Tag: competition

The 6th annual Real Elevator Pitch Competition is open for submissions. Sponsored by Saint Louis University, this contest is open to all college students. Two cash prizes will be awarded to the best business plan pitches.

The Real Elevator Pitch competition takes place on real elevators in the second tallest building in Missouri: One Met Square in downtown St. Louis. Real students deliver real startup pitches to real investors while riding up 40 stories on the building’s elevators.

Submissions are due by Nov. 7, 2017 at 11:59 CST

Saint Louis University staged the first Real Elevator Pitch six years ago and it has been a successful competition ever since.

Startup business pitches can be submitted in two categories: for profit ideas and nonprofit ideas.

To enter the competition, you must submit a 30 second pitch:

1.) Record your video and upload it to YouTube.

2.) Fill out the SUBMISSION FORM

A blue-ribbon panel of judges will select the top 18 that will move on to the Final Round.

The 18 Finalists will be invited to One Met Square building in downtown St. Louis  to pitch to 30+ wealthy judges while riding up and down on 12 elevators.

See the ‘Real’ Elevator Pitch FAQs to help answer any questions you might have or email ecenter@slu.edu for more information.

With more than ten thousand dollars at stake, student teams competed in the first-ever Project of the Year Symposium, hosted by The Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation (BCSCI), on May 17 at Washington University. The BCSCI symposium featured the top five corporate mini-consulting projects executed via our Center in the 2016-2017 academic year. The top prize, $5,500, for Best Project of the Year was awarded to the Emerson team. A second award, $3,000, was given to the Belden team for a project that demonstrated the greatest immediate business impact.  A third award. $2,000, was given to the Monsanto team for delivering the best presentation. All winning teams will be inducted into the Boeing Center Projects Hall of Fame.

Each student team had 15 minutes in front of a panel of judges composed of BCSCI advisory board members and representatives.

While all of our project teams (a total of 15 corporate projects) did an excellent job this year, these five demonstrated a particularly high level of execution, which set them apart. We are grateful to all of our member companies for providing us with interesting and challenging projects, and to all the students who worked on Boeing Center projects this year.

A special thanks goes out to our judges and board members in attendance: Greg Krekeler (Boeing), Mike Woerner (Edward Jones), Eric Carlson (Emerson), Marcelle Pires (Monsanto), Becky McDonough (Monsanto), and of course our own Sergio Chayet (WashU) and Panos Kouvelis (WashU & BCSCI Director). We look forward to developing more innovative supply chain solutions in the fall semester!

Representing this academic year’s projects in the competition were:

ABI student team: Serena Chen, Xinyue Du, Marcus Lei, Yanyan Li, and Cauthen Mordente.

Anheuser-Busch InBev  |  Fall 2016

The Anheuser-Busch InBev team’s project revolved around optimizing the inventory mix at distribution centers for some of ABI’s craft beer products. The need to achieve shipping efficiency by shipping full truckloads is a challenge when lower volume craft beers are involved. It is also important to maintain high service levels of performance when delivering to wholesalers.

The team utilized simulation models to support either the use of higher inventory levels at the distribution center, or shipping lower volume and higher volume beers on the same truck to achieve higher service levels for craft beers.

Belden  |  Spring 2017

Panos Kouvelis with Belden student team: Bonnie Bao, Michael Stein, Yuying Wang, and Yuyao Zhu.

The award for the “Greatest Immediate Business Impact,” with impressive overall cost savings to the company, was given to the Belden team.

The Belden team used the continuous review modeling approach, together with concepts of ABC analysis and market uncertainty, to identify opportunities for lowering costs and improving service levels at PPC, a Belden subsidiary in Syracuse, NY. The proposed decision support spreadsheet will be immediately implemented by the company, and will result in substantial savings. This project delivered the most immediate business impact.

Boeing  |  Spring 2017

Student team: Vineet Chauhan, Phil Goetz, Brian Liu, Sontaya Sherrell, and Fan Zhang.  

The Boeing team’s goal was to determine the most influential order and part characteristics affecting suppliers’ on-time delivery statistics of Boeing’s transactional spare parts business.

Emerson  |  Spring 2017

Student team: Kushal Chawla, Serena Chen, Kai Ji, Jeffrey Lantz, and Zoe Zhao, pictured at top of page.

The judges determined that the Emerson team had delivered the best overall project performance (problem solution, business impact, and presentation), and was declared “Project of the Year” winner.  The Emerson project team worked with ProTeam’s Richmond Hill facility to determine the optimal product mix, optimize inventory management of stock, and develop a data analysis model to facilitate future upkeep of the system. This was a well-executed project, with rigorous analysis and strong presentation by the team.

Monsanto  |  Spring 2017

Student team: Hai Cao, Yanyan Li, Ashwin Kumar, Jonathan Neff, Tom Siepman, and Xukun Zan.

Finally, the Monsanto team’s goal was to understand, define, and map out the credit processes within Monsanto. The audience enjoyed this team’s excellent presentation. The Monsanto team impressed the judges with the quality of its work and its exceptional presentation, and received the “Presentation Excellence” award.

