3D Health Solutions has been announced the winner of the 2020 John Pappajohn Iowa Entrepreneurial Venture Competition and was awarded $40,000.
The competition is a collaborative project of the Iowa John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Centers located at Drake University, Iowa State University, North Iowa Area Community College, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa.
24 companies made it to the semifinal round of the competition, and then to 12 for the final presentation round. The twelve finalists presented their business plan concepts to a panel of judges virtually last month.
In total $100,000 was given out in prizes to the final twelve companies.
3D Health Solutions received (1st place, $40,000)
3D Health Solutions is commercializing 3-dimensional in vitro canine cell culture lines for therapeutic drug screening purposes in both veterinary and human health applications.
FBB Biomed (2nd place, $25,000)
FBB Biomed is harnessing the latest advancements in genetics, bioinformatics and RNA virology to develop novel approaches in combating chronic inflammatory diseases, with its first application targeting multiple sclerosis (MS) therapy.
Roboflow (3rd place, $15,000)
Roboflow organizes, prepares, and improves image and annotation training data for developers. Roboflow transforms raw images into a trained computer vision model in minutes.
A fourth place award and three honorable mentions were awarded this year. Receiving fourth place and a $6,000 award was OpenLoop, founded by Jon Lensing, M.D.. Two companies were awarded $4,000 honorable mention awards including Nigel Reuel, founder of Skroot Labs, and Jeri Frank, founder of Stratafolio. Remaining finalists each received $1,000.
“We were glad to have John Pappajohn join the awards celebration this year, even if we had to connect virtually. John’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurs in Iowa is admired and appreciated by everyone,” said David Hensley, director of the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at the University of Iowa.
Details about next year’s John Pappajohn Iowa Entrepreneurial Venture Competition will be announced in February 2021.
