The concept of virtual reality often conjures up images of magical worlds and alternative universes.

First-year student Enzo Vinholi has a different idea.

Vinholi developed a virtual reality system that caters to the elderly and people with limited mobility. Through his company, Like it was Yesterday, users can escape their rooms to revisit old memories of places they’ve been. Eventually, he hopes to create custom virtual reality experiences.

“He’d like to go in and get people to say, ‘I really want this particular experience’ and him to be able to craft it,” said Laura Dunham, St. Thomas entrepreneurship professor and a mentor to Vinholi.

Dunham first met Vinholi in August of 2017 at the First-year Innovation Immersion event, where 100 first-year students spent two days learning how to develop, design and test ideas for which they then implement business strategies. Vinholi went to St. Paul Academy for high school with Dunham’s son, and after Dunham read about Vinholi in the school paper, she decided to introduce herself.

“Here’s a young man who saw a problem and wasn’t content to be bummed about that problem, but he proactively and creatively thought about, ‘How do I create a solution?’” Dunham said. “It turned out in creating that solution, he created a solution that was valuable to many more people. That is what entrepreneurship is all about.”

Vinholi’s family is originally from Brazil, and his grandmother lived with his family for the majority of his childhood. After she suffered from a series of strokes, she went back to Brazil.

“She would always call and ask how we were, how the house was, how Grand Avenue was, all the places we grew up together,” Vinholi said. “I always sent her photos and videos but I thought, ‘There has to be a better way than this.’”

Taking matters into his own hands, Vinholi assembled pictures, videos and audio recordings from his childhood into a virtual reality program for his grandmother. The program was such a success he started bringing it into nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

“We did a few of these for a few other people because I thought it was a really cool idea,” Vinholi said. “They felt like they had escaped where they were, like they had gone back in time.”

The program’s success got Vinholi thinking about other applications.

“One woman… was just talking in amazement about how these memories started flooding back to her that she hadn’t had in years, like about when she was a little kid,” Vinholi said. “I was thinking, ‘There is a huge application for this in Alzheimer’s and memory loss.’ To be able to bring back memories in a new way is something really critical to memory care.”

Previously, Vinholi funded his efforts by charging clients individually but now relies on donations in order to provides his services for free.

“As of right now, everything we do is free to our customers because everything we’re doing right now benefits our research for Alzheimer’s,” Vinholi said of his company. “We’re studying how our stereoscope displays affect the general cognitive function in adults over the age of 55, so those suffering from memory loss and those not.”

In the future, Vinholi hopes to develop the program into a non-invasive treatment which would be theoretically covered under health insurance.

Along with being the CEO of Like it was Yesterday, Vinholi runs Keiken Tech, which supplies the virtual reality technology for Like it was Yesterday. He is also the chief operating officer of Sponsor A Staff, a company that brings ‘flow arts’ to children around the world. Vinholi founded it with his older brother, Enrico Vinholi.

The Flow Arts Institute’s website defines flow arts as “the intersection of a variety of movement-based disciplines including dance, juggling, fire-spinning, and object manipulation.”

“We travel all around the world and set up afterschool programs for children to learn,” Vinholi said. “We’ve been to almost every country in South America, Thailand, Japan; this year we are in Kenya for three months and we’ve helped over 5,000 children all across the world. That’s something I’m really proud of.”

The company is funded through a combination of donations and merchandise the brothers sell on their website.

In his free time, Vinholi plays bass in a band called “Good Luck Finding Iris.”

“We’re going on tour all across the United States this summer, so it’ll be a lot of fun with some cool bands,” Vinholi said.

Vinholi described being in the band as a lesson in entrepreneurship.

“You need to manage shows, money, income, traveling, places to stay, marketing,” Vinholi said. “I think that was really useful as a foundation for me, just the disciplines of managing organizations that extend outside of yourself.”

Though he’s dabbled in virtual reality, flow arts and music, Vinholi hasn’t quite nailed down what he’d like to do post-graduation.

“As a freshman, I’m still juggling with it, we’ll see what the years ahead hold,” Vinholi said. “I know I’ll always be involved, somehow, in some sort of social entrepreneurship.”

Solveig Rennan can be reached at renn6664@stthomas.edu