Ninth Award at Leading Venture Contest Makes Carnegie Mellon 'Winningest'
School Ever
PITTSBURGH, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- For the ninth time, a team of students
from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon have landed the top
prize this past weekend at leading business plan competition Moot Corp(R).
This year's winning venture business -- NeuroBank -- has developed a
breakthrough proprietary technology to extract and preserve adult neural stem
cells. Tepper beat out 37 other teams from leading business schools and
universities worldwide, also earning the title as the winningest school since
the contest's founding.
(LOGO: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070425/CARNEGIELOGO )
The winning team consisted of Tepper MBA candidate Raymond Sekula, M.D.,
and Sasha Bakhru, a Ph.D. candidate at the Carnegie Mellon College of
Engineering. The team was advised by S. Thomas Emerson, David T. and Lindsay
J. Morgenthaler Professor of Entrepreneurship.
NeuroBank has developed cutting-edge technology to harvest, isolate,
expand and store neurologic stem cells from cerebrospinal fluid, a clear
bodily fluid around and inside the brain. NeuroBank's technology allows
minimally invasive extraction, isolation, expansion and cryopreservation of
these stem cells and supports efforts to expand their use in developing
treatments for Alzheimer's disease, stroke or traumatic brain injury, among
others. In addition, the technology will allow patients to store healthy
neural stem cells today to receive cutting-edge treatments for diseases they
might develop later in life.
As the winner of this year's Moot Corp(R) contest, NeuroBank will receive
a generous prize package valued at $100,000, including $25,000 in cash; one
year of strategic business consulting and mentoring; prosecution of the first
American patent by Ropes & Gray; and consulting from the McCombs School of
Business entrepreneurship faculty. Team members will also open the NASDAQ
Stock Market on August 15th in New York City. NeuroBank also recently won
third place in the Rice University Business Plan Competition, co-sponsored by
Fortune Small Business magazine.
Now in its 25th year, Moot Corp(R) is considered to be the "Super Bowl" of
business plan competitions and is held at the McCombs School of Business at
the University of Texas at Austin. In the last five years alone, the Tepper
School has achieved three first-place and one second-place finishes.
About the Tepper School of Business: Founded in 1949, the Tepper School of
Business at Carnegie Mellon (http://www.tepper.cmu.edu) is a pioneer in the
field of management science and analytical decision-making. The school's
notable contributions to the intellectual community include six Nobel
laureates and a consistent presence in the top tier of business school
rankings. The Wall Street Journal recently ranked the Tepper School as the
fifth-best business school in the United States.
SOURCE Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon
Deb Magness of Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, +1-412-268-8678,
dmagness@andrew.cmu.edu
