May 20, 2015
Booz Allen Hamilton was proud to participate in this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, the nation’s premier business plan competition, awarding cash and business startup services to outstanding teams of student entrepreneurs. The MIT $100K is a year-long educational experience that connects teams of students with game-changing ideas to a broad resource network to help bring their products to market.
Booz Allen Executive Vice President Michael Farber, who served as a judge in the final round of the competition, said of the event, “The MIT $100K Challenge started with 194 teams and was narrowed down to 8 truly extraordinary finalists that made our selection of a winner an exceedingly difficult challenge itself. Indeed, out of the almost 200 entrants we dozens that have emerging or advanced capabilities and products that we can readily apply and leverage to address some of our clients and society's most difficult challenges across a broad range of areas including health, education, energy, transportation, the environment, national security. I think that this clearly speaks to the importance of actively engaging in this wonderful part of the innovation and startup ecosystem that MIT has created and maintains for the good of us all."
This year’s winner, awarded $100,000 by a panel of judges including Booz Allen Hamilton Executive Vice President Michael Farber, is Raptor Maps. Led by three MIT Ph.D. candidates, Raptor Maps proposes to build and operate unmanned aircraft to provide crop analytics to agribusiness clients. One third of crops planted in the world are destroyed by diseases, insects, and weeds. Raptor Maps spots these troubled plants and enables focused pesticide application, increasing crop yields while reducing environmental impact.
Lead Associate JD Hannick, who served as a judge during the semi-final round of this year’s competition, said, “It was a privilege to be involved in this year’s MIT $100K event. The breadth of ideas presented by the teams was really amazing – from Microswarms, which uses small, autonomous, underwater robots to protect the military from underwater mines and find new sources of oil -- to Suono Bio’s device that enables rapid absorption of drugs to the gastrointestinal tract, treating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), cancer, and GI infections. Increasingly, we are seeing so many innovative ideas from the start-up space. It’s energizing to be a part of bringing groundbreaking technology to market.”
He continued, “It makes good business sense for Booz Allen to participate in events like the MIT $100K. Our primary clients--the United States government and big commercial institutions--want to keep their ideas fresh and bring in new solutions to difficult problems. With a proven 100-year history, Booz Allen is natural matchmaker, connecting great thinking with global-scale challenges.”
For a full list of finalists, visit: http://mit100k.org/.
