Rice Business Plan Competition
TriFusion Devices from Texas A&M wins 2016 Rice Business Plan Competition
TriFusion Devices from Texas A&M University emerged as the top startup company in the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) Saturday at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. The annual event is the world’s richest and largest student startup competition.
Selected by 275 judges from the investment sector as representing the best investment opportunity and taking home nearly $400,000 in cash and prizes, TriFusion Devices bested 41 other competitors hailing from some of the world’s top universities. TriFusion Devices offers breakthrough 3-D printed products and services aimed at revolutionizing the health care and sports-equipment industries in powerful and profitable ways.
2nd Place: Neurable, University of Michigan
$40,000 second-place prize and $280,000 Owl Investment Prize. The second-place prize was awarded by one of the sponsors of the first RBPC in 2001, Finger Interests. It was increased from $15,000 to $40,000 in memory of Jerry Finger by the Anderson Family Fund and the Greater Houston Community Foundation.
Neurable has created the first noninvasive brain-computer interface that allows for real-time control of physical objects and software.
3rd Place: Gecko Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University
Gecko Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University takes home more than $150,000 in individual prizes including: Norton Rose Fulbright 3rd place prize, $60,000 TiE Investment prize, $50,000 US Department of Energy Clean Energy prize, $10,000 Shell Technology Prize, $10,000 Wells Fargo Clean Tech Innovation prize and $10,000 Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Challenge prize.
Gecko Robotics builds robots for industrial inspections, starting with power plants.
4th Place: Bold Diagnostics, Northwestern University
Bold Diagnostics, Northwestern University -- fourth place and more than $73,000 in individual prizes including: EY 4th place, $25,000 TMC X Digital Health Accelerator prize, $25,000 Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Challenge prize, $20,000 NASA Earth/Space Human Health & Performance Innovation prize, Palo Alto Software Outstanding Written Business Plan prize and 4th place Mercury Fund elevator pitch prize
Bold Diagnostics is an early stage Northwestern University startup that is developing the future of blood-pressure monitoring with an innovative platform. The company’s patent-pending technology is currently being validated through a 150-person preclinical study at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
5th Place: Oncolinx, Dartmouth College
Oncolinx, Dartmouth College -- fifth place and more than $100,000 in individual prizes, including one of the $100,000 TiE RBPC Angel Investment prizes and 5th place Shell Technology Venture prize.
Oncolinx is developing targeted cancer therapies that both destroy the tumor and activate immunological memory to improve patient response durability.
6th Place: MDAR Technologies, Northwestern University
MDAR has developed a 3-D vision system that eliminates the trade-offs of existing technologies, thereby enabling a new wave of robotics.