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Teams With University of Illinois Ties Take Top Prizes

Posted on: Thursday, 9 March 2006, 18:00 CST

By Don Dodson, The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

Mar. 9--URBANA -- Two teams of current and former University of Illinois students took home top honors in the V. Dale Cozad Business Plan Competition on Saturday.

Andrew Honegger and Andy Phillip, founders of Chicago-based Microlution Inc., won the open division with their plan to market a "micromanufacturing" machine tool.

They received $20,000, plus legal and accounting services and six months of free rent at the UI's EnterpriseWorks facility for start-up businesses.

Mike Callahan and Thomas Coleman, founders of Ambient, won the social division with their plan to develop the Audeo voiceless communications device for the severely disabled.

That team received $10,000, plus legal and accounting services and six months at EnterpriseWorks.

"We were very excited," said Honegger, the 24-year-old vice president of Microlution. "We had the benefit of going last and saw all the other competitors (in the open division) present before us."

Both he and Phillip, 29, received master's degrees in mechanical engineering from the UI in December.

"Since then, we've been working full-time on the company," Honegger said.

Microlution is developing a machine tool to make "small precision parts" for medical devices and consumer electronics, he said. The tiny tool can be used to make components for products such as hearing aids, pacemakers and cellphones.

"Actual machine sales are probably no more than a couple of months away," he added.

The base price on Microlution's first commercial machine, the 310-S, will be about $80,000. That compares with a price tag of $250,000 for competing machines that are much larger.

"It does the exact same thing that its larger cousins do, but in the U.S, there aren't any machines like this on the market," said Phillip, the company's president.

Honegger said the new machine has performance, cost and space advantages over larger machines.

"It really changes the game in terms of who can buy a precision machine tool and where you can place it," Phillip said.

Honegger said he and Phillip located Microlution in Chicago because the city is rich in suppliers and research-and-development centers that can use the product and air travel to potential clients is easy.

But Phillip said the company plans to use the EnterpriseWorks space in Champaign. Two mechanical engineering students at the UI do work for the company, and they may use the space, he said.

Callahan, the 23-year-old co-founder of Ambient and a UI graduate student in entrepreneurial engineering, noted that different criteria were used to judge the social division.

"For the open division, it was 'How much money can you bring in?'" he said. In the open division, the question was, "With this idea, how many people's lives could you improve?"

Ambient is preparing to test its voiceless communications device on a young man in southern Illinois who received a traumatic brain injury in a car accident.

"He hasn't been able to speak for four years," Callahan said. "He's under the care of his parents 24 hours a day. He can't move. He can't speak. It doesn't appear he has voluntary control over his arms."

Since Ambient was featured in a News-Gazette story last October, Callahan said the company has continued to work with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and has sought to form a partnership with National Instrument, which makes the equipment and software Ambient used to develop the device.

Joining Callahan and Coleman on the Ambient team were David Osorio, a UI senior in civil engineering, and Bridget Ahern, a UI senior in accountancy.

The Cozad competition, now in its sixth year, is sponsored by the Technology Entrepreneur Center at the College of Engineering and the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the College of Business. The competition is named for the late founder of Cozad Asset Management in Champaign.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

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Source: The News-Gazette

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