ANN ARBOR – Teams from the University of Michigan have won first prize and received additional top honors in the Cleantech Venture Challenge hosted by the University of Colorado. U-M teams won a total of $27,000.

The winning teams from the University of Michigan included first-prize

winner Potentia, with a business plan for battery replacement technology

for wireless devices; second place: Forest Eye, a team comprised of one UM

student and one student from UC Davis that has software to enable more

efficient management of forest inventory; third-place: Cymergy, with a plan

to generate energy from cement factory waste heat emissions; and

fourth-place: enDep, with a package that allows hybrid vehicles to plug in

at home. Potentia won $15,000.

“Competitions are a great way for students to fine tune business plans,

hone presentation skills and prepare for life after the university —

whether that is with a start-up or as an innovator in an established

company,” said Tom Kinnear, Executive Director of the Samuel Zell & Robert

H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies. “The Zell Lurie Institute

team has enjoyed working with the University’s business plan competition

teams and we are proud of the great work Potentia, Forest Eye, Cymergy and

enDep have done on the national competition circuit. We look forward to

more great successes from these promising new businesses and their

enthusiastic management teams.”

The Cleantech Venture Challenge requires teams to present their

business plans and answer questions from a panel of distinguished venture

capitalists and entrepreneurs, who serve as judges and also provide

valuable feedback on the business plans. The plans are venture-grade,

for-profit business models, and/or technologies with high growth potential.

They provide innovative solutions, services, or products that reduce

environmental impacts or improve ecological sustainability.

The top-ranked team with a clean energy technology business plan will

be invited to present its plan at the annual National Renewable Energy

Laboratory (NREL) Industry Growth Forum in November 2008. Investor’s Circle

(IC), angel investors who support early stage sustainable companies, will

circulate all four teams’ executive summaries to investors.

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