Jeremy Klotz, a Ph.D. student at Columbia University representing the Center for Smart Streetscapes, took second place in the nation at the NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) Perfect Pitch competition, held September 29, 2026, at the ERC Biennial Meeting in Alexandria, VA.
Each of the country’s 16 NSF Engineering Research Centers sent one student champion to the competition. Facing the best pitch from every ERC nationwide — spanning fields from advanced manufacturing to water treatment to microbiome engineering — Klotz made the case for “Minimalist Cameras” to a panel of judges from industry and venture capital. His pitch presented research conducted with Prof. Shree Nayar at Columbia’s CAVE Lab: cameras designed with only the handful of pixels a task requires, preserving privacy by design while running entirely on harvested solar power.
The Perfect Pitch competition is a long-standing ERC tradition that fosters a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and rewards concise, persuasive communication. Held at the Biennial Meeting — the every-other-year gathering of all NSF Engineering Research Centers in the Washington, DC area — the competition gives each student 90 seconds and a single slide to answer three questions: what real-life problem their research addresses, how they solved it in a unique way, and what impact it would have for society and in achieving their Center’s mission.
You can watch Jeremy’s pitch presentation here.