Thursday, 31 July, 2008

Nanostove Wins Third Prize

PhD students from CeNS successful in Munich Business Plan Competition

 

The Nanostove team at the prize ceremony of the MBPW. Photo: MBPW.

Following the example of other successful spin-off companies of CeNS, the doctoral students Joachim Stehr and Federico Bürsgens won a prize at the renowned Munich Business Plan Competition (MBPW). Ranked 3rd in the category "Marathon", they were yesterday awarded with a sum of  5'000 EUR for their business plan idea of their potential spin-off company called "Nanostove".

The young researchers from the Chair of Photonics and Optoelectronics at the LMU want to develop and commercialize an ultrafast technique for a simpler and more exact DNA analysis. Their innovative procedure, which was developed in the group of Prof. Feldmann, is based on the use of gold nanoparticles attached to the DNA molecules to be investigated. Those nanoparticles are then rapidly heated up by a laser pulse, leading to the melting of the attached DNA molecules in less than fractions of a second. As Joachim Stehr showed in his PhD thesis, one can determine from the recorded melting curves whether the DNA contains a mutation.

Recently, the team, which was already awarded with funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, was extended by Lars Ullerich from the LMU Center for Entrepreneurship.