SUMMARY OF 2002 COMPETITION - LifeSonics

Grand Prize Winners, LifeSonics

Winners of the $10,000 grand prize for 2002 were Garima Goel, an MBA student in the School of Business, and Chung Hoon Lee, a PhD student in Electrical Engineering. Their plan was for LifeSonics, a company developing electronic pulmonary drug delivery-products. The firm believes its technology will outperform pills and injections for certain types of medical treatment.

Nine student teams with a wide variety of business plans competed for more than $24,000 in prize money in the competition, which is now in its fifth year.

Each competing team had at least one student with a scientific and/or engineering background and one with business expertise. Contestants presented plans on ideas ranging from improved snack products to complex drug-delivery systems. Previous winners have leveraged their success, had their business plans funded and seen their ideas become reality.

Second Place, MEMS Innovations

The second prize of $7,000 went to Masaru Anzai, Angelo Gaitas and Shamus McNamara representing MEMS Innovations (MI), which plans to provide the market with reliable micro-electro-mechanical machine measurement devices. Both Anzai and Gaitas are MBA students in the School of Business and McNamara is a PhD student in electrical engineering.

Third Place, Dairyland Biomass Renewable Energy

The third place winner of $4,000 was Dairyland Biomass Renewable Energy (DBRE) which has developed a process to convert agricultural residues, wood and paper wastes into simple sugars in order to produce ethanol. The team consisted of Elyse Eisenberg, a junior in the School of Business, Jacob Holl and senior in agricultural engineering at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and Matthew Holl, a senior in mechanical engineering.

Fourth Place, ToxImmune Inc.

The fourth place winner of $1,000 was Tim Moser, a MBA student in supply-chain management for ToxImmune, Inc., which has as its principal product a test that shows in 10 minutes whether a person has antibodies protecting against the bacterial toxin that causes Toxic Shock Syndrome.

In addition, a $2,500 prize for best prototype, the Tong Prototype Award, was a three-way tie between LifeSonics, MEMS and OZ Innovations, represented by Anand Chhatpar, a freshman in the College of Engineering, Osman Ozcanli, industrial engineering and Puneesh Malkani, an MBA student in the School of Business.

Dr. Lance Fors, Chairman and CEO of Third Wave Technologies, gave the competition’s keynote address on entrepreneurship in biotechnology.

Judges for the competition were Scott Button, Partner in Venture Investors; Patricia Lipton, executive director, State of Wisconsin Investment Board; Greg Lynch, partner in Michael Best & Friedrich; Jeff Rusinow, Managing Director, Silicon Pastures; and Richard Wilkey, President & CEO, Fisher-Barton.

The G. Steven Burrill competition is supported by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Technology Enterprise Cooperative, the School of Business, the College of Engineering and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Major funding is provided by G. Steven Burrill, a 1966 graduate of the School of Business and CEO of Burrill & Company, who is an internationally known spokesman for the life sciences and high-tech industries.