The UCI New Venture Competition, run by the Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, recently came to a close with winners receiving prize money from the largest fund the competition has ever had – $103,000.
Held at The Paul Merage School of Business, winners competed in various tracks, including the UCI Beall Applied Innovation-sponsored Tech Surge.
The New Venture Competition targets business- or innovation-oriented students from any major or class level to explore a project and develop a team within a five-month period. Throughout that time, teams work with mentors and complete a series of workshops and presentations in different competition tracks to refine their products.
“The reason we do this is we believed this would be very important to your career, regardless if you continue on this journey or stop,” said Imran Currim, faculty director of the Beall Center. ”I think at any one point in time, if you are passionate about something, you will not just retain more, but you will have a more rewarding time.”
UCI Beall Applied Innovation’s Chloe Hsieh, entrepreneur experiences coordinator, and Ron King, associate director for faculty innovation and entrepreneurship, presented prizes to this year’s Tech Surge winners, ELF Therapeutics and P-Flaps.
ELF Therapeutics, a Wayfinder startup, won first place with its handheld device that destroys fat cells in five minutes or less. Second place went to P-Flaps, which uses a projection camera-based surgical aid device to project a stencil on a patient’s body. ELF Therapeutics also placed first in the Life Sciences track and fellow Wayfinder startup Embryologic placed second.
Teams eligible for the Tech Surge track must create technologies based on UCI intellectual property to compete for over $15,000 in funding and automatic entry to Applied Innovation’s Wayfinder program, where they have access to resources such as workshops, collaborative workspaces, Innovation Advisors and more.
In addition to the competition’s standard tracks, the Chinese city of Suzhou sponsored the Win the Future award to support its goal of business acceleration and increased accessibility to the Chinese market.
Winners of the Win the Future award included Wayfinder teams Embryologic and NOWA Innovations, who are now eligible to compete in Suzhou’s business competition in July.
To learn more about The Paul Merage School of Business, visit here.
