Thai Student Entrepreneurs Win Intel Global Award For Innovation And Demonstrate Great Business Potential

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Thai Student Entrepreneurs Win Intel Global Award for Innovation and Demonstrate Great Business Potential

Intel Foundation Bestows $100,000 for Entrepreneurial Research

aQuainnova, a team of Thai student entrepreneurs from Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration, have won the Emerging Impact Award at the 7th annual Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley, United States. The award has been presented for the team's portable diagnostic business tool, GenovexTM, which can provide early detection of viral diseases in shrimp - key to preventing massive losses on shrimp farms. The aQuainnova team are the first student representatives from Thailand to be awarded at the Intel Global Challenge, supported by Intel Foundation.

The Intel Global Challenge is a competition designed to motivate young entrepreneurs to develop innovative technologies that solve real world challenges, build viable business models and move technology out of university labs and into the market. Student entrepreneurs from across the world submit their business plans, which are then judged and the most innovative ideas are awarded funding. The Intel Foundation supports the awards with over $100,000 in cash prizes. The Emerging Impact Award, worth $5,000, was presented to aQuainnova from Thailand for their innovative idea and scalable business model.

Supervised by professor Nick Pisalyabutra, aQuainnova team consisted of fourMBA students from Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration School: The team leader Patraporn Saenawatanakul - 27, and Nichaboon Purnaveja - 29, Prapada Prapan - 28, and Donsiri Aromsook - 27

"At Intel Global Challenge 2011, we were able to make people realize how GenovexTM, our shrimp virus detection device, can minimize shrimp loss from severe shrimp viral outbreaks and thus enable more stability for local and international shrimp farmers. We're proud to be a part of this competition as well as to have a chance to promote the Thai shrimp industry to the global arena. aQuainnova will continue our R&D on the GenovexTM device as we plan to launch the product in Thai market in 2012," said team leader Patraporn Saenawatanakul.

"Intel has a strong commitment to fostering student innovation around the globe," said Accharas Ouysinprasert, Country Manager, Intel Microelectronics (Thailand) Ltd. "Through our education programs, we've seen first-hand how empowering entrepreneurs positively impacts individuals, communities and economies."

"The Intel Global Challenge competition helps students develop lifelong innovation skills to identify problems and develop solutions they will use throughout their careers. It has been a real pleasure to see the aQuainnova team win such a prestigious award on a global competition level. They are the first Thai team to have participated in the competition," said Accharas Ouysinprasert.

This year, the first place went to Forward, a team from China, receiving $50,000 award for creating Gaitu, a one-stop image processing platform that matches Chinese consumers with designers who add special effects, provide image-sharing services and turn edited photos into art or merchandise. Second place and $20,000 was awarded to Maxygen-mobile DNA of Russia for inventing a low-cost, portable DNA test solution that can be used at the point of care to quickly identify thousands of infectious diseases, genetic predispositions and hereditary conditions. The $10,000 third-place prize went to nanoDiagX of Egypt, which used gold nanoparticles to develop a virus test that can detect Hepatitis C in less than an hour, and at one-tenth the cost of current commercial tests.

In Thailand, Intel has supported a number of educational related programs in the past including the global ISEF competition which Thai students triumphed at the competition. In addition, Intel Teach is an on-going project that Intel launched in 2003 in partnership with the Ministry of Education. To-date 150,000 teachers in Thailand have been trained and a total of 10 million trained teachers around the globe.

Over the past decade alone, Intel has invested more than $1 billion and its employees have donated close to three million hours toward improving education in more than 60 countries. To get the latest Intel education news, visit www.intel.com/newsroom/education, join the Facebook group at http://intel.ly/intel-edu and follow Twitter updates at http://twitter.com/intel_education. To join Intel’s community of people sharing their stories with the hope of becoming a catalyst for action and a voice for change in global education, visit www.inspiredbyeducation.com.

-- The Nation 2011-12-23

[Thai at Heart]

So they won, but didn't come in the top 3?