Infinite Cooling, based on research at MIT, has won the $500,000 top prize in a competition involving 42 student-led startups
Infinite Cooling, a startup led by two PhD students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) won the top prize and more than $500,000 at the 17th annual Rice Business Plan competiton which took place at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University last week.
Maher Damak, chief executive of Infinite Cooling, and Karim Khalil, chief technology officer, presented their company over three rounds of the competition. Their technology, which uses electric fields to recover water from the evaporative losses in the cooling towers of power plants, was invented by MIT professor Kripa Varanasi.
The competition attracted 42 teams from across the US and further afield including Hong Kong, Australia and India. In second place was Lapovations from University of Arkansas which is developing a device to improve the results of laparoscopy surgery.
The team placed seventh, WCB Robotics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India, was one of the biggest winners financially, receiving more than $450,000. WCB Robotics is developing a robot to clean the windows of skyscrapers.
Since the Rice Business Plan Competition started in 2001, more than $1.9bn of capital has been raised by the competing companies, which includes $583m from 28 successful exits.
Brad Burke, managing director of Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, who has been running the competition since 2002, said: “This is now the largest business plan competition in the world. 604 teams have competed since 2001. 60% of them have launched their companies and 179 are still in business. I congratulate all the competitors.”
A total of more than $2m was awarded in prize money and investment this year, put forward by angel groups and corporate sponsors.
