Bearing Analytics won $30,000 as the top presenter in the Gold Division for graduate and undergraduate student teams from any discipline, while ExDie Cleaning Technologies claimed the $20,000 first prize in the Black Division for undergraduate students.

Purdue electrical and computer engineering doctoral student Anurag Garg demonstrates how Bearing Analytics' system works while team member Lokesh Gupta, also an ECE doctoral student, looks on.

Led by Purdue electrical and computer engineering doctoral students Anurag Garg and Lokesh Gupta, Bearing Analytics is developing a patent-pending sensor that monitors the performance of bearings and alerts workers to premature bearing failure by measuring temperature and vibration changes.

ExDie Cleaning Technologies, led by materials engineering students MaryBeth Pavlick, Wanying Li, Daw Gen Lim and Nolan Lantieri, is developing a safe, efficient and inexpensive method for removing the remaining material from aluminum extrusion dies. The method would replace an expensive hazardous chemical process now used by the industry. 

"We saw some extremely impressive and tremendously innovative business ideas once again this year, making the task incredibly tough for our team of judges," said Joseph Pekny, interim director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. "The birth of the next-generation economy was apparent in all of these presentations."

The five finalists in each division presented their business plans in an open forum during the competition, now in its 27th year, at Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. P. Chris Earley, dean of the Krannert School of Management and the James Brooke Henderson Professor of Management, was keynote speaker at the awards dinner to announce the competition winners.

In winning the Gold Division, Bearing Analytics also receives $5,000 worth of in-kind services from law firm Ice Miller LLP, incubator space in Purdue Technology Center from the Purdue Foundry, a one-year membership in The Anvil co-working space, and one free registration in the 2014 Applied Management Principles (AMP) certificate program valued at $4,995 from Krannert.

As the Black Division winner, ExDie Cleaning Technologies also receives one free registration in the 2014 AMP certificate program.

Greg Deason, vice president and executive director of the Purdue Foundry, was impressed with all the competitors and encouraged about the role the university is playing in assisting many of the students on their presentations. The Foundry, he noted, worked closely with two of the top Black Division finishers and four of the five in the Gold Division.

"What's exciting is that the basis for these business ideas is to provide real solutions to real problems," Deason said. "Our goal through The Purdue Foundry, Discovery Park and the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship is to add value and provide the support for students, faculty and staff across campus for turning these ideas into real companies."

MaryBeth Pavlick, who is studying materials science and engineering at Purdue, delivers her winning presentation for ExDie Cleaning Technologies at the 27th annual Burton D. Morgan Business Plan Competition.

Primary sponsors for this year's competition are the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Krannert School of Management and The Anvil, Purdue's entrepreneurial incubator.

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 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.

A primary initiative of the Discovery Park center is the Deliberate Innovation for Faculty, or DIFF program, which was launched last month to provide mentoring for Purdue innovators who have an interest in translating their inventions to the public through commercialization, collaboration or entrepreneurship.

The building also houses the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub that opened in July 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.