Three pitch competitions were rolled into one extravaganza Oscars-style awards ceremony for the 2021 Big Idea Competition (BIC) at The University of Texas at Dallas. The Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship hosted the event and punctuated it by conferring more than $400,000 dollars in prize money.
Held Nov. 9 in the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology building’s Lecture Hall, the ceremony was a joint presentation of UT Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center at which $415,000 was awarded. The ceremony concluded a months-long search for the biggest ideas in North Texas’ bustling entrepreneurship ecosystem. Hannah Davis, host of WFAA Channel 8’s Good Morning Texas show, emceed the event. Ross Perot Jr., chairman of The Perot Group, and Anurag Jain, chairman and CEO of Access Healthcare, were the guest speakers.
Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Caruth Chair and dean of the Naveen Jindal School of Management, opened the festivities by providing the audience with a history of entrepreneurship at UT Dallas, recalling that the Jindal School started the institute in April 2006.
Pirkul said that the Jindal School leadership team created the institute knowing full well that it would eventually move beyond its bounds.
“When this institute was created, I did not want it to be a school institute,” he said. “I wanted it to be a University-level institute.”
“This awards ceremony is a celebration of innovation and entrepreneurship at UTD,” he said. “If you look at the quality of the student teams and all the ideas, it’s clear that entrepreneurship and innovation has become a cornerstone in UTD’s culture.”Winners in Three Tracks: Students, Alumni and Research Commercialization
Winners in Three Tracks
BIC contestants from the UT Dallas community included students, alumni and researchers in three tracks: student, alumni and research commercialization. Winners of two other competitions were also announced at the event.
Shashank Vinay Kumar, a computer science major in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, won $25,000 in the student track for Bonsai, a ticket-resolution and lead-generation tool that uses machine learning.
Matthew Coburn and Dr. Austin Howard won $25,000 in the alumni track for Tangible Intelligence, a business-as-a-service platform that uses machine learning to automate businesses’ rote and mundane work. Coburn earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Jonsson School in 2013. Howard earned a master’s degree in physics in 2009 and a PhD in physics in 2014, both from the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Dr. Joseph Pancrazio, vice president for research at UT Dallas, introduced the Research Commercialization Track and talked about the importance of the relation between innovation and research at the University.
“Many of the stories … that are being generated as a function of the Research Commercialization Award, are ones that we should be very proud of,” he said, “because it’s about moving innovations from the bench towards the marketplace.”
Pancrazio said that, in many ways, the award is “a promise realized, a funding promise that came from the taxpayers and then eventually makes its way to the marketplace and to society.”
Brothers Benedict Voit and Dr. Walter Voit won $100,000 in the research commercialization track. Benedict graduated from the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences in 2008 with a double degree in political science and economics. Walter is an associate professor of materials science and engineering and mechanical engineering at the Jonsson School, where he earned a BS in computer science in 2005 and an MS in computer science in 2006. They won for Qualia Oto, a biomedical device company that makes hearing assistance devices. Several other members of the leadership team at the company also have strong ties to UT Dallas.
More Money, More Competitions
Although the UTSW Biotech+ Research Track rounded out the BIC competition offerings, the results were not available at the time of the event. All contestants are researchers at UTSW vying for a $100,000 prize.
Winners from two other competitions were also announced at the ceremony. One — the UTDesign Startup Challenge — is an institute offering in partnership with the Jonsson School. The other — the Capital Factory Biotech+ Challenge — is from event sponsor Capital Factory.
The winners of the UTDesign Startup Challenge were Md Rakeen Murtaza, software engineering senior at the Jonsson School, for LawnExec; and Mercedes Johnson, MBA graduate student at the Jindal School, for Food Magnet. They each won $15,000 of engineering services along with $5,000 cash.
Sidney Collin, CEO and co-founder of De Oro Medical Devices, won the $50,000 Capital Factory Biotech+ Challenge.
UT Dallas President Dr. Richard C. Benson spoke about the University’s “core DNA” of entrepreneurship, thanked the event’s partners and sponsors, and then introduced the speakers of the evening — longtime business partners Perot and Jain, who co-founded Perot Jain, a Dallas-based venture capital firm. They concluded the festivities with a chat about entrepreneurship in Texas.
Perot said the goal at Perot Jain “is not so much the horse, but it’s the jockey.” In other words, the company’s focus is on building up promising young entrepreneurs rather than a specific startup company.
“We like to do early seed-round funding for great entrepreneurs or great ideas… the theory is they’re going to keep us young with their new ideas and their energy, but the odds are a lot of these great entrepreneurs — first, second time — they’re going to fail. But I want to know this talent, I want to be close to them, and if the first two don’t work, we’re there for the third.”
Paul Nichols, executive director of the institute, said that BIC’s growth this year — in terms of dollars and successful partnerships as well as big ideas — confirms that the entrepreneurship mindset continues to be instilled at the University and is influencing the region and beyond.
“The COVID-19 pandemic proved beyond any doubt the need to be ready and able to change products and business models when the old rules of success are no longer working,” said Nichols, who also directs the highly ranked graduate and undergraduate (10th and 18th overall, respectively, according to The Princeton Review) academic offerings at the Jindal School related to entrepreneurship. “At UT Dallas, we are providing the resources and training for our students and partners to be the innovators and game changers North Texas and the world will need throughout this century.”
McKesson, Biotech at Pegasus Park, Silicon Valley Bank, Blackstone LaunchPad, Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation, TechStar Group, Palomino Capital, and Capital Factory sponsored the 2021 Big Idea Competition.
