Three siblings honoring the legacy of their father and
a half dozen engineering students who
set their sights on improving outcomes of abdominal surgery
made the winning pitches at the finals of
the 10th annual Johns Hopkins University Business Plan
Competition.
The event, hosted by the Center for Leadership
Education, this year attracted 42 team entries
in two categories: general business, and
biotechnology/medical devices and technology. The teams
came from the Carey Business School, SAIS and the schools
of Arts and Sciences, Engineering,
Medicine and Public Health.
Last month, the judges whittled down the original
field of 42 teams to 26, which competed in
the semifinals on March 27.
For the finals on April 3, the remaining 12 teams went
before a judging panel of high-ranking
industry professionals, many of whom are alumni or friends
of the university.
The first-place winner in each category received
$5,000 and access to professional services to
assist in launching his or her business. The second-place
winner was handed $3,000, and the third-
place winner, $1,000.
In the general business category, first place went to
Tendix, a team of three brothers who
impressed the judges with their technology-driven company
formed to develop and market a novel
expansion chamber for internal combustion engines. The
company's Internally Radiating Impulse
Structure, or IRIS, design has the potential to double the
efficiency of traditional internal
combustion engines and reduce emissions of greenhouse
gases.
The concept was conceived by Corban Tillemann-Dick and
his father, Timber Dick, who died last
year in an automobile accident. Feeling the technology had
huge market potential, the family members
decided to carry on their father's work.
"We all wanted to make Dad's legacy a reality," said
Corban, a senior
economics major in Arts
and Sciences. The team consisted of Corban and brothers
Levi and Tomicah, both students at SAIS
and contributors to the development of the IRIS technology.
(Two other siblings are also part of the
Johns Hopkins family: Liberty, a senior majoring in the
history of science and
technology in Arts and
Sciences, and Charity, who received a graduate degree in
voice from
Peabody in 2007.)
Second place in the general business category went to
Nimble Notebooks, a School of Medicine
team that designed a piece of software for hand-held
portable devices that would allow scientists to
take written, voice and photographic notes during an
experiment. Care-Ease, a telemedicine company
that could provide affordable health care services to
customers in convenient locations, took third
prize in this category.
In the biotechnology/medical devices and technology
category, SurgyAid — a start-up medical
device company that creates innovative technologies to
improve efficiency, quality and effectiveness
of health care — won the top prize. The company's
flagship product, SurgyPack, is a device that offers
a novel means of bowel packing for abdominal surgery,
increasing the ease of operation while reducing
costs and postoperative complications. SurgyPack was the
brainchild of six
Whiting School of Engineering undergraduates and
graduate students.
Second place went to another Whiting School team,
which crafted a business plan for
NECO/Intuitive Medical Devices, a technology to allow
urologists to more safely and effectively
perform a minimally invasive tumor-removal procedure in an
area of the kidney. Completing a sweep in
this category, the Whiting School's Stem Cell Orthopedics
landed third place for its SutureCell, a
novel product that is designed to improve Achilles tendon
reconstruction surgery.
In previous years, the business plan competition was
open to only full-time undergraduates in
the schools of Engineering and Arts and Sciences, but for
2009 organizers opened it up to graduate
and part-time students from all the university's academic
divisions.
The JHU Business Plan Competition provides students
with an opportunity to test their
entrepreneurial ideas. The contest was launched in 1998 by
the Whiting School of Engineering's W.P.
Carey Program in Entrepreneurship and Management and has
grown significantly since its inception.
The Business Plan Competition committee is already
looking for new ways to expand the event
next year, such as the addition of a social
entrepreneurship category and an increase in the prize
money.
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