Before Yasha Zink became a UC Berkeley entrepreneur, she was a friend looking for answers. 

The summer before her freshman year, one of her closest friends had confided that she had been drugged and assaulted by two men at a party. Realizing how easily drink spiking can occur, Zink was determined to find a way to help keep herself and her friends safe as they entered college.

What she found was a glaring gap in the market that forced consumers to pick between two imperfect options: discreet tests that were more prone to false positives and could detect only a handful of commonly used drugs, or more accurate tests that required complex mixing steps to produce results — essentially creating a “mini-lab” in a bathroom that could be difficult to use properly.

Moreover, the scale of the issue is staggering, as the National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted on college campuses. 

In search of a product that could bridge the tradeoff between accuracy and discretion, Zink set out to create one of her own.

“I wanted to make a comprehensive test for drugs, because you have a right to know what’s in your cup,” Zink said. 

Zink (front row, center) with other 2026 Big Ideas winners and staff (Big Ideas photo)

Four years later, that idea became SipDisk — a drink-spiking detection device hidden inside a makeup compact. In May, the pitch earned Zink the $20,000 Grand Prize from UC Berkeley’s Big Ideas Contest, the university’s flagship innovation competition for students tackling real-world challenges. 

With just a few drops of liquid, users can discreetly test their drinks for multiple substances. The compact contains a mirror and replaceable testing disks designed to look like makeup, allowing people to check their drinks discreetly in real social settings surrounded by others.

Growing up in Marin County, just north of Silicon Valley, Zink said entrepreneurship was always a big part of her life, and was more than eager to start working on projects of her own. 

In high school, she launched her own clothing brand, Cavalloko, and later founded Running to the Rescue, a community fundraiser that organized public races and step challenges — even during the COVID-19 pandemic — raising $54,000 for the Save the Children Organization. 

That same love for entrepreneurship is what drew her to UC Berkeley hoping to join the Haas School of Business, and where she began developing an early version of SipDisk during her freshman year. 

Known then as Detect-Stix, Zink imagined a portable testing strip that could connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth and detect nine of the drugs most commonly associated with drink spiking. 

Zink also explored the idea of creating the testing chemistry from scratch and experimented with reusable formats, but fitting advanced testing technology into a small, affordable device proved more difficult than expected.

The idea began to take shape through the Blum Center’s Big Ideas Contest.

Zink first entered Detect-Stix into the competition during her sophomore year, and although she didn’t advance to the finalist round, she believes the experience helped her refine the product and its purpose. Working with Big Ideas mentors Phillip Denny, Karenna Rehorn, and Britt Miller, Detect-Stix transformed from a testing strip into the compact, disk-shaped device that would become SipDisk.

After advice from her mentors, she turned to Alan Wu, chief toxicologist at UCSF, for assistance with more technical parts of the product. Rather than reinventing existing chemistry, Wu encouraged her to build around testing methods that had already proven effective. He also helped her evaluate existing products and connect with manufacturers producing assay strips for these drugs. 

Today, Zink plans on working with toxicologists and medical experts to track emerging trends in drink-spiking cases. As new substances appear, she hopes SipDisk can evolve alongside them.

“Yasha’s perseverance and pitch are inspiring,” Britt Miller, then–Big Ideas advisor, said. “Success requires grit and a willingness to adapt to feedback, and she has both.”

This spring, Zink returned to the Big Ideas stage as one of 13 finalists.  

She opened her pitch the same way she often does: asking audience members to raise their hand if they know someone — or had themselves — ever been roofied. 

Nearly every hand in the room went up.

“I think one of the biggest reasons why this is still happening is because people don’t talk about it,” Zink said. “And it’s a hard thing to talk about, but people don’t think it’s happening because no one is talking about it.” 

After the presentation, a woman who hadn’t raised her hand approached Zink in tears.

“She told me, ‘This happened to me too, so thank you for trying to solve this problem,'” Zink said. “Looking back, I wish I had asked people to take a moment to look around and see how many other people’s hands were raised.”

Winning the Big Ideas Grand Prize marked a major milestone, but Zink says the work is still only beginning.

SipDisk recently joined Humanmade, a San Francisco-based hardware accelerator where the team is developing prototypes, testing designs, and preparing for a pilot launch at UC Berkeley in the fall. The startup also received a $5,000 seed grant from the William G. Nash Foundation for its work at the intersection of student entrepreneurship and drug awareness.

For Zink, though, SipDisk has always been about more than technology.

She hopes the company can spark conversations about drink spiking and help people better recognize the warning signs when it occurs. 

“Beyond the product itself, I want to raise awareness and educate people on how to identify drink spiking,” Zink said. “What we’re really selling is confidence and comfortability when going out, because you shouldn’t have to spend your fun night being paranoid about what’s in your drink.”