June 3 , 2009
Jackson, MS - The Mississippi Technology Alliance hosted its annual Mississippi Business Plan Competition and Innovators Gala on June 2. Entrepreneurs, students, faculty, business leaders, and elected officials from around the state attended the event held at the Jackson Marriott. The Business Plan Competition was split into three divisions including student, university, and an open division. Hattiesburg entrepreneurs and technology developed at Southern Miss won several awards.
In the student division, Benny Anderson, Jr. placed third with a business plan to develop a new approach to processing latent fingerprints. Anderson’s invention is a portable fuming capsule that is safe, easily transportable, and much more efficient than traditional fingerprint processing methods. Anderson received $2,000 from MTA, and also recently placed third in the “Invent Your Future!” competition hosted by Noetic Technologies in Hattiesburg where he received $4,000.
In the university division, Ablitech, Inc. placed third and also received $2,000. Ablitech, Inc. is developing radical innovations for healing the human body, based on technology developed at Southern Miss. Their technology includes bio-transformable, drug-eluting material for coronary stents, and other drug delivery methods. Ablitech is also a previous “Invent Your Future!” winner, placing first in the 2006 competition.
To add to the honors received in the business plan competition, Southern Diversified Products, LLC (parent company of Mythic Paint) received a Companies to Watch 2009 award for their success. SDP was awarded the title for not only making an outstanding impact on the economy of Mississippi, but also for the invention, production and marketing of Mythic Paint, a high performance, zero-VOC, zero-toxin paint that is being distributed nationwide. Mythic Paint, which was launched in November 2007, is currently the fastest growing paint company in the country, and is available in ten finishes and a designer palette of over 1,200 colors.
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