a texas a&m university former students startup spark biomedical was awarded $50 000 as the winner of the 2019 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) daniel powell is ceo of the medical device company which is developing noninvasive neurostimulation solutions for opioid withdrawal and addiction im very humbled and grateful said powell ceo of spark and a 1996 graduate of texas a&ms mays business school this award means a lot because texas a&m is my alma mater being back here is fantastic and this win is a testament to the work were doing and our dedication to making a difference with this product also in the finals was teysha technologies which was commercialized out of texas a&m college of science laboratories teysha has developed new solutions for the worldwide plastics pollution problem by developing a natural polycarbonate platform that will degrade after the end of their useful lifetime teyshas ceo and inventor of the technology dr karen l wooley has joint appointments in the departments of chemistry chemical engineering and materials science and engineering dr ashlee jahnke is head of research and development for the company as well as an assistant research scientist at texas a&m the competition featured a new award this year the engineering vice chancellors innovation prize two $15 000 (in-kind support) prizes were awarded to sun co tracking and ictero medical sun co tracking is developing shape memory alloy actuators for solar panels and ictero medical is developing a catheter-based therapy for treating and preventing gallstone disease this unique prize is intended to help the awardees access the world-class engineering capabilities at texas a&m to obtain technical assistance toward solving their most challenging technical problems in product design manufacturing or testing said dr balakrishna haridas tees director for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship these collaborations between the prize winners and texas a&m engineering will generate technical data to support on small business innovation research/grant proposal funding or private capital investments to the company at more than $500 000 in cash and in-kind services the prize pool for this years competition was the largest yet since 2015 the tnvc has awarded more than $15 million in prizes to texas-based startups the 2019 tnvc was made possible by tees; mcferrin center for entrepreneurship; texas a&m university school of innovation; 80/20 foundation; southwest national pediatric device consortium; exxonmobil; texas engineering extension service-product development center; ark pharmacies inc; amerra; brazos valley economic development corporation; biotex; paragon innovations inc; schwegman lundberg and woessner; thomas horstemeyer; hollinden | marketers + strategists; tees clean energy incubator; ramey & schwaller law firm; texas a&m college of science; tmc innovation; aggie angel network; goose society of texas; texas a&m college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences; chevron technology ventures; fannin innovation studio; winstead pc; texas a&m health science center; texas a&m transportation institute; fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies; texas a&m division of research; and tumey llp full list of winners: (visit here for more information on these companies) 1st – $50 000 – spark biomedical 2nd – $35 000 – surfellent 3rd – $25 000 – intelligent implants 4th – $15 000 – teysha technologies 5th – $10 000 – venostent 6th – $5 000 – gaitiq elevator pitch competition:1st - $5 000 – polyvascular2nd - $4 000 – saber3rd - $3 000 – novothelium4th - $2 000 – immosis5th - $1 000 – em device lab additional prizes: brazos valley economic development corporation launch prize – saber southwest national pediatric devices consortium prizes – spark biomedical and em device lab ark pharmacies inc regional prize – gaitiq paragon engineering services prize – toggle health biotex investment prize – polyvascular amerra visualization services prize – polyvascular thomas | horstemeyer ip legal services prize – ictero medical and teysha technologies tmc investment prize – gaitiq tmc accelerator admission prize – ictero medicalramey & schwaller ip legal services prize – venostentaggie angel network investment prize – spark biomedicalhollinden marketing and strategists services prize – gaitiq schwegman lundberg and woessner ip legal services prize – gaitiqtees clean energy incubator prize – carbonwire technologygoose society investment prize – polyvascularengineering vice chancellor innovation prize – sun co tracking and ictero medicalteex product development center prize – surfellent