In the month before graduation, Michael Gidding, MBA’13, was on a global marathon competing in more challenges with his startup Aerosol Control Technologies (ACT). Before packing up and moving to Cambridge, Mike sent an update on ACT’s latest awards and his post-grad plans.

Mike and his ACT partner, Daniel Garcia, clearly have a winning idea with their business plan to use “soft x-rays” to filter diesel particulates based on a patent developed at Washington University.

Here’s Mike’s update:

Daniel Garcia and I traveled to London for the finale (round 3) of the CleanTech Challenge to compete on April 25-26. (Pictured above: Mike and Dan during Q&A session in London.) This competition is organized by University College London and the London Business School. Our team was one of six teams selected for the finale from 151 round 1 applications and 56 round 2 applications.

Sir Andrew Likierman,Dean of the London Business School, congratulates Mike and Daniel on their runner-up status in the CleanTech Challenge.

We finished as the runner up team!

Costs associated with travel and lodging were generously offset by MBA Programs and Engineering Student Services.

Immediately preceding the CleanTech Challenge, I was in NYC at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit April 22-24 Thanks to WCC and Washington University Career Center for funding assistance.

It was a busy week, I left the conference in NYC at 3:30pm Wednesday to catch a 7pm flight to London. I landed at 7am Thursday, just in time to make it through customs at Heathrow and to the London Business School campus for the start of the CleanTech Challenge at 11am that day! (all times are local.))

This fall, Daniel will pursue a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University.

I’ve accepted a 6-month fellowship in Boston at Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems in their Techbridge program. I’ll be working with energy-related startups to identify technical milestones, and helping those startups reach those technical milestones using Fraunhofer’s applied research facilities.

Earlier in the month (April 3 & 4) Daniel and I were in Chicago for the Clean Energy Trust Student Challenge. Earlier this year, ACT was awarded $10,000 as the winner of the Missouri Clean Energy Student Challenge.

This award made ACT eligible to present at the Clean Energy Student Challenge on April 4.   While ACT did not win any funds in Chicago on April 4, our presentation turned a lot of heads and gave the technology and WashU some great publicity.

Needless to say, I had a very positive experience competing in the Clean Energy Trust Student Challenge. A press release is from the competition organizers is here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/luminaid-lab-and-bearing-analytics-capture-100000-grand-prizes-at-2013-clean-energy-challenge-2013-04-05

My participation in the Chicago event was funded by MBA Programs.

There are a million and one ways that Olin, SEAS, and Skandalaris Center have helped me in this process. Truly grateful for my experiences at this school.

Best of luck to Mike and Daniel on their future endeavors. And congrats to Mike on earning three degrees last week! In addition to his MBA, he earned a BS in Chemical Engineering and MS in Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering.