Get Involved

Click Here for 2010 Competition

1st Place:
Novaphage provides an advanced biological solution to treat resistant bacterial infections in a clinical setting. Current antibiotic strategies suffer from declining effectiveness against mutidrug-resistant bacteria. The engineered bacteriophage - or phage for short - that Novophage plans to commercialize will provide a safe and highly effective biological alternative to the current regimen of antimicrobial treatments. The benefits from using this genetically engineered bacteriophage include suppression of the evolution of antibiotic resistance, high efficacy in combating bacterial biofilms, and a broad activity spectrum of activity against different bacterial species.

2nd Place:
An estimated 22.9 million Americans suffer from Asthma. According to industry reports, only 60% of asthmatic patients are treated effectively. AirGO - a company dedicated to the cure of Asthma - offers a novel therapeutic approach to treating the disease by enhancing antioxidant activity at the epithelial surface of the lung. Spearheaded by a team of Boston University doctors, AirGO is a small virtual company with management expertise in drug development for respiratory diseases. With this groundbreaking treatment, AirGO has the potential to make a major impact in the world of asthma.

3rd Place:
Click Chemicals is a niche fine chemicals company that supports chemistry research by providing novel building blocks, screening libraries, and custom library synthesis services. The company aims to be the first supplier to bring a powerful new chemical tool known as Click Chemistry to pharmaceutical, agrichemical, and biotechnology companies in North America and Europe. Invented by Nobel Laureate Professor K. Barry Sharpless, Click Chemistry is a back-to-basics research approach that employs the most reliable, predictable, and efficient chemicals reactions to quickly discover molecules with unique properties (e.g. pharmaceuticals). Through this unique approach, Click Chemicals' products and services can be expected to accelerate customers' chemistry research programs.

Runner Up:
Bikenow focuses on 3rd generation bike-share programs for the Boston and Baltimore metropolitan areas. To get from Kenmore to Harvard could take 45 minutes by T, 30 minutes by car, or a fresh 15 minutes by bike. BikeNow offers anyone in need of quick transportation the ability to swipe a card and ride off on one of our conveniently located bikes, and for less than the cost of public transportation. Anyone with a credit card or membership card can access our bikes, whether he/she is a tourist, student or businessman. As an added bonus, using the BikeNow service will help the environment by reducing carbon emissions caused by other means of transport.

The eighth annual competition showcased diverse and innovative life science, medical and mobile technologies, as well as language lesson products. Entrants to the competition submitted their business plans in January. The four finalists were selected in February and spent two months refining their plans and presentations. At the competition finals on April 9, each team spent 20 minutes presenting their plans and
10 minutes fielding questions from the judges, who were venture capitalists and lawyers specializing in
start ups.

While the judges were debating their choice of winners, the audience had the opportunity to vote on which team they would invest in using wireless technology donated by Platinum Sponsor Brown Rudnick. The most popular teams with the audience were not necessarily the most popular with the judges. After the judges announced the winners, they explained in detail what they liked about each business plan and what the teams needed to improve.

1st Place:
Headed by Roberto Reif ENG’08 with teammates Jonathan Scherer GSM’08, Dave Spenciner GSM’09, and Adam Winston GSM’08, Essense Medical Inc. develops disposable medical tools that can both diagnose
and treat cancer in real-time, while reducing the need for biopsies. The tools incorporate a patented optical
biopsy sensor that can identify cancerous tissues non-invasively by using light, therefore guiding the treatment towards the site of interest. Essense Medical Inc. will initially focus on screening and treating colorectal cancer to speed-up colonoscopy procedures and reduce the cost of healthcare. The company expects to translate the technology platform into other important medical markets.

2nd Place:
Presented by Erick Ramos Murillo GSM’07 and Rodrigo Navarro Huerta GSM’07, RemesaTel aims to help Mexican citizens in the US and Mexico reduce the exorbitant fees currently being paid for financial and commercial services by providing access to credit and trading opportunities through mobile text messaging.
In 2007, $24B in cash remittances was sent from the US to Mexico. In Mexico, families have access to more than $6 billion dollars in cash and government subsidies but often lack the basic financial instruments (like credit cards) that would allow them to access these funds at a reasonable rate. The result is payments ranging from 20%-300% over regular prices. By using RemesaTel mobile technologies, families will be able to conveniently transfer funds and realize significant savings.

3rd Place:
Anirban Chatterjee GSM’08 and Paul Mirer presented their business plan based on breakthrough biomaterials technology developed at Boston University. AutoNAIS offers a simple, convenient alternative to DNA sample preparation that looks and works a lot like a common laboratory pipettor, but quickly performs sophisticated separation and sampling procedures that now take many valuable hours to complete. Ideal for molecular biologists, the AutoNAIS is easy to automate, saving time and effort and enabling many types of cell-based research to become truly high-throughput.