U Michigan, DTE Team Up To Launch $100,000 Clean Energy Prize

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 09/17/08
A new competition is challenging teams from Michigan colleges and universities to develop the best business plans for bringing new clean energy technologies to market. Organized by DTE Energy and the University of Michigan, the Clean Energy Prize challenge will award $100,000 in prize money during spring 2009 in an effort to help draw emerging technologies out of university labs in Michigan and into the commercial space.

The U Michigan Ross School of Business' Zell & Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, College of Engineering's Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute, along with student organizations MPowered Entrepreneurship and the Ross Energy Club are organizing the competition. The competition is open to students and faculty from all Michigan colleges and universities. Each team must have at least one U Michigan student or faculty member.

"The marriage of business and engineering talents that this competition will create will be of great benefit to clean tech commercialization," said Thomas Kinnear, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute.

The competition will require that teams focus on business ideas that support renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grid technologies, environmental control technologies, plug-in electric vehicles, or energy storage.

The business plan entries will be judged by independent panels that will include members of the venture capital, business, industry, and academic communities.

Assuming this initial competition is successful, it is envisioned that the competition will be held in subsequent years with an annual prize pool of $200,000.

DTE Energy is a Detroit-based energy company. The Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies provides the curriculum, program initiatives, community involvement, and alumni outreach activities for Ross School of Business at U Michigan. The Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute develops, coordinates and promotes multidisciplinary energy research and education at U Michigan.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • glowing blue AI sphere connected by fine light lines, positioned next to a red-orange shield with a checkmark

    Cloud Security Alliance Offers Playbook for Red Teaming Agentic AI Systems

    The Cloud Security Alliance has introduced a guide for red teaming Agentic AI systems, targeting the security and testing challenges posed by increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence.

  • server racks, a human head with a microchip, data pipes, cloud storage, and analytical symbols

    OpenAI, Oracle Expand AI Infrastructure Partnership

    OpenAI and Oracle have announced they will develop an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity, expanding their artificial intelligence infrastructure partnership as part of the Stargate Project, a joint venture among OpenAI, Oracle, and Japan's SoftBank Group that aims to deploy 10 gigawatts of computing capacity over four years.

  • laptop displaying a red padlock icon sits on a wooden desk with a digital network interface background

    Reports Highlight Domain Controllers as Prime Ransomware Targets

    A recent report from Microsoft reinforces warnings about the critical role Active Directory (AD) domain controllers play in large-scale ransomware attacks, aligning with U.S. government advisories on the persistent threat of AD compromise.

  • Abstract AI circuit board pattern

    New Nonprofit to Work Toward Safer, Truthful AI

    Turing Award-winning AI researcher Yoshua Bengio has launched LawZero, a new nonprofit aimed at developing AI systems that prioritize safety and truthfulness over autonomy.