Chinese team wins 5th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge

Ihealth, a team from Tsinghua University, Peoples Republic of China, whose bionic technology of biodegradable bone screws promises to improve the quality of life for patients with bone injuries, won the 5th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge on Thursday, November 19, on the UC Berkeley campus. The award includes a $25,000 cash prize.

The competition was sponsored by Intel Corporation and hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to promote the commercialization of technology innovations that promise significant positive impact on industry and society.

The second place award was won by CaptchaAd, a team from the Technical University Munich in Germany, the world's first company to combine enhanced SPAM protection, interactive video advertising and a more conscious perception of advertising by the user.

The third place award went to Zimplistic, a team from the National University of Singapore, which automates the production of rotis, a staple diet of 800 million Indians eating 2.4 billion rotis everyday.

The People’s Choice Award, voted on by all attendees at the competition finals, was also won by first-place finisher Ihealth.

Descriptions of the winning teams’ proposals:

Ihealth - Tsinghua University, P.R. China
Ihealth Group aims to improve life quality with its revolutionary new product—MPHB biodegradable bone screws. Ihealth has developed MPHB bone screw in light of bionics which has been granted a national patent in China. Our product overcomes the disadvantages of the existing materials and provides a nearly perfect solution for the rehabilitation and fixation of bone injuries.

CaptchaAd - Technical University Munich, Germany
The CaptchaAd GmbH is the world's first company to combine enhanced SPAM protection with interactive video advertising and thus increase the security on websites and facilitates visitor’s use, while at the same time ensuring a more conscious perception of advertising by the user. Instead of distorted codes conventional CAPTCHAs (an anti SPAM function usedmore than 250 million times a day worldwide) use to differentiate between humans and machines, CaptchaAd (Captcha Advertising) uses questions concerning the content of the spot. A CaptchaAd is a short commercial including a question which can easily be read and answered by site customers to substitute the “normal” CAPTCHA process. This results in a higher level of attention and involvement by the user to the viewed content.

Zimplistic - National University of Singapore, Singapore
Roti is staple diet of 800 million Indians eating 2.4 billion rotis everyday. Making rotis is a very time consuming, tedious and skillful task and since there is no fully automatic home appliance that makes rotis, people resort to unhealthy and expensive alternatives like frozen rotis. Zimplistic is a Singapore based startup that has designed & developed the first ever, fully automatic "Rotimatic". It is like a coffee machine. It is the size of a mini microwave oven, the user just has to enter no. of rotis, and it measures, kneads, flattens, roasts and puffs rotis out.