AWARDS & HISTORY

 

Competition and Awards 2006-2007

The Finalists:

  • AID Networks - Producing low cost vital sign sensors.
  • Advanced Energy Storage Devices - Improving battery life in everything from MP3 players to electric cars.
  • Simple Robot - Creating robots to save consumers time, energy and money.
  • Stroke Intervention - Advancing medical procedures to open clogged arteries in the brain.
  • Membrex - Creating devices for high-throughput in vitro membrane protein screening.

Competition and Awards 2005-2006

Mesolytics and Ensemble share the First Place title at the sixth annual Big Bang Business Plan Competition, each taking away $10,000 in awards. Ensembles LLC of San Ramon helps busy families prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals and Mesolytics of Davis is a biomedical venture that is developing a handheld diagnostic tool for health care professionals.

After many months of serious hard work by all of the competitors in the Big Bang, the finalists were narrowed down to these six teams, each with unique and innovative ideas for their start-up companies.

Competition Finalists Included:

  • SOYum!
  • Innovative Design Automation
  • Nova Chemicals
  • Ensembles
  • Mesolytics
  • SmartMomsCircle

Each of these six teams was expected to make 12-minute presentations before judges and a second eight-minute presentation before a public audience. The panel of eight judges included mostly venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from the Sacramento region and the Bay Area. Throughout the competition, judges were asked to evaluate the summaries, plans and presentations as they would for ventures funded by their own firms.

Both top winners aim to capitalize on an underserved need for convenience, speed and efficiency in their market niche. Visitors to Ensembles, which opened its first store in San Ramon on May 31, will be able to create 8 to 14 healthy, ready-to-cook meals that are personalized to their family's tastes. The company says customers can save hours of shopping, preparation and clean-up time. The team members are co-owners Juliet Hodder, a candidate in the UC Davis Bay Area MBA program, Leslie Leach and executive chef Ann-Marie Ramo.

Mesolytics hopes to give health care professionals a portable tool to quickly diagnose medical ailments using a swab of patients' saliva or drop of blood. The platform is based on nanowire technology proven to detect a single virus with laboratory sensitivity. Disposable test cartridges will target influenza, including the H5N1 "avian flu" subtype. Future efforts will address other respiratory ailments, HIV and common sexually transmitted diseases, and biosecurity hazards such as exposure to anthrax and plague. The team hopes to set up its manufacturing in West Sacramento. Team members are Zane Starkewolfe and Dan Masiel, both graduate students in chemistry at UC Davis; and two UC Davis alumni -- Kara Schmelzer, who has a doctorate in pharmacology, and Farley Stewart, who has a master's in business administration.

Competition and Awards 2002-2003

More than 40 teams submitted executive summaries of their business plans in two rounds: a November warm-up round and a final deadline in February. Eleven qualifiers were asked to submit complete business plans in March. Following a review of the business plans, four teams were selected to make 15-minute presentations before judges Wednesday and before a public audience May 15, 2003 .

 

Competition Finalists

A panel of nine venture capitalists from the Sacramento region and the Bay Area, including two UC Davis alumni, served as judges and selected the first- and second-place winners in the final round. Results were announced at the final event of the competition on campus during the Final Awards Ceremony May 15, 2003 .

SialoGen Therapeutics Inc. of Davis won first place in the third annual Big Bang! Business Plan Competition, designed by the students of the Graduate School of Management to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and hands-on learning.

SialoGen has patented chemical technology that shuts down the production of enzymes that make polysialic acid, a sugar polymer found on the surface of cancer cells. It's thought that the presence of the carbohydrate allows tumor cells to rapidly multiply and expand. SialoGen has already identified one inhibitor that will work and could lead to a future cancer therapy.

Team members are Brian Rogers, a UC Davis Graduate School of Management alumnus and adjunct professor; Frederic Troy, a professor in the UC Davis School of Medicine; Jaqueline Gervay-Hague, a professor of chemistry at UC Davis; Sandra Reynoso, a Ph.D. in immunology from UC Davis and M BA student; and Neil Byzick , an M BA student at UC Davis.

