C-Crete Wins MIT $100K for Making Cleaner Concrete

Erin Kutz5/12/10Comments (3)Follow @erkutz

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You can’t win them all, but you can sure win a few. Ask C-Crete Technologies, the winner of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition this year. Team founder Rouzbeh Shahsavari, a MIT civil engineering PhD candidate, also won the Elevator Pitch Contest segment of the $100K in November for his 60-second pitch of his technology, which is a nanoengineered formula of concrete designed to reduce the carbon emissions that occur in traditional production of the building material. It’s also stronger and cheaper than the concrete already out there.

C-Crete was also a finalist in MIT’s Clean Energy Prize this week, but Stanford University team C3Nano won the $200,000 grand prize, for the transparent electrode technology it says will make photovoltaic solar panels less expensive and more efficient. That prize money was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and NSTAR.

Life sciences track finalist Aukera Therapeutics won the $10,000 audience choice award at tonight’s $100K awards ceremony, for the treatment it’s developing for the neurodegenerative disorder commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, by harnessing a naturally occurring protein that stimulates nerve growth. Wade described the finalist teams in greater detail in a piece earlier this week, so check out his story for a closer look at the other technologies that were in the running. I’m excited to see where C-Crete and Aukera are going, and am hopeful that at least a few other teams will turn into future startup profile subjects for this website.

Erin Kutz is an Associate Editor for Xconomy. You can reach her by e-mail at ekutz@xconomy.com or by phone at (617) 252-0700, or follow her on Twitter at @erkutz.