Diversity & Inclusion
Awards / Events / Geekadelphia

Here are the winners of the 2016 Philly Geek Awards

BioBots, ROAR for Good's Yasmine Mustafa and Azavea's Kathryn Killebrew made it to the winner's circle — in an evening where diversity played a starring role.

By:
Roberto Torres headshot
Roberto Torres,  @TorresLuzardo
Oct 17, 2016 11:53am
Azavea's Kathryn Killebrew accepts the Geek of the Year award, flanked by Generocity's Mo Manklang and EvoXLabs' Ather Sharif. (Photo by Julie Zeglen)

Four hundred geeks in formal wear gathered in the basement of the Free Library of Philadelphia Sunday night, in a diverse tribute to the city’s biggest nerds.
That’s right, the 2016 Philly Geek Awards went down this Sunday, even though it seemed unclear if they were going to happen at all this year, due to the ceremony’s constant growth and the challenges it posed. But then Technical.ly and Generocity joined forces with long-time organizers Geekadelphia to make the awards happen.
“If there’s one thing we know, it’s dangerous to go alone,” Geekadelphia editor Mikey Ilagan wrote in a blog post back in July.
It was an evening of thunderous applause, nervous speeches, acceptance videos and even Pokémon sightings. And thanks to the high geek ratio in the audience, there are many more moments from the lavish evening under #PhillyGeekAwards on Twitter.
The ceremony also proved to be an echo of its own community: women and people of color — or initiatives led by them — won 10 of the 14 categories of the evening.
From the seats of the Library’s auditorium we saw Stephan Grupp, a medical researcher at CHOP, take home the Scientist of the Year accolade for his work on pediatric cancer. We heard the entire room clap for 11-year-old Rad Girl Marley Dias as she accepted, in a prerecorded video, the award for Movement of the Year for #1000blackgirlbooks.


That pint of ice cream that sorta made it to space landed Partnership of the Year, in a joint venture between the Workshop School and Little Baby’s Ice Cream.
Fresh from their latest media shoutout, BioBots landed the much sought-after Startup of the Year award, for its 3D-printed tissues, while the “Eternal Winner” of Philly Startup Leaders’ BBQ won again (shocker!): Yasmine Mustafa landed the Technologist of the Year prize (and later broke it, smh).


Food Connect took home Dev Project of the Year (full disclosure: this reporter presented that award), while Cipher Prime’s Tailwind: Prologue was recognized as Game of the Year.
For the final and most awaited recognition of the evening — and following a purposefully long intro speech by former recipient Ather Sharif — Azavea’s Kathryn Killebrew landed the Geek of the Year award for her civic-tech achievements.
(Before we leave you with the full list of geeks, here’s a quick shoutout to our sponsors: Wildbit, StartUp PHL, NextFab and Yikes Inc. We appreciate your support.)

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Here’s who won:

Comic Creator of the Year:

Maker of the Year:

Scientist of the Year:

Feature Length Indie Film of the Year:

Movement of the Year:

Mission Leader of the Year:

Impact Org of the Year:

Partnership of the Year:

Startup of the Year:

Technologist of the Year

Dev Project of the Year

Game of the Year

Geek of the Year

Bonus track: here’s a quick vid with all the awesome geeks who made it this year:

Companies: BioBots / Azavea / Cipher Prime / Free Library of Philadelphia / Generocity / Science Leadership Academy / Technical.ly
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