[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Loutfy_Rafik.jpg” caption=”Dr. Rafik Loutfy, director of XCEEi and the Walter Booth Chair of Engineering Entrepreneurship & Innovation. File photo.”]Call it speed dating for start-up funding. A new contest will help McMaster researchers commercialize their work by pairing them with student entrepreneurs and providing $50,000 in prize money to help commercialize their technology.

Vaguely resembling a speed-dating session, the Smart Start Innovation Fair is based around a poster and elevator-pitch competition that will be held Oct. 9 at the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo.

Faculty will present posters outlining their technologies. Entrepreneurship students will review the posters and pitch themselves as potential commercialization partners to the faculty members. At the morning's conclusion, a matchmaking process will link students with faculty members in commercialization teams.

That afternoon, the commercialization teams will develop their business idea into an elevator pitch. The teams will present their pitches at the end of the day to a panel of industry investors. The top pitches which show a reasonable and commercially viable business concept, as selected by the judges, share the prize money.

Launched by TECNet, a partnership between McMaster's Xerox Center for Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (XCEEi) and the University of Waterloo's Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology, the Smart Start Innovation Fair creates opportunities for professors to collaborate with entrepreneurship students to commercialize inventions.

TECNet organizers expect the teams to continue working together over the next 18 months. Entrepreneurship students at the XCEEi will work with the inventors to commercialize the technology presented at the fair in a structured and supportive manner through a degree entitled a Master's of Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MEEI). Students will create full business plans to present at next year's Smart Start Business Plan competition.

As they begin creating their start-up companies, the commercialization teams will also receive assistance from the McMaster Office of Research Contracts and Intellectual Property and C4, the technology transfer consortium that links universities in southwestern Ontario.

“There are great technologies being developed by McMaster University researchers and faculty,” said Dr. Rafik Loutfy, director of XCEEi and the Walter Booth Chair of Engineering Entrepreneurship & Innovation. “With the Innovation Fair, we will harness the entrepreneurial drive and expertise of MEEI students to translate those technologies into commercially viable goods and services.”

The Smart Start contest is open to McMaster and Mohawk College faculty, as well as faculty at Waterloo, Guelph and Wilfrid Laurier universities and Conestoga College.

TECNet is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.

For more information or to register, visit tecnetcompetition.org or call 905-923-8642.

Spaces are limited, so researchers are encouraged to register online before Oct. 1.