Students win Burrill competition with drug delivery device
Students in business and biomedical engineering created a drug delivery device and a company called Ratio that won them a $10,000 first prize in the G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition at UW–Madison.
Anthony Escarcega, an MBA student in entrepreneurship, and teammate John Puccinelli, a graduate student in biomedical engineering, wrote the winning plan for the already-patented device that can deliver large-molecule drugs to patients.
Second-place prize of $7,000 went to FireSite, a team whose business plan centered on a device for helping firefighters to escape from burning buildings.
FireSite’s team consisted of Brian Burke, a sophomore in finance, Chandler Nault, a senior in mechanical engineering, Mitch Nick, a sophomore in industrial engineering, and Nick O’Brien, who is majoring in chemical engineering and theater. The team recently took first prize of $10,000 in the College of Engineering Schoofs Prize for Creativity.
Third place – and a $4,000 check – went to Clean Well, a new idea incorporating a HEPA filter into well caps to keep out airborne pathogens. The team presenting this idea consisted of James Lynnett, a master’s student in business, and Dan Gerdman, who is studying for his MBA in entrepreneurship.
The $1,000 fourth-place prize went to a company called Microfend that offers anti-bacterial custom treatment for fabrics for special markets, including hotels and hospitals. The team for this business was Alfredo Armengol and Paul Pucci, who are studying entrepreneurship and Jay Deivasigamani, a graduate student in textile engineering.
Fourteen teams comprised of 42 students joined this year’s all-day competition last Friday. Teams from disciplines across campus presented their business plans to a panel of expert judges Friday in Grainger Hall.
Business concepts ranged from online grocery services to creating and selling the services of creative students for brainstorming sessions.
“The idea of the competition is always to encourage the students to take their ideas and make them concrete enough to be marketable,” says Anne Miner, a business professor who has directed the competition since its inception.
Miner said this year’s competitors represented a wide range of students with an even wider range of ideas.
“There are more business ideas on this campus than anyone could imagine. We certainly have some incredibly creative minds at work,” she says.
The G. Steven Burrill competition is supported by the UW–Madison Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship, the School of Business, the College of Engineering and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
In the School of Business, the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship and the Erdman Center for Operations and Technology Management collaborate to produce the competition.
Major funding is provided by G. Steven Burrill, a 1966 graduate of the School of Business. Burrill made a surprise visit to the pre-event dinner Thursday night to offer students feedback on their business ideas.
- Helen Capellaro, (608) 262-9213, hcapellaro@bus.wisc.edu