Entrepreneurial teams of students and faculty from the UNC School of Public Health took first and second prize in the 2008 Carolina Challenge entrepreneurial business-plan competition sponsored by the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School on April 19.

Competing against 15 other teams, the two teams won $22,500 worth of prize money to be used in developing their entrepreneurial ventures.

“Carolina Liquid Assets,” a team of students from the UNC School of Public Health and the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, won first prize — the $15,000 John Stedman Social Entrepreneurship Award — for their business plan to manufacture and distribute ceramic water purifiers in Cambodia. They hope eventually to scale the operation throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.

Applied Microproducts, Inc., won second prize ($7,500) in the competition’s commercial category. The company, developed by Environmental Sciences and Engineering Professor Dr. Frederic Pfaender, in conjunction with others, makes environmentally-friendly wood-treatment products for industry utility poles to replace the hazardous materials currently used.

“All the materials we use in our product are food-grade materials,” Pfaender says. “In fact, you could eat them. We are replacing hazardous materials with materials that are on the Food and Drug Administration’s list of materials generally regarded as safe.”

The Carolina Liquid Assets entrepreneurship project was developed through the Carolina Global Water Partnership — a research collaboration between UNC’s Schools of Public Health and Business designed to evaluate options for commercializing different household water treatment technologies in developing countries. The partnership is one of seven Gillings Innovation Laboratories (GILs) at the UNC School of Public Health — interdisciplinary research groups funded through a gift to the School from Dennis and Joan Gillings.

“There was definite support and leverage provided through the Gillings Innovation Lab program,” says Tom Outlaw, a business administration master’s student at Kenan-Flagler, member of the Carolina Global Water Partnership and team captain of Carolina Liquid Assets.

“Carolina Liquid Assets was the nom de plume to compete in the Carolina Challenge and leverage the work that had already been done through the Carolina Global Water Partnership and specifically, to develop a business plan that is part of the deliverable that the Global Water Partnership is designed to produce.”

The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 2 million children die each year from diarrhea and related illnesses caused by unsafe drinking water and inadequate hygiene and sanitation. UNC School of Public Health research has demonstrated that the use of ceramic water filters (and also concrete biosand filters) reduces the incidence of diarrhea by up to 40 percent.

“We know that biosand and ceramic filters and other household water treatment technologies make an enormous difference in the health of people who don’t have access to clean drinking water,” says Dr. Mark Sobsey, Kenan Distinguished University Professor of environmental sciences and engineering, who has researched the efficacy of these devices in removing waterborne pathogens and reducing diarrheal disease. “We have the technologies, but now it’s a matter of finding ways to get these technologies into communities and households, and have people adopt and use them effectively and sustainably.”

Kate Rademacher, UNC health policy and administration master’s student and member of Team Carolina Liquid Assets, says the business plan for the ceramic filter project was further developed this spring through a public health entrepreneurship graduate certificate program launched this semester by UNC School of Public Health faculty in collaboration with the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative at Kenan-Flagler. The new program offers graduate students, post-docs and fulltime faculty and staff opportunities to explore how entrepreneurship is changing their fields and how to conceive, plan and execute new commercial and nonprofit ventures.

Other Carolina Liquid Assets team members include Ben Aiken, an environmental sciences and engineering master’s student; Lindsey Witmer, an environmental sciences and engineering bachelor’s student; and Sara Abdoulayi, a business administration master’s student at Kenan-Flagler.

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School of Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.