Fans of NBC's popular new series "The Apprentice" have been glued to their sofas every Thursday night to watch as a diverse group of enterprising hopefuls battle it out for the chance at a lucrative employment opportunity.
This year - minus the reality show - a similar brand of intense competition can be expected in the School of Management's Technology Entrepreneur Competition.
According to Althea Luehrsen, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, teams of students will attempt to develop the most innovative proposal for a new business that fuses technology and the life sciences.
"The premise of the competition is to promote UB-generated technologies, by bringing together students of different disciplines to meet each other and partner up," said Althea Luehrsen, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.
Each team will be made up of two or more students, one from the field of technology, and one from the area of life sciences. Luehrsen said this is done in hopes of maximizing the teams' business and scientific potential.
One group of graduate students has entered the competition to help make fillings at the dentist's office a thing of the past.
"We want to develop technology that will allow for the early detection of dental decay," said Carrie Buckley, a graduate biomaterials major working on a design with three other students from her department.
Buckley and biomaterials students Karrishma Jumani, James Fick and Brindha Subramanian hope to complete the basic design for an ultrasound cavity-detecting device within the next 10 days.
"There's a point where it can't be seen on x-ray, but it's actually there," she said. "We're working on developing ultrasound technology that can detect the cavity at that stage."
Buckley said cavity formation could actually be reversed if the decay is recognized in time. With early interventions such as fluoride treatments and increased oral hygiene, missing calcium and phosphate can be restored to the tooth.
"We have a nonworking model right now - we're still working on things like the circuit design," said Buckley. "But we would definitely need the money to develop it and make sure the plans are right."
"I think we can win," she said. "One of the interesting things about our team is that Brindha and Karrishma are actually trained dentists. We have a very practical diversity in our team."
Buckley said the group wants to see the project to fruition and hopefully patent it, regardless of its success in the Technology Entrepreneur Competition.
"We're interested in developing the technology whether or not we win the competition," said Buckley. "We actually believe in our technology enough that we're going to do it anyway."
Five judges for the competition were carefully selected to represent a cross-section of the professional world. Luehrsen said it includes representatives of both the business and technology fields.
This panel of judges will narrow down the entries to the top five teams, who then present their proposal for the final judging, which takes place on May 7.
The size of the winning team's prize package is due to contributions from several corporate sponsors.
It includes $25,000 in funding and one year of office space, advertising, marketing and legal services.
School of Management officials announced this contest as UB is stepping up its bioinformatics research effort.
Under Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi, bioinformatics - which itself involves the fusion of high-powered computing and scientific research - became a major investment for UB.
A six-story, $142-million dollar headquarters for the Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics is currently under construction on Washington Street in downtown Buffalo.
Luehrsen said that while the contest is in its first year, interest in it has been high. Last Wednesday, the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership held an open house meeting in the Center for Tommorrow.
"We are expecting about 20 to 25 teams to register," she said. "About 20 to 25 people attended the open house meeting, and there were quite a few people who were interested but did not attend the meeting."
Students who are interested must sign up their teams by Feb. 27.
