The first prize in the competition is NIS 50
Daniel Levin, named after the Biztech entrepreneurship award at the Technion
The LifeBond group won the "BizTech" entrepreneurship competition held at the Technion yesterday. The product offered by the group is tissue glue, intended for gluing damaged tissues in the body. The unique adhesive, based on the development of Dr. Havshelat Feld-Bianco from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion, is the first adhesive that maintains the three essential properties of this type of adhesive: non-toxicity, strength and effectiveness even on wet surfaces, typical of body tissues.
The LifeBond people, Yishai Atar, Oran Price-Bloom, Nir Makif and Hadar Shazipi, explained that the two competing products on the market do not fulfill the three requirements. They added that the glue can in many cases eliminate the need for a seam, thus saving a lot of time and huge costs. The adhesion, unlike the suture, can be performed in the office, without the need for an operating room, and eliminates the need for a repeat visit to remove the sutures.
The "BizTech" competition, which is a unique competition in Israel, is based on a model used in the USA and implemented in leading universities, including MIT, Harvard and Berkeley. The competition is designed to encourage students to plan, formulate and present a complete business plan, accompanied by senior professionals (mentors). The first prize in the competition, NIS 50, is dedicated every year to the memory of Daniel Levin, who was killed in the US in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. The late Levin, a graduate of the Technion (with honors) and a doctorate from Cambridge University, founded the Akamai company and was CEO to the company until the day of his death. On September 11, he was on one of the hijacked planes, and according to the telephone testimony of one of the flight attendants, he tried to resist the hijackers, and therefore was probably killed even before the crash.
Professor Moshe Isenberg, the Technion's vice president for research, said at the opening of the event that the Technion has three goals: education, research and technology transfer. "This competition combines the first and third goals, between the student and the entrepreneur, and also contains the middle dimension, the research dimension," he emphasized. "This is a program that calls on the student to learn to swim (education and training), then jump into the water (entrepreneurship)."
Avi Zaevi, founder and partner of the Carmel Ventures Fund, said that the connection between academia and industry is insufficient. "We must tighten it and help you, the Technion people, turn scientific and technological developments into real products Israel has a clear and well-known qualitative advantage in science, engineering and hi-tech, but this is not enough. The limited number of our scientists and engineers is a bottleneck, because they are the real sources of innovation. We must strive to increase the number of scientists and engineers."
Major General (Res.) Amos Horev, chairman of the Technion Association, said that in the State of Israel, personal excellence is not enough. "We need team excellence, total excellence. I am concerned about the erosion of overall excellence, which is existential excellence for the State of Israel. We must strive for a culture of excellence."
The second place in the competition was won by the SNSOS group, which developed a bio-terrorism detector, and the third place went to the SmartCab group, which developed software to optimize the taxi driver's work.
The entrepreneurship award in the "BizTech" competition will be distributed on Sunday at the Technion
The entrepreneurship award will be distributed on Sunday, June 25, at the Technion. Ten teams advanced to the final stage of the "BizTech" competition, the first of its kind in Israel, organized by the initiative of the Entrepreneurship Forum at the Technion. Among the initiatives that made it to the finals - an ultrasound device for introducing an anti-fungal drug into nails, tissue glue, a tiny projector for an MP4 device and a detector for bio-terrorism, which works as a smoke detector and detects the dispersion of biological substances in public places.
About one hundred original executive summaries were submitted to the competition. The ten teams that were announced as finalists were closely accompanied by senior Israeli business leaders in the construction and writing of a complete business plan. The forum raised the funding and sponsorship to run the competition from high-tech companies, venture capital funds, patent offices, technology incubators and business entities. The three winning programs in the competition will be awarded three cash prizes, with the best program receiving NIS 50. The competition is based on an idea that originated in the USA, where such competitions are practiced at leading universities such as MIT, Berkeley and Harvard. Companies that won these competitions are currently valued at $10.5 billion, and have contributed greatly to the US economy.
