What could you say in 90 seconds that would change the rest of your life? The question will be on the minds of 15 teams at the finals for the first Global Life Science Innovation Competition to be held Friday, April 21, at the UCSF Mission Bay Community Center.
Each team is given a 90-second shot at fame and fortune. Teams briefly present their plans for innovation to a panel of venture capitalists, biotech leaders and UCSF faculty. Teams will be judged on their proposal's innovation, impact and feasibility.
The competition is organized by Innovation Accelerator, a UCSF student- and postdoc-run lab-to-market bioentrepreneur group. The event, open to the public, runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Bakar Conference Center on the Mission Bay campus.
UCSF Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Washington will kick off the event with a welcome address to the presenters, university participants, and industry leaders in attendance.
More than 100 entries were submitted free of cost in February 2006, each representing a project at early stages of development. Entries were submitted by both academia and industry, from the United States and abroad.
UCSF students, postdocs and faculty are well represented in the competition, as are other UC campuses, together making up a third of all entries. Entries cover a wide spectrum. A San Diego team has developed a computer-aided diagnostic tool for breast ultrasounds that may one day replace invasive breast biopsies. A group from UC Berkeley has constructed "smart" vascular grafts that may provide an alternative solution to synthetic and vein grafts currently used in artery bypass surgeries.
Thirty teams were invited to give poster presentations, and 15 have a chance to give a 90-second, "lightning round"-style presentation. Up to six teams will be selected from the lightning round for a final round, where they will compete for $15,000 in cash awards. Also, the audience will vote for their favorite team for the people's choice award.
The competition's goal is to further integrate academic and industry science, to create a forum for business-minded feedback on the ideas of fledgling innovators, and to promote bioentrepreneurship by hosting the premiere Global Life Science Innovation Competition.
Innovation Accelerator expects a diverse group of attendees to this event, including life science financiers, attorneys and accountants servicing the life science sector, competing entrepreneurs, and UCSF inventors.
As a co-host for the Global Life Science Innovation Competition, the accounting firm of Ernst & Young has chosen this event as the location for their West Coast launch of Ernst & Young's 20th Anniversary Beyond Borders Global Biotechnology Report, an annual assessment of the health of the biotech industry. UCSF's Center for BioEntrepreneurship is also co-hosting the competition.
For more information and to register, visit the
website.
