Armour College Students Among IIT Team Advancing to Second Round in 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 second round in the NIH Neurostartup Challenge. The competition is a three-phase national business plan competition sponsored by National Institutes of Health (NIH) where teams are charged with developing a commercially viable business plan for one of 16 NIH-patented technologies. The winning team will be awarded the chance to launch a funded start-up company.

The thirteen member 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, Thomas Mozer, IIT Stuart School of Business adjunct professor.

The IIT team is working on a neuroscience therapeutic platform technology designed to treat Multiple Sclerosis. The IIT team, along with a select number of teams from each invention category, will develop a 10-page business plan with a detailed financial plan and a 20-minute live pitch presented to judges. Winning teams will receive a cash prize of $2,500 and advance to the final phase of the competition by this summer, where winners in each invention category will have the opportunity to potentially launch a start-up company with funding.