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April 4, 2006
NanoTect Takes Top Prize in Mid-South Business Plan Competition
Contact: Eric Mathews, 901-678-5105
or: emathews@memphis.edu
The FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis has announced
the winners of its inaugural Business Plan Competition. Winner of the $20,000
grand prize was NanoTect, which specializes in protecting corrodible exposed
metal surfaces with a nano-thin film that self-assembles and adheres to
the metal surface. Initial target products will be gold jewelry and copper
pipe used in plumbing. Team members are Dr. Eugene Pinkhassik, director
of the Institute for Nanomaterials Development and Innovation at the U of
M, L. Todd Banner, U of M graduate student, and Wayne Culbreth, chief operations
officer of Santi Company.
The $5000 first runner-up prize went to Deep Web Analytics, a search engine
for the deep Web, which will help users find information that traditional
search engines do not index. Team members are Rajesh Ramanand, U of M graduate
student, Dr. King-Ip Lin, associate professor of computer science at the
U of M, and Steve Morrison, Vivek Sheel, Kiran Jain, O.P. Skaaksrud and
Chris Apalodimas, all of FedEx Corp.
Taking the $2500 second runner-up prize was AbliTech, which develops new
polymer products and polymer/drug combination products that advance healing
technology. AbliTech’s initial focus is a polymer coating with enhanced
drug delivery for the cardiac stent market. Team members are Nick Hammond,
IGERT Fellow and doctoral candidate at the University of Mississippi, and
Lisa Kemp, doctoral candidate and IGERT Fellow at the University of Southern
Mississippi.
The Business Plan Competition was designed to
encourage students and researchers to create top business firms. Sponsors
were the Memphis Business Journal, LogoWorks, Emerge Memphis, and Baker,
Donelson, Bearman, Cadlwell & Berkowitz.
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