AuroraBiofuels.com
Bio-diesel Firm Snags Top Prize From Intel-UCB Event
by Dylan McGrath
may 5, 2006
Read the full article here or at www.eetimes.com
SAN FRANCISCO — A team of University of California-Berkeley students and faculty, presenting an intriguing technology for creating bio-diesel fuel, has snagged the $25,000 top prize in a university contest sponsored by Intel Capital.
Aurora BioFuels, an alternative energy company, won both the first prize and the People's Choice Award at the finals for the eighth annual University of California-Berkeley Business Plan Competition, the university said.
According to UC-Berkeley, Aurora BioFuels has developed a way to create bio-diesel fuel with yields that are 125 times higher and have 50 percent lower costs than current production methods.
The winning team includes Matt Caspari and Guido Radaelli, full-time UC-Berkeley MBA students;Bert Vick, a Ph.D. student in molecular and cell biology; and Tasios Melis, professor in the department of plant and microbial biology at the school, UC-Berkeley said.
The UC-Berkeley Business Plan Competition is organized by the university's MBA students at its Haas School of Business. Intel Capital is the competition's top sponsor. Other sponsors this year included Qualcomm Ventures, BlueRun Ventures and ComVentures.
The $10,000 second prize was awarded to Kirsen Radio Vision, a company with a new approach to security technology that produces instant 3-D "see-through" identification of objects that differentiates among materials, UC-Berkeley said.
CellASIC, a team developing a microfluidic platform capable of mimicking the body's cellular environment for improved drug screening, tissue engineering and stem cell research, won the $5,000 third prize, the university said.
The contest was judged in three rounds by venture capitalists, who volunteered their time, the university said.
