2006 Invention Competition awards $10,000 in prizes

What if there was a mining machine that could extract billions of barrels of oil from tar sands in Canada? What if website content could be certified as valid? What if the discovery of natural antibiotics could be hastened? These and other questions inspired competitors to come up with some amazing ideas, which were on display April 28th in the Bobby Chain Technology Center at the finals of the 2006 Invent Your Future! contest. At stake was a prize pool of $10,000.

Winning the competition and collecting $5000 were Lisa Kemp and Nick Hammond, who have developed novel approaches to improving the drug-release properties of drug-eluting stents. Second place and $3000 went to Vijayaraj Nagarajan, who has created tools to find natural antibiotic compounds to fight antibiotic-resistant infections. For devising a system to culture a super-nutritious live feed for marine fish larvae, Jason Lemus received $2000 and third place honors.

“The variety of technologies and markets represented at this competition is incredible,” remarked Dr. Pat Kinlen, Director of R&D for Crosslink and one of four judges.

The competition was sponsored by the Southern Miss College of Science and Technology, Noetic Technologies, Inc., Crosslink, Welsh & Katz, Ltd., Mississippi Technology Alliance, and Jackson, Bowman, and Blumentritt, PLLC.

The Invent Your Future! contest is open to staff and students of Southern Miss. It is an opportunity for inventors and budding entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas and gain valuable experience. Jim Lowrey, VP for Business Ventures at Mississippi Technology Alliance, was very impressed with the quality of the presentations. Lowrey, who recently facilitated the formation of the Mississippi Angel Network, believes investors will be interested in learning about opportunities these inventions bring forward.

Noetic Technologies, Inc., a company with a combined 45 years of expertise in moving projects from research to commercial reality, offers a variety of private partnerships including research, licensing, joint ventures and start-ups.

For more information contact: Kelli Booth @ 601.818.0612