Ninth Award at Leading Venture Contest Makes Carnegie Mellon 'Winningest'
School Ever
PITTSBURGH, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- For the ninth time, a team of
students from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon have landed
the top prize this past weekend at leading business plan competition Moot
Corp(R). This year's winning venture business -- NeuroBank -- has developed
a breakthrough proprietary technology to extract and preserve adult neural
stem cells. Tepper beat out 37 other teams from leading business schools
and universities worldwide, also earning the title as the winningest school
since the contest's founding.
(LOGO: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070425/CARNEGIELOGO )
The winning team consisted of Tepper MBA candidate Raymond Sekula,
M.D., and Sasha Bakhru, a Ph.D. candidate at the Carnegie Mellon College of
Engineering. The team was advised by S. Thomas Emerson, David T. and
Lindsay J. Morgenthaler Professor of Entrepreneurship.
NeuroBank has developed cutting-edge technology to harvest, isolate,
expand and store neurologic stem cells from cerebrospinal fluid, a clear
bodily fluid around and inside the brain. NeuroBank's technology allows
minimally invasive extraction, isolation, expansion and cryopreservation of
these stem cells and supports efforts to expand their use in developing
treatments for Alzheimer's disease, stroke or traumatic brain injury, among
others. In addition, the technology will allow patients to store healthy
neural stem cells today to receive cutting-edge treatments for diseases
they might develop later in life.
As the winner of this year's Moot Corp(R) contest, NeuroBank will
receive a generous prize package valued at $100,000, including $25,000 in
cash; one year of strategic business consulting and mentoring; prosecution
of the first American patent by Ropes & Gray; and consulting from the
McCombs School of Business entrepreneurship faculty. Team members will also
open the NASDAQ Stock Market on August 15th in New York City. NeuroBank
also recently won third place in the Rice University Business Plan
Competition, co-sponsored by Fortune Small Business magazine.
Now in its 25th year, Moot Corp(R) is considered to be the "Super Bowl"
of business plan competitions and is held at the McCombs School of Business
at the University of Texas at Austin. In the last five years alone, the
Tepper School has achieved three first-place and one second-place finishes.
About the Tepper School of Business: Founded in 1949, the Tepper School
of Business at Carnegie Mellon (http://www.tepper.cmu.edu) is a pioneer in
the field of management science and analytical decision-making. The
school's notable contributions to the intellectual community include six
Nobel laureates and a consistent presence in the top tier of business
school rankings. The Wall Street Journal recently ranked the Tepper School
as the fifth-best business school in the United States.
SOURCE Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon
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