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Science students bring ingenuity and teamwork to entrepreneurial competition

IV Flow LLC won the top $30,000 prize in the Gold (graduate) Division of the business plan presentation contest, which took place at Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. Mike Golebrowski, a second-year Krannert School of Management MBA student, made the winning presentation, explaining the chemistry and technology of injecting a fluorescent dye into a cancer patient's bloodstream to get faster, more accurate counts of circulating tumor cells. Team member Wei He, a doctoral candidate in chemistry, devised the technology with his professor, Philip S. Low, Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. The third team member, Yuehui Ouyang, is a graduate student in electrical engineering.

Merlin’s Magic Castle developed to help teach language skills, took third place in the undergraduate division of the competition. “The goal was to make an engaging game for young children to facilitate their learning of English as a second language,” said project programmer and web administrator Brian Trisler, a senior majoring in computer science and clinical psychology.

Merlin’s Magic Castle runs on a computer and uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that the students embedded in toys. When a toy is run over the computer’s scanner, the program registers that RFID, and as Merlin says the toy’s name, it also appears on the screen.

“These multiple levels of stimulation (audio, video, and haptic [touch]) influence better comprehension and information retention,” said project leader Alexei Czeskis, a junior double majoring in computer science and math, and minoring in Russian.

James Roberts and Matt Jonker created Roberts-Jonker Health Solutions, a company aimed at improving the health care industry, that took fourth prize in the undergraduate competition. Their first product is HAPPE—Health and Physical Patient Evaluation—a medical assessment tool designed to run on PocketPCs and TabletPCs.

“When patients enter a nursing home or other long-term care facility, the law requires that they have an evaluation performed by a doctor or nurse practitioner,” says Matt. “This is currently being done on paper forms. HAPPE improves this process by making assessment creation completely electronic and paperless. HAPPE allows doctors to create their own assessments and have complete control over report generation and creation.”

“The competition showed us how much detail truly goes into a business plan,” says James. “Competition, financials, and the market all need to be researched to provide the detail necessary for a firm entering the market. It is a lot of work, but it is vital in defining a company and a product.”

James and Matt found the competition’s feedback forum very constructive and they were encouraged to continue their product. They have a working prototype of the software. Their initial goal is to gain experience and lay an initial foundation in the health industry, then to venture out into other markets.

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