Two UNB Teams took the top prizes this year in the undergraduate track of the annual CIBC Business Plan Competition, held November 27-28. Bob Keleher and Simon Peam, UNB Bachelor of Business Administration students won the $5,000 first prize for their business plan for Power Washing Solutions, a company that pressure washes homes  with vinyl siding. The pair got the idea when they worked for College Pro Painters going door to door to generate work and noticed so many homes had vinyl siding. They may not have needed paint, but they needed washing. Hence the plan for Power Washing Solutions was born.

The runner-up prize of $2,500 went to a fourth year UNB engineering student, Kumaran Thillainadarajah, who is working on project that brings together nanotechnology and bio engineering to produce a product called “Smart Skin” that will be used to create prosthetic limbs that enable the bearer to regain the sense of touch. “The idea,” Kumaran told the Telegraph Journal, “is to make a skin for prosthetic limbs that has pressure sensors so we can give people back their sense of touch...The focus has been on how realistic the skin looks. But skin is our interface to the reset of the world: it’s our sense of touch and it’s what makes us human.” Kumaran is working on his research project at the applied nanotechnology lab under the guidance of Felipe Chibante, the Richard J. Currie chair in nanotechnology in UNB’s faculty of engineering.

The CIBC Business Plan Competition is organized through the Faculty’s International Business and Entrepreneurship Centre. Though this is the competition’s sixth and final year, Jeff Gray, district branch manager for CIBC New Brunswick and one of the judges, said a proposal was being considered to keep the competition going. This year 14 teams from across Atlantic Canada competed for prizes. Universities represented in the competition were Dalhousie, Mount Allison, Memorial, Saint Mary’s and UNB. The winners were as follows:

Graduate Track

1st Prize                $5,000   Conductive Paper

2nd Prize               $2,500   CE Spacer

3rd Prize                $1,000   Growlife

Undergraduate Track

1st Prize             $5,000   Power Washing

2nd Prize               $2,500   Smart Skin

3rd Prize                $1,000   iGotFunk.com

The major sponsor of the completion was CIBC, who’s Forging our Futures donation helps pay for most of the administrative costs associated with coordinating the competition as well as the first and second prizes in each track. Other key sponsors were

• UNB’s Dr. J. Herbert Smith Centre for providing each of the 3rd place Graduate and Undergraduate prizes

• ADI for providing the prize for the Best Financials in the Graduate Track
• CBDC for the Best Financials in the Undergraduate Track
• Lifeofsports.com for the best elevator pitch prize
• and UNB’s MBA Society for the best Vodcast prize

Several prizes and gift certificates donated by local businesses were given out throughout the competition; these donors were

• Aliant
• CIBC                                                      
• Covey Basics
• Bejewel
• East Side Board Supply
• Isaac’s Way
• Regent Mall
• Robert Simmonds
• Rogers
• Spa Club
• Sabian
• Capital Airways
• Sodexho