Boeing Center Symposium photo gallery • click here

For more supply chain digital content and cutting-edge research, check us out on the socials [@theboeingcenter] and our website [olin.wustl.edu/bcsci]

• • •

A Boeing Center digital production

Supply Chain // Operational Excellence // Risk Management

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The winning team, named Project Starfish, is creating a device that uses short-wavelength ultraviolet light (UVC), which kills bacteria, molds, viruses and other pathogens, to continuously and effectively kill bacteria in urinary catheters. About 75 percent of urinary tract infections acquired in the hospital are associated with the use of a catheter, and up to 25 percent of hospitalized patients in the hospital receive a urinary catheter, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

Elizabeth Bowman

Project Starfish has received a provisional patent for its device and has confirmed with FDA consultants that the device will follow a relatively inexpensive regulatory pathway, said Elizabeth Bowman. Bowman received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in commercial entrepreneurship May 19.

“We’re really glad that we won this competition because we needed to the money to move us forward to the next step,” said Bowman, who plans to continue working on the project in addition to working as a health-care consultant in Silicon Valley.

The team’s initial funding to build a 3-D prototype and a small circuit board came from  Sling Health (formerly IDEA Labs).

Other team members are:

• John Bisognono, sophomore, majoring in computer science with a minor in bioinformatics
• Elliot Jaffe, BS/MS student in electrical engineering with a second major in physics
• Caleb Ji, first-year student majoring in math
• Daniel Lane, doctoral student in biomedical engineering
• Jessica Miller, founder and an MD/PhD student at the School of Medicine and in biomedical engineering
• Vineet Chauhan and John Henschen, MBA students in the Olin Business School
• Jay Vasileva, a graduating biomedical engineering student from Saint Louis University

Project Starfish plans to incorporate this summer.

The School of Engineering & Applied Science’s Discovery Competition promotes innovative discoveries that solve a particular challenge or need.  The competition provides undergrad engineering students a forum to explore their entrepreneurial interests with support from mentors, to use their creativity to develop solutions for real-world problems, and to compete for financial resources that could help turn their ideas into businesses. The annual competition is funded by Engineering alumni.

Link to more about the 2017 Discovery Competition.

By: Beth Miller, School of Engineering & Applied Science

A team of Olin students took third place in the Chicago Quantitative Alliance’s Investment Challenge, a year-long competition that requires students to apply stock selection and portfolio management skills in a simulated, real life hedge fund experience. Congratulations to the WashU Green Team: Chongyu Li, Siyong Chen, Yingan Yi, Yuanfang Liu, Yuming Lou, and Sahil Ghurye, captain, for their excellent finish.

“It pits you against other domestic and international business schools like Cornell, Columbia, Fuqua, Tepper, CUHK, ISB, Georgia Tech etc.,” said Sahil Ghurye. “This year 50 colleges took part in the competition.”

Rich Ryffel, Senior Lecturer in Finance has organized and mentored Olin teams for the CQA competition for the past two years. “The objective of the CQA Investment Challenge is to successfully manage an equity long/short market neutral portfolio over the course of the academic year,” Ryffel explained. Kirk MacDonald, a Senior Research Analyst at Argent Capital Management served as the team advisor.

“It gave us a great opportunity to apply classroom theories to a simulated real world setting,” said Ghurye. “The competition helped us follow the public markets and factor recent macroeconomic trends that might affect our portfolio. We had to monitor our portfolio often to stay within the constraints set by the challenge.”

The winning team was determined by the combination of their absolute return, risk adjusted return and an evaluation of a strategy presentation with an emphasis on the risk adjusted returns. Prizes include $3,000 in prize money distributed across the top three teams ($1500, $1000, $500).

Ghurye and his fellow finance quant team members encourage other students to compete in the CQA. “I would certainly recommend the CQA challenge to students who aspire to work in finance. The challenge doesn’t take too much of your time but it gives you great exposure to public markets and to great mentors.” Another perk, Ghurye adds: “The CQA challenge looks good on your resume and is a great conversation starter in interviews.”

What is the Chicago Quantitative Alliance (CQA)?
The CQA is a professional investment organization comprised of leading quantitative investment practitioners.  The CQA membership includes investment managers, academics, plan sponsors, consultants, and other investment professionals.  The primary goal of the CQA is to facilitate the interchange of ideas between quantitative professionals.

Source: CQA website.

The first weekend in April, a group of four Olin students: Kevin Pung, David Gumins, Jon Goldstein, and Andrew Glantz, along with negotiations professor and PhD candidate Elizabeth Luckman, traveled to Waco, Texas for a negotiations competition. Andrew wrote this post for the blog:

The Baylor Business Negotiations Competition consisted of three rounds (single-elimination) with teams of two people each (12 teams overall). Kevin and I were on a team, and David and Jon were on another team.

The first round was 35-minutes: our role was a pharmaceuticals company hiring two consultants and we had to negotiate a contract with them. Both of our teams made it to the next round (semi-finals).

The semi-final round was also 35 minutes: our role was the in-store sales strategy team at a Walmart-esque company and we had to negotiate a marketing strategy/budget with the online division. Only two teams with the highest scores out of the six semi-finalists made it to finals. Kevin and I ranked 1st after that round; David and Jon ranked 5th.

Kevin and I then competed in finals in an auditorium for a 45-minute negotiation: our role was a development company negotiating a maintenance contract with a large company. It was a close negotiation and we ended up with a beneficial deal, but lost in a 2-1 decision with the judges. Kevin and I each won $150 for placing 2nd in the competition.

This was the first intercollegiate national competition of this nature. WashU is looking to possibly host one in the future in addition to other colleges. It was terrific to see the two teams place 2nd and 5th from WashU! I look forward to seeing WashU continue this in the future.

Guest Blogger: Andrew Glantz BSBA ’17