Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: Alarms for Nurses, Pool-Cleaning Robots: Promising Ventures Win Start-up Funds in UC Davis Business Plan Competition

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Abstract:
Three young scientists with a potentially lucrative idea for getting patients out of hospitals faster took home the $15,000 first prize in the annual Big Bang! Business Plan Competition managed by UC Davis MBA students.

Alarms for Nurses, Pool-Cleaning Robots: Promising Ventures Win Start-up Funds in UC Davis Business Plan Competition

Davis, CA | Posted on May 17th, 2007

The $5,000 second prize went to a pair of students who hope to put a solar-powered pool-cleaning robot in every backyard swimming pool in the country.

A $3,000 "People's Choice" award went to two five UC Davis students for their plan to refine and market a robotic, nanotechnology-based process that could allow scientists and drug developers to study cell-membrane proteins far more rapidly than is currently possible. Such studies can lead to advances in understanding and treating viruses, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses.

The awards were announced at a ceremony on campus Wednesday night. The Big Bang! competition, founded in 2000 by Graduate School of Management students, is designed to reward innovation at UC Davis and encourage entrepreneurship in the region at large.

"Big Bang! is an exciting brew of talent, competition and money," said Nicole Woolsey Biggart, dean of the management school. "It's better than ‘American Idol,' because our winners go on to build companies that make a difference."

Designed to Save Lives

The first-place team, Aid Networks, developed a software system and wireless device designed to solve a problem every hospital faces: promptly detecting problems in patients in medium-acuity wards, where a nurse may make rounds only every four hours or so. The device, worn around a patient's wrist or neck, monitors heart rate and other vital functions and emits a "smart alarm" when something goes wrong. The alarm not only alerts nursing staff to a potential problem, but also signals the appropriate response.

Danielle Sheehan, vice president of product development for the startup, predicted the system will triple the rate at which patients are admitted to and released from hospitals, since fewer patients will have their stays extended due to preventable complications. Sheehan and her partners calculate the venture will deliver more than a 20-fold return on investment in seven years.

"We want to save lives and turn $6 million into $160 million," said Sheehan, who earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at UC Davis in 2006 and is pursuing a master's in the same field at Stanford. Sheehan's teammates were Darin Buxbaum, a student in Stanford's Graduate School of Business; Tia Gao, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins; and Leo Selavo, a postdoctoral researcher in wireless sensor networks at the University of Virginia.

According to Sheehan, the Aid Networks monitoring system is already in clinical trials at hospitals in Baltimore, Boston and Washington, D.C. Sheehan and her partners have filed for a patent for their device.

$120,000 in Seed Funding to Start-ups

In the past seven years, UC Davis Big Bang! has awarded $120,000 to 21 promising student-initiated projects, becoming one of the best-known business plan competitions on the West Coast. From November through May each year, dozens of students, scientists and entrepreneurs from UC Davis, other universities and the private sector invest hundreds of hours honing their business ideas for the chance to win cash and network with management professors, investors, intellectual property attorneys and business leaders. Teams must include at least one UC Davis student, alumnus or staff or faculty member.

Prize money, coaching and volunteer judges are provided by some of Northern California's largest employers, venture capital firms and law practices. DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary was the lead sponsor for the seventh consecutive year. Major sponsors included the UC Davis Medical Center, DFJ Frontier, Amplify Software, Wells Fargo and Boutin Dentino Gibson Di Giusto Hodell Inc. Other sponsors included American River Ventures, CleanStart, McClellan Technology Incubator, Akers Capital LLC, Central Valley Fund/Gael Partners LLC, DCA Partners, Fenwick & West, First US Community Credit Union, Javed Iqbal, McDonough Holland & Allen, Silvers HR Management, Wavepoint Ventures and the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship.

"The Big Bang! is infecting the campus and whole region with the spirit of entrepreneurism," Biggart said. "This is an infection we never want to be cured of."

This year's competition opened with a field of 31 teams that was eventually whittled down to five finalists by a panel of eight volunteer judges from the Sacramento and Bay Area business, investment and law communities.

Four of the finalists were also winners in a Little Bang contest in February sponsored by UC Davis InnovationAccess, which encourages more campus scientists to explore the market potential for their research.

"This competition has been extremely successful in initiating collaboration between the business community and research coming out of UC Davis," said MBA student Cassie Hilder, a co-chair of this year's competition. "We hope to build on these successes to create an even larger contribution to the region."

Pool-cleaning Robot

The second-place Big Bang! prize went to Simple Robot Inc., for the ray-shaped "Manta" autonomous swimming pool cleaner. Team members were Bill Allan, who earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering at UC Davis in 2006 and now works for a Bay Area technology firm, and Alex Morris, a second-year MBA student at UC Davis. Allan and Morris say they want to build the nation's leading robotics company, automating menial tasks so people have time for more meaningful ones.

MembreX Protein Technologies was voted the favorite project by the audience at Wednesday's ceremony. Two MBA students and three doctoral candidates at UC Davis launched the new enterprise, which seeks to capitalize on technology developed in research laboratories. The students predict the process they are bringing to market—for rapid screening of cell membrane proteins—will allow scientists to complete in three hours screening studies that now take three years. Team members are MBA candidates Kevin Chartrand and Davin Hsieh; Cristina Tcheyan and Babak Sanii, both doctoral candidates in applied science; and Adrian Brozell, who is earning his doctoral in biophysics.

Other Finalists

The two other Big Bang! finalists were:

* Advanced Energy Storage Devices. Conceived by three students in the UC Davis Working Professional MBA Program offered in Sacramento, this nascent company seeks to develop and market carbon nanotube ultracapacitors and electrodes as an alternative to conventional chemical batteries. The devices would recharge in seconds and outlive the machines they power, company founders say. Team members, all of whom hold full-time jobs while pursuing their MBAs, are Brett Cowley-Crawford, who works as a project manager at Aerojet in Sacramento; Dave Walton, a manager at Intel in Folsom; and Norman Lim, an electrical engineer at Intel.
* Stroke Intervention Technologies. Paul Yu-Yang, a doctoral candidate in biomedical engineering at UC Davis with an MBA from the management school, and Geraldine Baer, a third-year medical student at UC Davis, teamed up to design a novel stent delivery system for clogged arteries in the brain. Their product relies on a high-tech shape-memory polymer developed and patented by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The material can be fabricated into a desired shape and mechanically crimped into a smaller shape. When heated, the material expands to the pre-crimped shape.

"This year's Big Bang finalists were the most prepared and articulate ever," said Roger Akers, president of Sacramento-area venture capital firm Akers Capital LLC, who has served as a judge and sponsored the competition the past seven years.

"All six finalists had plans that hold real potential to become operating companies," Akers said. "They had modeled themselves on other successful businesses and provided solid analytics as to why their competitive advantage would prevail. Winners Aid Networks and Simple Robots edged out the other because of their ability to compel the judges to want to invest right now."

For more information on the competition, visit http://bigbang.gsm.ucdavis.edu .

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About UC Davis
Established in 1981, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management provides management education to nearly 400 students enrolled in Daytime MBA and Working Professional MBA programs on the UC Davis campus, in Sacramento, and in the San Francisco Bay Area. It also offers a technology management minor for undergraduates and business development programs in which doctoral science students develop skills to commercialize research.

For more information about the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, visit http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu

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Contacts:
UC Davis Graduate School of Management
Tim Akin, 530-752-7362

or
UC Davis News Service
Claudia Morain, 530-752 9841

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