LBNL Pitch Competition

Berkeley Lab hosts an annual pitch competition for scientist-entrepreneurs who participate in the Lab I-Corps Lite program, providing them with the opportunity to practice pitching their ideas. The first place winner advances to a DOE-wide pitch competition to compete for cash prizes supporting market research. The 2021 LBNL Pitch Competition will take place on September 9, from 1:30-3:30 pm. To sign up for the competition, contact Gregg Scharfstein, GAScharfstein@lbl.gov at 510.486.7586.

LBNL Pitch Competition 2020

The LBNL Pitch Competition 2020 was held on October 8 from 1:30-3:30 pm. The winners received cash prizes to be applied towards customer discovery:

• First Place: Andrew Haddad (Energy Technologies Area)
• Second Place: Dilip Vasudevan (Computing Sciences Area)
• Third Place: Reshma Singh (Energy Technologies Area)

Contestants/Technologies:

Sam Birenbaum, A Sustainable, Affordable, Transportable HUD-compliant Home Spencer Dutton, Packaged HVAC and Energy Storage Christoph Gehbauer, Comfortable Buildings that Reduce Cost – The Revolution with Dynamic Facades Andrew Z. Haddad, Providing Economic Value from Produced Oil and Gas Waters George Michelogiannakis, Reconfigurable HPC Networks With Emerging Photonics Reshma Singh, I-SPACE Workstation Hub Dilip Vasudevan, Superchips: Energy Efficient Superconducting Electronic Chips

 

LBNL Pitch Competition 2019

Eight IPO I-Corps Lite graduates pitched their technology commercialization plans to a panel of industry judges at LBNL’s 2019 Pitch Competition. August 1.

The most compelling business cases were awarded funds to continue customer discovery efforts.

• 1st place: Erika Suzuki — radioactivity mapping
• 2nd place: Andrew Voyles — radionuclide production for nuclear medicine
• 3rd place: Arun Persaud — soil health system

 

 

Other entrepreneurial researcher participants included

• Pete Christensen – recyclable polymer for circular plastics economy
• Nicholas DeForest – investing energy resources for buildings or microgrids
• Ernst Oberortner – DNA, RNA, and protein sequence design
• Maren Wehrs and Yuzhong Liu – natural dyes for safer, sustainable textiles
• Ning Sun – renewable ionic liquids

The judging panel questioned each participant to identify top features and next steps for business planning. The panel included

• Thomas Schenkel, LBNL physicist/senior administrator and 2017 pitch competition winner
• Kevin Rodondi, I-Corps instructor and UCSF pharmacy professor
• Rhonda Shrader, Haas School of Business executive director of entrepreneurship
• Virginia Rath, Quotient Design Research consultant and Haas faculty member
• Mike Biddle, Evok Innovations managing director

Interested in a future pitch event and entrepreneurial training? Contact Gregg Scharfstein, GAScharfstein@lbl.gov at 510.486.7586.