UTD’s annual Big Idea Competition announced the winners of its final round as pharmaceutical startup BioDelivera and backpack engineering company Vaucluse on April 16, and awarded over $50,000 in total to students and alumni pitching their startups, ideas and business ventures.
Hosted by the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the competition took place over a month and a half, during which qualifying applicants competed in a semifinal round where they pitched their projects in front of a judging panel. The winning semifinalists then pitched to judges again during a final round. Carol Marcus-Rehtmeyer, executive director of the institute, said this year’s participation was the biggest to date for the 17-year-old competition, with 125 total applications representing every single UTD school narrowed down to four student finalists and three alumni finalists over the course of spring semester. While the majority of student-track applicants hailed from JSOM, with ECS in a distant second place, the winning student project was a biotechnology startup aiming to improve chemotherapy.
The startup, BioDelivera, uses a novel drug delivery technique to direct chemotherapy drugs specifically to tumors and help the drugs penetrate deeply into cancerous tissue. The technique relies on virus-like particles — protein shells used to contain the medicine — that have been genetically engineered to bring the medicine to only cancer cells instead of to other quickly-replicating cells like hair and skin, which are affected by conventional chemotherapy methods that cause side effects like hair loss. These modified virus-like particles were created by Ikeda Trashi and Orikeda Trashi — sisters, fourth-year chemistry Ph.D. students and the founders of the startup — in response to a gap they saw in how chemotherapy is currently administered.
“So you inject [the drug] with a needle in the tumor itself, and sometimes it can be really problematic because tumors are really strong and and the efficiency of how much the drug goes into the tumor is really low and the patient feels a lot of pain, and [for] the doctor, it’s really hard for them to do that,” Orikeda said. “So it is really inefficient way to do it.”
Orikeda said that while their lab has modified virus-like particles before, Ikeda was the first in the lab to figure out how to make the modified particles contain cargo like medicine and demonstrate their consistent effectiveness in helping the drugs target only tumors. For the sisters, the efficacy of their new drug delivery system is only part of BioDelivera’s goal; another major focus is ensuring that cancer patients around the globe can benefit from the treatment.
“Here in the U.S. specifically, we do have advanced cancer therapy like [monoclonal antibodies], but even here they cost too much,” Ikeda said. “Most people will only get chemotherapy and radiation … some countries might even not get that. We come from Albania and so we were really interested to make advanced cancer therapy accessible to everyone. So to do this, we had to create something really cheap … We manufactured a particle in bacteria cells, so this makes it very cheap, so everyone can have access to advanced cancer therapy.”
“Most people will only get chemotherapy and radiation … some countries might even not get that. We come from Albania and so we were really interested to make advanced cancer therapy accessible to everyone.” — Ikeda Trashi
By November 2024, the sisters said they felt confident enough in their research to launch the startup, and with encouragement from their lab, applied to the Big Idea Competition the following spring to give their first-ever pitch. Despite being the only woman-led and biotech team in the final round otherwise comprised of men and AI-based startups, according to Ikeda, the sisters won first place with a $12,000 prize.
The other startup that took home a $12,000 first-place prize, competing in the alumni track, was technology company Vaucluse. Launched by 2004 UTD alum Brice Sokolowski three years ago, the company makes ventilation frames for backpacks to prevent discomfort during activities like hiking trips.
“I wore a backpack going to school and it was uncomfortable because I went to UTD, I grew up in Dallas, you get hot and sweaty, you know,” Sokolowski said. “When I worked, I took public public transportation because I lived in big cities and it was uncomfortable, and then I got into backpacking and I thought [companies] would make some type of ventilation shift system that would work properly, but everything I found was just not really working for me, so using my engineering background, I sketched something and then from the sketch I found somebody that could help me create a computer design out of it, and I started doing 3D printing.”
With a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and a master’s in project management from Southern Methodist University, Sokolowsi said he never thought he’d become an entrepreneur, but welcomes the change after years in engineering jobs and a decade of nonprofit fundraising. According to him, Vaucluse is projected to make a million dollars this year, which prompted him to join the competition, flying out from Phoenix for the semifinals and finals.
“Obviously there’s money involved, but I thought [about] reconnecting with my roots and I really liked going to UTD and there’s an entrepreneurship school, there’s a business school, maybe there are resources and people that can help me, and I’m glad that I [participated],” Sokolowski said. “It was an opportunity to reaffirm my plan, but at the same time to reconnect with the university and meet a lot of people that were excited for me.”
“It was an opportunity to reaffirm my plan, but at the same time to reconnect with the university and meet a lot of people that were excited for me.” — Brice Sokolowski
Sokolowski, Ikeda and Orikeda all said the competition provided them with mentorship to refine their pitches before presenting. Marcus-Rehtmeyer said she personally worked with 68 teams, some of which reached the finals, but that the point of the competition wasn’t about placing or getting an award.
“The goal is to [help] the individuals to make those connections and help them to the next step,” Marcus-Rehtmeyer said. “We have a lot of the [venture capitalists] that were actually judges who have connected with students, we had several that were just in the audience that met up and connected with different members because they had a connection with the type of VC that they do.”
The $50,000 in total prize money was distributed among all placing finalists in the student and alumni tracks, as well as winners in specialty categories such as best presentation and audience choice. According to Marcus-Rehtmeyer, the competition’s future includes finding new ways to support smaller or more nascent projects, potentially by introducing another competition as an “early stage.”
Vaucluse is aiming to generate $10 million in revenue by 2026, according to Sokolowski, and he plans to license the company’s patented technology out to major backpacking companies, as well as work with different UT System schools to sell products featuring their logos. Orikeda said she and Ikeda plan to complete their Ph.D. degrees by summer and expand into targeting different types of cancer, with the goal of raising enough funds by August this year to sustain their continued research. Both Sokolowski and Orikeda said anyone interested in the competition should participate in future years; for projects based on students’ own research like BioDelivera, Orikeda said finding a supportive lab is crucial.
“Whenever you are a graduate student, it’s really important that you have support from your [principal investigator], like your supervisor,” Orikeda said. “A lot of professors who will not let you go independently, but for [us], we were really lucky that our PI was open to us exploring this unknown [field] and trying because it might have been a failure … If you are not feeling right in the lab, try to find the lab where you feel yourself, where your PI will let you.”