For the past few months, Impact has been working along side the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) to organize Ontario’s Next Top Entrepreneur Pitch Competition. From a large applicant pool consisting of undergraduate and graduate students representing 14 different post-secondary instituitions, five finalists were chosen to present their business ideas at the Discovery 10 Conference.

Last week, these top five teams delivered their pitches to a panel of judges for a chance to be enrolled in OCE’s Centre for Commercialization of Research’s New Entrepreneur Program. The winning team was granted a non-recourse micro-loan of up to $18,000 ($6,000 per team member), access to advisory services, and given the opportunity to network with key mentors and private investors.

The competition was a great success! Congratulations to Avenir Medical for winning the title of Ontario’s Next Top Entrepreneur! The winning teams were as follows.

First Prize Winner: AVENIR MEDICAL

Armen Bakirtzian, Andre Hladio, Richard Fanson, Ara Hasserjian

The heart of Avenir Medical Inc. is PelvAssist (trademarked), an intra-operative guidance tool which aids orthopaedic surgeons in the proper placement of the acetabular prosthetic component during Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA).

Second Prize Winner: GLASS TELEPRESENCE

Teresa Thomas, Gabriel Tomescu, David Farr

Glass Telepresence is offering revolutionary telepresence communications technology that enables life-size, high-definition, face-to-face visual and spoken communication between remote locations.

Third Prize Winner: TALK MESH

Anton Lopyrev, Francis Ian Mendiola, Prabhdeep Gill, Artem Lopyrev

Talkmesh is a multi-platform, dedicated application for you and your closest friends to keep in touch.

In addition to the pitch competition, the Impact Team was able to use the tradeshow setup at the conference to network with industry partners and students from across the province. One of the other highlights of the conference was certainly the keynote by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers.

Great job to all members of the Impact Team that made it to the event: Christine Lu, Teresa Choo, Nikhita Singh, Scott Tolksdorf, Dave Hale, Judith Ma, Sarah Katyal, Vino Jeyapalan and Yong Lim. Congratulations team for a job well done!

Do you have an innovative start-up idea? Are you looking for your next big break? Well here is your chance!

Impact Entrepreneurship Group is proud to present the “Ontario’s Next Top Entrepreneur” competition at the Discovery 2010 conference and extend this amazing opportunity to Ontario’s most talented teams.

Present your idea in a short video, telling us why it could be the next big thing. The top five teams will move on to deliver their pitch at Ontario Centres of Excellence’s (OCE) Discovery 2010 conference. The winning team will be enrolled in OCE’s Centre for Commercialization of Research’s New Entrepreneur Program where they will be granted a non-recourse micro-loan of up to $18,000 ($6,000 per team member), have access to advisory services, and have the opportunity to network with key mentors and private investors.

For more details about the  ”Ontario’s Next Top Entrepreneur” pitch competition and the Dicovery 2o10 conference please visit http://www.ocediscovery.com/.

To apply for this amazing opportunity, click here.

Are you working on the latest, greatest, most fascinating new science and technology?  The OCE Student Video Competition is your opportunity to broadcast your project to the world; through the OCE Discovery website, YouTube channel, Facebook Page and on the big screens at OCE’s Discovery 2010.

Use your creative video skills to:

1. Tell your research story
2. Introduce your research team
3. Show us your technology
4. Explain the benefits and outcomes of your work
5. Connect to the Ontario innovation network
6. Attract investors
7. Inspire others
8. Promote collaboration

You could win cash prizes:

• 1^st Prize: $2,500
• 2^nd Prize: $1,500
• 3^rd Prize: $1,000

Competition Quick Notes:

When: Starting immediately. Entry forms must be submitted by April 1, 2010. Videos must be uploaded to YouTube before April 30^th, 2010.

How: Upload your video to www.YouTube.com (naming it as instructed, and informing OCE when your video is ready) and it will be added to the OCE Discovery 2010 Video Contest YouTube Channel.  The panel of judges will award cash prizes to the top three videos, but all finalists will receive a free pass to Discovery 2010.

Who: The video contest is open to all post-secondary students enrolled at an Ontario university or college during the period of April 1, 2009 and March 31, 2010. Students must be working on an applied science research project with commercial potential.

For additional information, or to download the application form, please visit the student centre at ocediscovery.com, or contact Jamie Doran at (519) 998-2476 and james.doran@oce-ontario.org.