Armour College Students Among IIT Team Advancing to Finals of NIH Neuro Startup Challenge

Six Armour College of Engineering Ph.D. students are part of an interdisciplinary student team from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) that has advanced to the third and final round in the Neuro Startup Challenge. The sixteen winning teams were selected based on their 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 competition is a three-phase national business plan competition sponsored by Heritage Provider Network (HPN) in collaboration with National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI). The teams are charged with developing a commercially viable business plan for one of 16 NIH-patented technologies. The challenge started in August 2014 with 71 teams comprised of 578 student entrepreneurs vying for the chance to launch a funded start-up company.

The IIT team has been working on a neuroscience therapeutic platform technology designed to treat Multiple Sclerosis. The interdisciplinary team is made up of six Armour College of Engineering Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. students including Sam Bredeson, Emily Dosmar, Gayatri Kaskhedikar, Chris Osswald, Tiwalade Sobayo, and Jeff Stout. Other members include five MBA students from Stuart School of Business including Yupeng Du, Sai Prashant Boy Reddy, Siddhartha Pidhadia, Devon Nobles and Yeshwanth Kumar Lanka; and two Biology Ph.D. students from College of Science including 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, and Thomas Mozer, IIT Stuart School of Business adjunct professor.