A team of Georgia Tech and Emory graduate students placed second in a challenge round of the Idea to Product Global Competition for their plan to commercialize technology enabling more accurate cancer diagnosis.

In the competition, held November 2-3 at the University of Texas-Austin, students presented their plans for moving early-stage technologies from the lab to the marketplace.

Students on the Georgia Tech/Emory team (called DiagNano) are participants in the Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER^®) program. A collaboration between Georgia Tech and Emory Law School, the program brings together PhD, MBA, and law students in the classroom and research lab to advance early-stage research into real business opportunities.

The DiagNano team includes Georgia Tech MBA student Kristina Crockett; Brad Kairdolf, a doctoral student in the joint biomedical engineering program of Georgia Tech and Emory; Jarrett Silver, a joint law/MBA student at Emory; and Laura Huffman, another Emory law student.

Students who win acceptance into the highly competitive TI:GER^® program are assembled into four-member teams, including one MBA and two law students who focus on the commercialization of a Georgia Tech PhD student's research over a two-year period.

The DiagNano team is developing a plan to market a cancer diagnostic kit. This platform technology is based on a novel "non-stick" surface coating for nanoparticles that prevents the sticking problem encountered when using them in biological samples. The initial application is using "non-stick" fluorescent quantum dots for developing personalized disease fingerprints from cancer patients' biopsy samples.

DiagNano placed in the Cockrell School of Engineering Challenge Round of the competition.