QD Tech has won the $35,000 grand prize in the University
of Massachusetts Amherst's Innovation Challenge Final Business Plan Competition.
The winning team plans to produce quantum-dot-based materials designed to improve
solar cells.
The Innovation Challenge is a competition for the best innovation-driven business
plan produced by students, recent alumni and faculty advisors at UMass Amherst.
The program, which includes a preliminary elevator pitch contest, as well as
mentoring and educational events throughout the year, culminated in the investor
presentations by four finalists this week.
“QD Tech aims to increase solar cell power output by adding a quantum
dot active layer to increase existing solar cells’ efficiency,”
the team said in describing its technology. “Our proprietary quantum dot
synthesis method allows us to do this at relatively low cost, when compared
to the traditional quantum dot synthesis.”
The $25,000 second-place prize went to Bug Power, a biotech company planning
to produce a talented strain of bacteria that can simultaneously clean up waste,
eliminate odor and generate electricity in portable toilets.
“Our first product is the eToilet—an eco-friendly, electricity-generating
toilet that uses waste to power fans, lights and sensors that make portable
toilets cleaner, brighter and odorless,” as the Bug Power team described
its goal. “We are confident that the eToilet will be a breath of fresh
air for the $1 billion portable toilet rental industry.”
Soapbox, which seeks to empower community initiatives through an Internet platform
that influences government, business and NGO activities for the common good,
received the third prize of $10,000.
QD Tech aims to bridge the gap between current and next-generation solar cells
by increasing the efficiency of the current technology, while at the same time
keeping production costs near their current levels. By employing a quantum-dot-based
optical coating, QD Tech intends to increase the efficiency of both silicon
and thin-film cells by 5 percent. The team consists of MBA student Mike Deschamps,
chemistry doctoral student Kevin Early and chemical engineering doctoral student
Tracy Heckler.
The members on the second-place Bug Power team are physics doctoral candidate
Nikhil Malvankar, operations management doctoral candidate Xuan Huang, electrical
engineering undergraduate Danxiang Li, and hospitality and tourism graduate
student Apurv Mathur. Team members for Soapbox are Conor White-Sullivan, an
undergraduate majoring in anthropology, and Bengy Messner, an undergraduate
in the Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration program.
The Innovation Challenge is an initiative of the Isenberg Program for the Integration
of Management, Engineering and Science as a cross-campus collaboration of the
College of Engineering and the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst.
The founding Platinum Sponsor of the Innovation Challenge is Wolf, Greenfield
& Sacks, P.C. “As specialists in intellectual property, we are heavily
invested in fostering innovation in the Commonwealth,” said Edmund Walsh
of the company. “We are pleased to be able to work with this talented
group of innovators."
The other Platinum Sponsor is Saint-Gobain. “Saint-Gobain has enjoyed
being a sponsor, judge and mentor for the Innovation Challenge and the student
teams for the past couple of years,” said Michael Mahoney, a research
associate at that company. “A number of excellent innovative ideas and
new businesses have been initiated as a result of this competition. It is also
a tribute to the collaborative teaching efforts between the College of Engineering
and the School of Management at UMass Amherst that the quality of the entrepreneurial
teams and their business plans has continually improved.”
“The Innovation Challenge is designed to give participants a taste of
the challenges that must be overcome in the real world to translate a concept
into a high impact business or nonprofit enterprise,” noted Michael Malone,
the Ronnie & Eugene Isenberg Distinguished Professor and the Dean of Engineering.
“In addition, we aim to inspire and encourage innovators across the campus
and connect them with experienced mentors. The diversity of the teams that compete
underscores the great depth and breadth of UMass Amherst.”
Since 2005, the Innovation Challenge has awarded more than $270,000 in prize
money to 20 different student-led teams. The competition is designed to help
students and young alumni pursue novel business ideas by developing new technologies
into marketable products or making new approaches to difficult problems. The
goal is for each interdisciplinary team to conceptualize a product with regard
to its scientific and technological design and create a business plan for the
product’s commercialization.
Besides Platinum Sponsors Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks and Saint-Gobain, other
sponsors of the Innovation Challenge are Forge Partners; Cooley Godward Kronish
LLP; Joseph Bohan; Scott Perry ’82; Raytheon; VISTAGY; Stephen Dunne ’89;
Stephen Collins ’81; Bart Stuck & Mary-Jane Cross ’66; Michael
Tunstall ’82, and Karen Lauter Utgoff Consulting. In addition to the sponsors,
support is provided by Eugene and Ronnie Isenberg.
Posted May 7th, 2009
