PSU MRS Entrepreneurship Challenge '06

c/o Katina Bartley, 101 Steidle Building, University Park, PA  16802, PSUMRS@psu.edu, March 5, 2006

Prizes and Experience

Grand Prize	$1000
Second Prize	$700
Third Prize	$500

Penn State’s Materials Research Society (MRS) student chapter is proud to announce its first-ever entrepreneurship competition.

This competition also provides substantial exterior networking benefits to all participants. A panel composed of real-world venture capitalists, eager to provide constructive feedback and support, will judge teams’ presentations.

Competition Goals

Our goals are as follow:

• To foster interest in entrepreneurship within the Penn State community through providing hands-on opportunities for students to learn real-world business formation and venture capital processes.
• To promote networking and collaborative opportunities between Penn State business and science/engineering students—students who typically get little opportunity to interact.
• To instill a generation of science/engineering researchers with vision, tools, and interpersonal connections necessary to bring innovations to market; and to provide business students with keener senses for recognizing innovation.

Additionally, this inaugural competition will provide us with feedback for future entrepreneurship competitions. Therefore we hope this contest proves the beginning of our inspiration of entrepreneurial science/engineering career paths.

Eligibility

The PSUMRS Entrepreneurship Challenge is loosely based on the Material Research Society's National Enrepreneurship Challenge. We invite Penn State students of any field to participate in this entrepreneurship challenge specific to Pennsylvania State University.

Each team must include at least one science/engineering student, and at least one business-student. Teams membership is unlimited. Beyond those required, students of any background may become teammates. Collaboration amongst students of varied disciplines is strongly encouraged.

Contest administrators (PSUMRS@psu.edu) will gladly help students form teams. Interested student will be paired up in two ways depending on the number of applications received.

1. A list of individual people with different background will be maintained on the PSUMRS website which can act as a place for interactions between interested students to team up.
2. Students unable to form teams from the website will be matched with people from the business school with the help of Dr. Anthony Warren.

Teams should also feel free to solicit additional help and input from outside advisors and mentors—from industry or from academia. All such assistants should be acknowledged. Such people are considered resources and do not count toward a team’s membership.

Entry Expectations

Team-Entry Format

Competition submissions are essentially abbreviated business plans. Final submission format is a twelve-slide PowerPoint presentations, with explanatory commentary. A hyperlink including instructions for creating PowerPoint voiceover is provided in “Resources for Creating Presentations.”

Final presentations are submitted via campus/snail mailed or self-delivered CD-ROM. Final entries must arrive by the time specified. They should be delivered to:

c/o Ms. Katina Bartley
101 Steidle Building
University Park, PA 16802

The program is structured such that most interactions amongst team-members, contest administrators, and judges, will occur over the Internet. The total time commitment expected from participants will be limited, so as to encourage the widest possible participation.

 

Additional Expectation

We designed the PSUMRS Entrepreneurship Challenge to encourage cooperation between professionals and students of all brands of business, science, engineering, and more. Still, all contest presentations should relate to materials science. This is almost necessarily easier than it sounds, since the world is made up of real, physical materials. Although the scientists/engineers of one’s team may not study materials science/engineering. It is important to realize that every product or service-oriented business plan relies on material resources in some way.

 

Deadlines 

Intent to Participate including résumés and e-mail addresses	Friday, Sept. 22nd 12:00 noon
Final, narrated PowerPoint presentations on CD-ROMs	Friday, Nov. 10th 12:00 noon

Submission e-mail and address appear in the first-page's header.  We will post contest results in the beginning of December.

Resources for Creating Presentations

MRS National's Presentation Guidelines (includes narration instructions, scoring rubric similar to PSUMRS')

MRS National's Presentation Template

 

Intellectual Property Disclaimer

Any materials submitted to the PSUMRS Entrepreneurship Challenge should only become available to PSUMRS officers, contest administrators, and judges.  Most likely, no one therein  possesses  either the know-how-nor the incentive-to use/release your entry's intellectual property.  Nonetheless, plan ahead:

If you already intend to patent your invention, please be aware that you may need to file a patent disclosure prior to the competition, omit patentable details from your submission, or take other measures to secure the intellectual property associated with your invention. Please consult a patent attorney or your Penn State's licensing/intellectual property office (http://www.research.psu.edu/ipo/) for appropriate legal guidance.

Realize, also, that any correspondence via the internet is either public or compromisable.  PSUMRS does not take responsibility for the unintented/undesired release of intellectual property pertinent to your invention.