Contact: Eric Mathews, 901-678-5105
or: emathews@memphis.edu

The FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis has announced the winners of its inaugural Business Plan Competition. Winner of the $20,000 grand prize was NanoTect, which specializes in protecting corrodible exposed metal surfaces with a nano-thin film that self-assembles and adheres to the metal surface. Initial target products will be gold jewelry and copper pipe used in plumbing. Team members are Dr. Eugene Pinkhassik, director of the Institute for Nanomaterials Development and Innovation at the U of M, L. Todd Banner, U of M graduate student, and Wayne Culbreth, chief operations officer of Santi Company.

The $5000 first runner-up prize went to Deep Web Analytics, a search engine for the deep Web, which will help users find information that traditional search engines do not index. Team members are Rajesh Ramanand, U of M graduate student, Dr. King-Ip Lin, associate professor of computer science at the U of M, and Steve Morrison, Vivek Sheel, Kiran Jain, O.P. Skaaksrud and Chris Apalodimas, all of FedEx Corp.

Taking the $2500 second runner-up prize was AbliTech, which develops new polymer products and polymer/drug combination products that advance healing technology. AbliTech’s initial focus is a polymer coating with enhanced drug delivery for the cardiac stent market. Team members are Nick Hammond, IGERT Fellow and doctoral candidate at the University of Mississippi, and Lisa Kemp, doctoral candidate and IGERT Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The Business Plan Competition was designed to encourage students and researchers to create top business firms. Sponsors were the Memphis Business Journal, LogoWorks, Emerge Memphis, and Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Cadlwell & Berkowitz.