A total of $14,500 in cash and prizes was awarded during the TOP DAWG New Venture Championship at Louisiana Tech University. Bulldog Entrepreneurs hosts the annual event which encourages students to build innovative, creative products and services that create value in the marketplace.  During the competition, each team is mentored by business experts from commercial and academic fields. Teams of student entrepreneurs competed in the TOP DAWG “Idea Pitch” this past October with the top 10 teams invited to compete in the TOP DAWG New Venture Championship.  Awards were given to the top three finishers as well as for entrepreneurial spirit and best presentation. “03 Solutions” (Alan Katzenmoyer – biology major and Casey Roper – recent finance graduate) won first place and $3,000 with an herbicide treatment for giant salvinia that leaves behind no trace or legacy chemicals. This year, the Innovation Enterprise Fund awarded $1,000, which was added to the $3,000 first place award. Second place and $1,500 was awarded to “BioTech” (Louis Reis – biomedical and chemical engineering double major, and Katelyn Burnaman – economics major) for a medical device that offers a continuous glucose monitor that is cheaper and requires only one finger prick per week for calibration. “HelpFlix” (Sreenivasa Rae Sanakan – biomedical engineering major and Arjun Sada – computer science graduate student) won third place and $500 for a service company that turns printed assembly instructions into easy-to-understand videos. In addition to the cash awards, the Louisiana Tech Enterprise Center sponsors six months of incubator space to the winning teams, which is valued at $4,500. Jones Walker recognized the team with the most entrepreneurial spirit through sponsorship of the $2,000 Jones Walker Entrepreneurial Spirit Award.  This award went to “PowerFetch” (Aaron Chenevert – mechanical engineering major, Brandon Lawrence – mechanical engineering major, Jason Reich – mechanical engineering major, and Brandon Cloud – biomedical engineering major), a venture that developed an automated fetch machine – a product that improves and extends a dog’s life through regular exercise. Jones Walker has grown over the past several decades in size and scope to become one of the largest law firms in the Gulf South. With more than 300 attorneys, Jones Walker serves local, regional, national, and international business interests in a wide range of markets and industries through offices in Alabama, Arizona, the District of Columbia, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. For more information, visit www.joneswalker.com. The O3 Solutions team also won the $2,000 Ruston-Lincoln Parish Business Awards Best Presentation Award.  Proceeds generated by the Ruston-Lincoln Parish Business Awards Breakfast, a collaborate event of the Ruston-Lincoln Chamber of Commerce and the Louisiana Tech College of Business, fund the award. Supporting sponsors for the TOP DAWG include the Louisiana Tech College of Business, Louisiana Tech College of Engineering and Science, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology (CEnIT), the Louisiana Tech Enterprise Center, and the Technology Business Development Center (TBDC). Seven, multi-disciplinary teams progressed to the New Venture Championship final round.  Teams are scored on the quality of their new venture investment deck and presentation as well as the overall viability of their business concept. For more information on the event or the winning teams, contact Debbie Inman in the College of Business at (318) 257-3430 or debinman@latech.edu. Written by Debbie Inman – debinman@latech.edu