Business Pitch Training and Competition
In past years, Berkeley Lab has hosted a pitch competition, co-hosted by the Intellectual Property Office and Haas Business School, for scientist-entrepreneurs, providing them with the opportunity to practice pitching their business ideas to funders and potential partners.
Format: The contestants gave ten-minute presentations on their elevator pitch, their market position, the customer and competitive landscape, and financial considerations, followed by a five minute Q&A with the judging panel.
Pitch competition training was virtual. Competition was in-person.
Prizes (tied winners split prize money):
First place: $10,000 in funded time (not cash) for market exploration time
Second place: $7,000 in funded time (not cash) for market exploration time
Third place: $3,000 in funded time (not cash) for market exploration time
Congratulations to the winners of the 2023 pitch competition! Read this story to hear more about the event.
2023 Winners
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Nate Weger
Energy Technologies Area
Calectra: Electrifying Industrial Heat
Asun Oka
Biosciences Area
ReactorX: High-throughput Pressure Reactor
Dupeng Liu
Biosciences Area
REEscovery: Eco-efficient Recovery of Rare Earth Elements
Past Winners
2022
First place
Deepika Aswathi, Biosciences Area, for “Z6 Technologies: Upcycling Methane to Green Biochemicals”
Second place (tie)
Farshid Roumi, Energy Technologies Area, for “Fire Free Battery Screening Technology”
Chun Chang, Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, for “Hunting the Greener and Cheaper Energy You Need”
Third place
Kenneth Higa and Daniel Collins-Wildman, Energy Technologies Area, for “Better Batteries for Buildings”
2021
First place
Lukas Hackl, Energy Technologies Area, for “Aepnus Technology, an Electrochemical Platform Technology for the Refinement of Battery Minerals”
Second place
Bishoy Kamel, Biosciences Area, for “Rapid Development of COVID Precise Diagnostics”
Third place (tie)
Nick Buraglio, Computing Sciences Area, for “Hecate: Directing happiness to internet service provider customer” (artificial intelligence/machine learning-driven traffic engineering for high profile networks
Peter Grant, Energy Technologies Area, for “SmartRecirc—Near Zero Waste Hot Water Distribution”
2020
First place
Andrew Haddad, Energy Technologies Area
Second place
Dilip Vasudevan, Computing Sciences Area
Third place
Reshma Singh, Energy Technologies Area
2019
First place
Erika Suzuki, radioactivity mapping
Second place
Andrew Voyles, radionuclide production for nuclear medicine
Third place
Arun Persaud, soil health system
Contact
Lucian Sweitzer
LSweitzer@lbl.gov
