An interdisciplinary student team from Illinois Institute of Technology was one of 16 winners of the Neuro Startup Challenge, an open innovation competition designed to bring promising medical inventions to market, sponsored by the Heritage Provider Network (HPN) in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI). The winning teams were selected based on their business plans, financial models and live pitches and will move forward to phase three of the challenge to launch new businesses to commercialize 16 NIH-conceived and developed inventions. These inventions include therapeutics, diagnostics, prognostics and medical devices designed to improve brain health.

More than 578 students and entrepreneurs in 71 teams competed in the challenge that was launched in August 2014. Teams competed in two phases during which they were mentored by experts to produce business plans, financial models and live pitches. In the final phase, the winning teams will be mentored to launch their startups, incorporate their business, apply for licensing and execute development and regulatory requirements.

The IIT team is working on a neuroscience therapeutic platform technology designed to treat Multiple Sclerosis. IIT team members include MBA students Yupeng Du, Sai Prashant Boy Reddy, Siddhartha Pidhadia, Devon Nobles and Yeshwanth Kumar Lanka; Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. students Emily Dosmar, Chris Osswald, Tiwalade Sobayo, and Jeff Stout; and Biology Ph.D. students Rama Sashank Madhurapantula and Adriana Manas.

The IIT team is being advised by Raja Krishnan, adjunct professor at the Institute of Design and intellectual property manager for the IIT Technology Commercialization Office, Thomas Mozer, IIT Stuart School of Business adjunct professor.

For more information on the challenge, click here.