UA graduate students win Georgia Bowl business plan competition
by February 13, 2017 10:45 am 301 views
Surface Mod, a University of Arkansas graduate student team hoping to start a company around tissue-engineering technology, earned first place at the 2017 Georgia Bowl student business plan competition on Feb. 4.
The technology, first developed by Prof. Vassilios Sikavitsas at the University of Oklahoma, “improves tissue scaffolds – a foundational material used by tissue engineers to generate synthetic tissues, grow human organs for transplantation, and develop and test new drugs,” according to the UA.
Surface Mod’s technology allows engineers to have better control and accuracy when building tissue structures, according to the UA.
“Tissue engineering can play a role in reducing costs for cancer therapies in the U.S., and that’s just one example,” Nathan Watson, Surface Mod CEO and an MBA student in the UA’s Sam M. Walton College of Business, said in a press release. “Using cells from a patient’s biopsy, our technology can recreate the tumor many times over for study in the lab and maintain the function it displays in the body. This will enable researchers to identify effective cancer treatments more efficiently and cost effectively.”
Other team members are Tyler Spain and Kikko Haydar, also MBA students at the UA, and Cortes Williams, a University of Oklahoma doctoral student who is working with Prof. Sikavitsas.
“The cross-section of skills on this team provides them with a rare degree of competence and credibility in developing this idea,” Carol Reeves, team coach and associate vice provost for entrepreneurship at the UA, said in the press release. “Together, they have brought engineering, business and technology development, marketing and logistics together to create a realistic and incredibly promising plan.”
The four members have pledged to invest $30,000 of their own money in the business if their success continues in other business plan competitions, according to the UA.
The Georgia Bowl is an annual competition among aspiring future entrepreneurs and business leaders attending MBA programs at leading colleges and universities throughout the world. A second UA team, Rejuvenics, also competed in the 2017 competition, according to the university.