{"id":1213,"date":"2013-04-16T10:44:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T10:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uchc.dev.uconn.edu\/regenerativeengineering\/2013\/04\/16\/the-ccei-start-up-challenge-pitch-competition\/"},"modified":"2013-04-16T10:44:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T10:44:00","slug":"the-ccei-start-up-challenge-pitch-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/2013\/04\/16\/the-ccei-start-up-challenge-pitch-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"The CCEI Start-Up Challenge Pitch Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-557 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2015\/10\/photo_harmon.jpg\" alt=\"Matthew Harmon\" width=\"250\" height=\"296\" \/>The Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CCEI) held its Start-Up Challenge Pitch Competition on April 8 on the Storrs campus. Open to students on all UConn campuses, CCEI awarded a total of $10,000 in prize money to individuals and\/or teams across ten categories. Entries ranged from mobile apps for improved access to educational resources to novel material design for improved transportation infrastructure. The organizers challenged students to prepare a 90-second business idea pitch followed by a 2-minute Q&amp;A session.<\/p>\n<p>I am very proud to announce that our pitch for a novel interbody fusion device won \u201cBest Pitch.\u201d Nicknamed SpineFuze, this is a biodegradable, natural polymer-based interbody fusion device for spinal disc surgery. The team also plans to submit an additional entry for the upcoming written business-plan competition.<\/p>\n<p>The business pitch was delivered by Matthew Harmon, a current 3rd-year Ph.D. student in the Institute for Regenerative Engineering. Matthew is completing his Ph.D. before returning to medical school to continue his pursuit of a career as a physician scientist in orthopaedics. His current research interests involve novel material design for the treatment of spine-related orthopaedic injuries and pathologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CCEI) held its Start-Up Challenge Pitch Competition on April 8 on the Storrs campus. Open to students on all UConn campuses, CCEI awarded a total of $10,000 in prize money to individuals and\/or teams across ten categories. Entries ranged from mobile apps for improved access to educational resources [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-27 13:35:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/regenerative-engineering-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}