A team of undergraduates won $50,000 for their proposal to use genetics to improve crops at the Fuqua School of Business' annual Duke Start-Up Challenge Saturday.
One of five finalists, the team developed a plan to establish SunDance Genetics, a company that would patent seeds with pest resistance.
The proposal is based on crop sustainability research by Mary Eubanks, adjunct professor of biology ,and would market licensing agreements to companies already producing seeds to create SunDance seeds.
"SunDance Genetics has the potential to revolutionize the way the world approaches crop improvement," team member Chuck Eesley told the audience during his marketing pitch.
Team members, who first learned about Eubanks' research in a Markets and Management capstone course, said they do not know what will come next, but that they hope to put their plan into action.
"Now that we've won, we'll have to sit down and figure that out," said fellow team member Rudy Gopalakrishnan.
This is the first year undergraduates have advanced to the final round of the start-up challenge, which was established three years ago to foster entrepreneurial activity at Duke.
"American society cherishes entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship," said keynote speaker Vivek Wadhwa, founder and CEO of Relativity Technologies. "Duke has a great reputation for turning out leaders. This is what Duke has always been famous for, but Duke is not famous for turning out entrepreneurs."
Zach Ager, senior and co-chair of the Duke Start-Up Challenge Committee, said the University lacks entrepreneurial infrastructure and that its culture does not encourage entrepreneurial activity.
"The experiential education the participants get from going through this process is really unparalleled in other initiatives at the University," he said.
This year's competition also marked the beginning of the social enterprise category, which recognizes the best business plan that produces both economic and social value with a $5,000 award. The winning proposal, Tahirih Language Services, creates job training opportunities and employability for refugee women.
"Those women arrive in the U.S. with varying degrees of education and varying degrees of employability," said team member Joy Howard of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler School of Business. "Our venture will provide them training and education, and also employ them as translators and interpreters."
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