On January 20th, the Great Lakes Energy Institute hosted a Clean Energy Student Competition to provide experience in business pitches. 

1st Place: CrystalE

2nd Place: Greenlite Technologies

3rd Place: EnPower

After much preparation, 6 project teams presented to a panel of 5 judges: Joe Jankowski (Chief Innovation Officer - CWRU), Lisa Delp (Entrepreneur-in-Residence - LCC/GLIDE), Chris Mather (Leveragent), Jim Pae (Corporate Relations - CWRU), and Ted Theofrastous (Intellectual Property Venture Clinic - CWRU).

Each team in the competition received individual feedback and the opportunity to win prizes - $500 for 1st place, $300 for 2nd place, and $200 for 3rd place. Prizes were funded this year by Clean Energy Trust (CET). Investing $1 million in early-stage energy start-ups, CET is holding their 6th annual clean energy competition in April. Prize money can be applied to prototyping costs and competition travel expenses. In addition, the 1st place winner is automatically entered to present at the Allegheny Region Clean Tech Competition to be held at Carnegie-Mellon University on March 16th. This year's winners included:

1st Place: CrystalE (Xuqian Zheng, Jonathan Colon, Andrew Ritosa, Swetha Ravi)
2nd Place: Greenlite Technologies (Ian Ferre, Evan Harris, Samuel Crisanti, Quentin Baker)
3rd Place: EnPower (Shariq Ali, Nayyir Qutubuddin, David Buckmaster)

All 6 teams submitted entries to the Clean Energy Trust competition (April 12th) and the Allegheny Region Clean Tech Competition (March 16th).

Congratulations to all teams for an outstanding performance! We look forward to watching each of these businesses continue to grow.