Two First-Place Honors for UC Entrepreneurs

A group of UC graduate students won two top awards at the 21st Annual University of Oregon New Venture Championship (NVC) on April 5-8, 2012.

The team—Pooja Kadambi, BME ’11 MSE ’12, Ron Meyers, MBA ’10, MS ACCT ’12, Joe Lovelace, CEAS ’11, and Aaron Kurosu, DAAP ’11—took first place honors and a $3,000 check in the Lighting and Trade Show rounds of the competition for their Ischiban Neural Engineering Systems invention.

The Ischiban product is a neural based system for electrical technology applications in medical (stroke detection), military, and commercial entertainment industries. Ischiban’s neural engineering products, Neuro-SensorTM and its accompanying Neuro-ControllerTM, are focused on the nexus of software and hardware needed to significantly shorten the time needed to detect strokes.

Teams are judged on their ideas, business plans, and pitches, as well as how fast they can adjust to feedback from various judges, says Charles H. Matthews, executive director of UC’s Center for Entrepreneurship Education and Research, professor of management and a team advisor.

“The NVC is one of the best, but also one of the toughest competitions,” Matthews says. “Everyone was talking about their innovative approach to early stroke detection.”

This isn’t the first time the group competed and walked away with top honors. The team was a first-place winner in the Innov8 Health Idea Expo at General Electric Aviation Learning Centre and a first runner-up in the Spirit of Enterprise Competition in Cincinnati.

Next the team faces the Venture Labs Investment Competition on May 3-6, 2012, a Super Bowl of business plan competitions that allows for only 30 teams from around the world to compete.