Second place and $3,000 was awarded to Inventra of Davis, which focuses on innovative prosthetic valve technology and has developed the Active Response Valve for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Team members are Dr. Michael Dake, Chris Elkins, Karoon Monfared, Bassel Rifai, Ceron Rhee, Dr. Jacob Waugh and UC Davis undergraduate Lana Chan.

As the audience's favorite, Davis BioPharma of Davis won the People's Choice award and $2,000. The company has developed technology that more quickly screens compounds leading to the discovery and identification of new drugs, with an emphasis on those used in the treatment of cancer.

The other finalist team was Applied Microsensors Inc. of Oakland , which is promoting sensors that will allow farms to remotely monitor their crop's health with real-time data on temperature, humidity and light intensity. Team members are Sparky Rose; Kimberly Cornett , a UC Davis master's graduate and doctoral candidate; Michael Guddal, a master's graduate of UC Davis; and Mark Chang, a graduate of UC Davis.

 

Throughout the competition, judges were asked to evaluate the summaries, plans and presentations as they would for ventures funded by their firms. The final judging panel included: Gilles Attia of Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich in Sacramento; Brian Atwood of Versant Ventures in Menlo Park; Barry Selick from Sofinnova Ventures in San Francisco; Bill Lanfri from Accel Partners in Palo Alto; David Aslin from 3i in Palo Alto; Cynthia Posehn from the Sacramento Angels; Roger Akers from Akers Capital in Fair Oaks; Harry Laswell from American River Ventures in Roseville; and Pete Bernardoni from Technology Funding in El Dorado Hills.

 

Competition and awards 2001-2002

There were 25 entrants in the first round of the 2001-2002 Big Bang! Business Plan Competition. Eleven teams were selected as semi-finalists and submitted executive summaries in January. Prominent venture capitalists and attorneys, who were among the sponsors and judges, mentored the teams. The eleven teams submitted complete business plans in late April.

Five finalists were announced on May 11 to compete for $15,000 in start-up cash. The teams presented their plans to the public at the Final Awards Ceremony on May 23. The five finalists included:

  • Gradient Design – develops software solution for emerging thermal problems in next-generation integrated circuit designs. Gradient Design was awarded the $10,000 first place award.
  • LabInfo – develops disease surveillance and bioterrorism defense software. LabInfo won the $3,000 second prize.
  • ICI (Improved Converters, Inc.) – develops revolutionary waste-to-energy technology, clean coal gasification technology and oil shale extraction technology. ICI won the $2,000 "People's Choice" Award.
  • Akaar - electronic transaction management technology.
  • GlowComm - infrastructure provider for secure data movement in the wireless economy.

Competition and awards 2000-2001

The award ceremony for the first UC Davis Business Plan Competition took place on April 25, 2001. Dubbed “Big Bang!,” the competition was initiated and organized by MBA students at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. More than 50 teams registered for the contest.

Entrants came from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, both technical and non-technical, and ranged in experience from first-time entrepreneurs to accomplished businesspeople from the UC Davis alumni community.

A panel of venture capitalists served as judges, narrowing the field to 32 teams and then to 16. Seven finalists competed for a total of $15,000 in prize money:

  • Emergent Software, which develops applications that facilitate the tracking and control of a product's progress during the development phase, was the winner of the competition, taking home $10,000 in prize money.
  • The runner-up was VisualCalc, which licenses and customizes Web-based software to help financial services providers present data in visual and dynamic ways. VisualCalc was awarded $3,000.
  • As the audience's favorite, Scalable Life Sciences of Palo Alto won the People's Choice award and $2,000. The company is focused on developing and licensing genetic technologies that increase plant size, yield and hardiness, and it plans to first target pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.
  • TerraGenomics
  • CE3000.com
  • Crosspipe (Code Tables)
  • OptoMedical Diagnostics