The company received $15,000 for its concept to minimize the cost and time of clinical chemical testing by creating a portable and self-sustainable analytical instrument. In addition, $3,000 worth of in-kind services from Ice Miller and a one-year membership in The Anvil were part of the prize.

The competition process started last fall with 85 initial submissions, said Cliff Wojtalewicz, managing director of the Burton D. Morgan Center. The final 10 teams were selected by a group of judges after two rounds of screening. Those teams, five each in the Black and Gold divisions, then presented to a separate panel of 13 judges on Tuesday. Panel judges ranged in diversity from intellectual property attorneys and venture capitalists to small business owners and an associate dean from Saudi Arabia. Each team has 20 minutes for its presentation and 10 minutes for questions from judges.

The Purdue entrepreneurship competition started in 1987 with an endowment gift from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, which also funded the $7 million, 31,000-square-foot Center for Entrepreneurship in Discovery Park. The goal of the competition is to provide an opportunity for Purdue students to learn about entrepreneurship through the development and presentation of a business idea to a panel of judges. Participants in the competition have an opportunity to define their ideas in commercial terms and to compete for substantial cash prizes that could be used to further the commercialization of their inventions.

The Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, through its sponsored initiatives and partnerships - including the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Technology Realization Program, Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy and business plan competitions - aims to stimulate entrepreneurship at Purdue and serves as a state, regional and national resource.

The center also houses Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub that opened in 2013 to provide assistance in areas such as product ideation and market analysis as well as business-plan development, alumni and faculty mentoring, and help in finding funding.

Read the full article at the Purdue newsroom.