May 13, 2010
Bioengineering teams snapped up many of the top awards at the Berkeley Business Plan Competition again this year, taking the Grand Prize, First Place in Life Sciences, First Place in Products and Services, and the People’s Choice Award. The Grand and Life Sciences prizes were taken by Orpheus Medical, a team including Berkeley/UCSF Bioengineering Ph.D. Erika Palmer. Orpheus has created the first medical device that can painlessly cure hemorrhoids in a single procedure that can be performed by gastroenterologists in their endoscopy suites.
Especially exciting is the performance of BrightSense, a company which has grown out of a class project from the Spring 2009 BioE 104 course, where students chose to model the diffusion and kinetics of dental whitening strips for their computation design class project. Building on this research, BrightSense aims to reduce post-whitening sensitivity by designing customized whitening strips with peroxide dosages optimized for each user’s teeth. BrightSense took home First Place in Products & Services and the People’s Choice Prize.
Teams were judged by panels of venture capitalists, and will receive cash prizes to help launch their companies. The Grand Prize winners will head to Spain in June to participate in 22@Barcelona’s HIT Barcelona World Innovation Summit.
Congratulations!