Undergrads take 4th Prize in Business Plan Competition

Sanifits, a team of UW undergraduate students in business and mechanical engineering, took fourth prize and $7,000 in seed money at the 8th annual UW Business Plan Competition. The team of Scott King, Justin Taber, Owen Yee and Parinaz Ejlali earned passage to the final four from the field of 73 entrants with their plan to launch a touch-less waste disposal retrofit system for garbage receptacles in fast food restaurants.

The Herbert B. Jones Foundation Grand Prize of $25,000 went to Atheroson, a company developing ultrasound technology that will evaluate coronary heart disease quickly, inexpensively and non-invasively, won the competition.

Founders David Dupree, Srinath Narayanan, T. Fettah Kosar and Lawrence Rozsnyai-UW graduate students in business, bioengineering and law-created the business last summer through the WRF Capital/Gates Fellows program as a way to commercialize a promising technology developed at the UW.

The $15,000 Vulcan Ventures second prize went to Therapeutic Monitoring Systems (Tauqeer Bashir, Christopher M. Brown, C. Michael Dickerson, Thomas L. Fare and James Greener). TMS has developed an implantable device that can detect the reoccurrence of cancer in the bloodstream.

Soren Systems (Adelina Balog, Edward J. Hansen, Cintra Pollack, Ivan Shuvalov), another multi-disciplinary product of the WRF Capital/Gates Fellows program, won the third prize of $10,000. Soren Systems is a next-generation solar energy company targeting grocery and other big box retailers.

The Business Plan Competition also awarded $5,000 in seed money to the purveyors of Best Ideas in several categories: The UW Business School Global Business Center International Prize went to MEDS, an African health care training and placement organization created by UW undergraduates from the Business School. The DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary Technology Prize went to Atheroson and Therapeutic Monitoring Systems. The Starbucks/UW Net Impact Sustainability Prize went to Soren Systems. The Service/Retail Prize went to CollabSmart, a purchasing consolidator for small construction companies. And the Non-Profit Prize went to Washington All Abilities.

"The two things we focus on at the UW Business School are creating futures and transforming lives," said Dean James Jiambalvo. "I can't think of anything we do that accomplishes those objectives better than the Business Plan Competition."

Sponsors included the Herbert B. Jones Foundation, Vulcan Capital, DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP, Starbucks, UW Net Impact, and the UW Business School's Center for Technology Entrepreneurship, which organized the event.

For more information, contact Whitney Lackey, program coordinator, Center for Technology Entrepreneurship, whitneyw@u.washington.edu or (206) 685-9868; Christopher Klemm, director, Center for Technology Entrepreneurship, rcklemm@u.washington.edu or (206) 616-2450 or visit http://bschool.washington.edu/cte/bplan_comp.shtml

Return to June 2005 BA Alumni News