DSU Students Take 2nd Place in Business Plan Competition

A team of six students from various departments of the College of Business and the Department of Physics and Engineering at Delaware State University won second place in the 2014 Innovations in Social and Business Entrepreneurship Business Plan Competition.

This competition was organized by the School of Business & Public Administration of University of the District of Columbia on April 5. The group of DSU students -- Anju Polas, Lawer Angmor-Teye, Deantrae Matthews, Richard M. Garner, Dinesh Chowdhary, and Kameron Catron-Mitchell -- competed with students from universities and colleges in the District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. The 2nd place prize was $3,000, which the students split up.

The purpose of this competition was to educate and provide an experiential opportunity to showcase the creativity of tomorrow’s business leaders. The business plan was based on the interdisciplinary project that developed a sensor to assess environmental air quality at local (e.g. Kent County) and state levels. The students were judged on:

• Developing business plans, based on an identified social issue or need, using a social business entrepreneurship business model for their program.
• Presenting business implementation plans or delivery modes that demonstrate how the plan can impact communities.

The DSU students had been working on a project entitled “Next-generation sensors for improving human health and urban air quality- A technology driven business model for young entrepreneurs” and funded from a DSU PRIDE grant. Dr. Mohammed Khan, assistant professor of physics (PI); Dr. Mukti Rana, assistant professor of physics (co-PI); and Dr. Nandita Das, associate professor of business (co-PI) are part this project.

The project entails a prototype greenhouse gas sensor technology for environmental applications, developed indigenously at DSU’s engineering laboratories. It will be transformed into a marketable product through a model business plan developed by DSU’s College of Business team.

The goal of the project is to expose students to the critical stages of research conducted in the laboratories and to the aspects of commercialization of such technologies through interdisciplinary collaboration in a unique academic setting.

The same group of students also  presented their business plan at the April 10-13, 2014 OFC Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program Conference in Atlanta, Ga. There were 19 HBCUs represented in this competition and the DSU group was among the finalists.