Kudos to TEC students

Student teams from NC State's TEC program swept top honors at two recent competitions.  Vindhya Kunduru, Ryan Libert, Scott Moore and Guarav Shah won first place at the Poole College of Management Leadership and Innovation Showcase.  They assessed NC State patented technology that allows for the creation of vaccines against Salmonella, E.coli, and over 2,000 other species in the Enterobacter family. The team is launching a company, EnteroVax, following completion of this course; its first product will be the Hassan Salmonella Vaccine for poultry.  

Scott Bolin, Ryan Chan, Mohammad Hassan, Ying Lui and Moataz Mussa won second place for the business plan for their new company, Tethys Water Treatment System.  The company is applying NC State patented technology to solve an environmental hazard resulting from the fracking process used to extract natural gas from shale.

NC State teams took first and second place in the 2012 Lulu eGames’ New Venture Challenge.  First place went to 7ED, a company using NC State technology to manufacture an essential component used by most LED manufacturers. 7ED’s team members are Dragana Mendel, Michael Teal, Garret Foster, and Sunny Wang.  Second place was awarded to Zeek, a company that displaces the paper coupon book with an online and mobile coupon system that takes fundraising into the 21st century. Zeek’s team members are Matthew Davis, Josh Robertson and Jonathan Stephens.

It has been exciting to see the great work the HiTEC teams have been doing over the years.  It is especially exciting to see their business plans validated and placed on the path toward funding and the launch of new business ventures.  And the cash prizes are a nice bonus.