{"id":84050,"date":"2015-10-22T18:58:51","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T15:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/blog\/peekaboo-group-1st-in-biztec-2015\/"},"modified":"2015-10-22T18:58:51","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T15:58:51","slug":"peekaboo-group-1st-in-biztec-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technion.ac.il\/en\/blog\/peekaboo-group-1st-in-biztec-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Peekaboo Group 1st in BizTEC – 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
The National Entrepreneurship Competition for students ended yesterday\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>with first prize going to the Peekaboo team, which developed\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>technology for non-invasive collection of sterile urine from baby\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>girls.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Innovative technology for the non-invasive collection of sterile urine\u00a0<\/span>from baby girls, developed by three students from the Technion, won\u00a0<\/span>first prize yesterday at the finals of the BizTEC Entrepreneurship\u00a0<\/span>Competition held at Microsoft\u2019s R&D center in Herzliya, Israel. The\u00a0<\/span>winning team, Peekaboo, whose members are Janna Tenenbaum-Katan,\u00a0<\/span>doctoral student at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and Lior\u00a0<\/span>Har-Shai and Yoel Angel, graduates of the Rappaport Faculty of\u00a0<\/span>Medicine, received a 10,000 prize from the Technion, the main\u00a0<\/span>financier of the competition. Second place went to DeepSense, which\u00a0<\/span>predicts and helps prevent failures in industrial machines, and third\u00a0<\/span>place to SelfLift – a sustainable and inexpensive irrigation solution\u00a0for \u201csmall\u201d farmers. Other technologies that reached the finals: an\u00a0<\/span>app for locating products in stores; smartphone-controlled robots;\u00a0<\/span>home monitor for pulmonary diseases; a non-invasive cardiac monitor; a\u00a0<\/span>system for navigation inside buildings; a laboratory management\u00a0<\/span>platform; a smart needle for tumor biopsies; and a wearable system\u00a0<\/span>designed to shorten athletes\u2019 recovery time.<\/span><\/p>\n The BizTEC Competition was established in 2004 as an internal Technion\u00a0<\/span>competition, and is now a countrywide competition open to all students\u00a0<\/span>and university graduates in Israel. Since its establishment, BizTEC\u00a0<\/span>has \u201cgiven birth\u201d to over 120 startups, which have raised more than\u00a0<\/span>100 million over the years. Tomer London, BizTEC\u2019s first prize\u00a0<\/span>winner in 2009, recently raised 60 million from Google Capital.\u00a0<\/span>LifeBond Ltd, first prize winner in 2006, has raised a cumulative\u00a0<\/span>total of more than 50 million. And these are just two examples of\u00a0<\/span>many.<\/span><\/p>\n The winning team, Peekaboo, was born in the Medical 3DS Competition\u00a0<\/span>held at the Technion\u2019s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine on the initiative\u00a0<\/span>of Faculty Dean Professor Eliezer Shalev. The team won first place in\u00a0<\/span>the competition, thanks to its development of an innovative and simple\u00a0<\/span>approach to collecting contamination-free ( sterile ) urine from baby\u00a0<\/span>girls, effectively but non invasively. According to Tennenbaum-Katan,\u00a0<\/span>the mother of two little girls, \u201cthe current collection method is\u00a0<\/span>inconvenient for both the child and the parent, and invasive\u00a0<\/span>collection is clearly even more unpleasant. Every year 1.8 million\u00a0<\/span>baby girls undergo invasive urine collection in the United States\u00a0<\/span>alone, and our interviews with medical personnel indicate that our\u00a0<\/span>product has significant medical and economic potential, with sales of\u00a0<\/span>over 17 million units per year in the US alone.\u201d After the\u00a0<\/span>announcement, Tennenbaum-Katan said: \u201cIt is very exciting to know that\u00a0<\/span>not only do we believe in ourselves, but the judges also believe in\u00a0<\/span>us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Rafi Nave, head of the Bronica Entrepreneurship Center at the\u00a0<\/span>Technion, said yesterday that the Technion attaches great importance\u00a0<\/span>to entrepreneurship and therefore invests money and additional\u00a0<\/span>resources in its development.<\/span><\/p>\n Professor Wayne Kaplan, Technion Executive Vice President for\u00a0<\/span>Research, added: \u201cEntrepreneurship on the part of students and faculty\u00a0<\/span>is one of our main goals today, and we are promoting it through the\u00a0<\/span>business unit (T3), the Bronica Entrepreneurship Center and our\u00a0<\/span>accelerators.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sasson Yona, chief mentor of the competition, said that working with\u00a0<\/span>the students competing in BizTEC is \u201can extraordinary experience,\u00a0<\/span>characterized by motivation, talent and diligence. With\u00a0<\/span>entrepreneurship there is no paved road – and each group paves its own\u00a0<\/span>road.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Competition Director Tomer Aharonvitch said: \u201cWe started the year with\u00a0<\/span>85 teams, most of them (58%) from the Technion, and we chose the 30\u00a0<\/span>best teams to continue with us in a training and team-building\u00a0<\/span>program, accompanied by our partners from industry, with around five\u00a0<\/span>mentors for each team. We invite students and alumni of the Technion\u00a0<\/span>and other schools to participate in the competition and the training\u00a0<\/span>that we provide. We don\u2019t demand royalties or anything else – just a\u00a0<\/span>commitment to the project and to the program.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This year the program was sponsored by the Yigal Arnon law office, the\u00a0<\/span>Eyal Bressler patent law office and the Lely agricultural products\u00a0<\/span>company. Now they will be joined by Bank Hapoalim. Speakers at\u00a0<\/span>yesterday\u2019s event were Tzahi (Zack) Weisfeld, Head of Microsoft\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Global Accelerators Program; Bank Hapoalim CTO Dr. Yoav Intrator; and\u00a0<\/span>Professor Shlomo Maital, senior research fellow at the Samuel Neaman\u00a0<\/span>Institute for National Policy Research at the Technion<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BizTEC-2015 National Entrepreneurship Competition: Technion\u2019s Peekaboo Group Wins First Place The National Entrepreneurship Competition for students ended yesterday\u00a0with first prize going to the Peekaboo team, which developed\u00a0technology for non-invasive collection of sterile urine from baby\u00a0girls. Innovative technology for the non-invasive collection of sterile urine\u00a0from baby girls, developed by three students from the Technion, won\u00a0first prize… Continue Reading Peekaboo Group 1st in BizTEC – 2015<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>