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October 26, 2007

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Chemical Engineering Students Win BIG IDEA Competition

The University of Pittsburgh Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business last night announced the six winners of the BIG IDEA Competition, sponsored by the Institute’s Entrepreneurs’ Society. The competition, which sought the best business ideas to turn into competitive business plans and businesses, received submissions from students in many different programs and schools across the University. Winners will work with dynamic teams of professional business consultants, industry experts and entrepreneurs to build strong business plans that they can use in local, regional and national business plan competitions. For winners who have already founded their own businesses and those who seek to do so, the business plans will also serve as a solid foundation and tool for entrepreneurial success. Winners include:

Njideka Mbonu and Liangliang Cao, students in Pitt’s School of Engineering Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering , and Nneka Mbonu of the Katz Graduate School of Business, who have developed a sensor to detect gelatinases, a family of enzymes closely associated with tumor aggressiveness. Knowing the levels of a patient’s gelatinases can provide information important to the diagnosis, course and outcome of cancer, and thus are useful to doctors determining patients’ treatments for cancer.

The BIG IDEA Competition does not end with the plan. Once winners and their teams have crafted elite plans, they will present at local, regional and national competitions. These competitions create unparalleled opportunities for students to network with enterprising students and business people from all over the country, while also providing the chance to earn significant capital to get their businesses started.



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