Collegiate teams from northern Nevada took four of the top six spots in the Donald W. Reynolds Governor's Cup Competition for best business plans last week.
A team from the University of Nevada, Reno, took second place in the undergraduate category with a plan for development of an alternative communications device for people with communications disorders.
A team from Sierra Nevada College took third place in the undergraduate category with a plan for restaurants to use discarded vegetable oil to generate electricity for their own use.
In the graduate category, a UNR team's proposal to develop an online platform for news and discussion about green culture took second place. Another UNR team took third in the graduate category with a proposal to use atmospheric water-generation technology to produce drinking water from the air.
A team from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, took first place in the undergraduate competition with a plan to maximize the extraction of products for recycling and reuse from the waste stream.
Another UNLV team won the graduate competition with a proposal to reduce the paperwork associated with mobile businesses that have both field and office staffs.
The top teams in each category won $20,000 cash prizes. The winning undergraduate and graduate teams now will compete on May 15 against the winners of similar competitions in Arkansas and Oklahoma for a prize pool of $90,000.
The Lt. Governor's Award, which provided $5,000 prizes for ideas that employ clean or renewable energy, went to the Sierra Nevada College undergraduate team that proposed restaurant use of discarded vegetable oil. In the graduate category, the award went to a UNR team that proposed use of coffee grounds to produce biodiesel fuel.
The awards program is overseen by Nevada's Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. A record 48 teams entered this year's competition.
In other recognition, Dr. Gary Valiere of UNR was among faculty advisors recognized for ongoing commitment to entrepreneurship and higher education.
