In the 1960s, there weren’t many role models a little black girl interested in science could relate to. As a child, Evelynn Hammonds, who would become the first black female Dean of Harvard College, looked up to the Lt. Uhura character from Star Trek. Today’s generation, said the dean, will have slightly more realistic women to imitate, thanks in no small part to organizations like the Science Club for Girls.

SCFG, an after-school mentoring program for K-12 girls that emphasizes science education, holds a special place in Xconomy’s heart—indeed, we chose the organization as one of the beneficiaries of this our second annual Battle of the Tech Bands in January. So I was excited to attend SCFG’s Catalyst Awards ceremony at the Broad Institute in Cambridge last night, which coincided with the organization’s 15-year anniversary. Formed in Cambridge at the King Open School, with an initial class of 16, the program has ballooned into a network of science clubs in Cambridge, Boston, and Newton, with over 400 girls presently enrolled.

Hammonds and Larisa Schelkin received Catalyst Awards for their work promoting the involvement of underrepresented groups in science. Hammonds was cited for her accomplishments at Harvard and at MIT, where she founded the Center for Study of Diversity in Science, Technology and Medicine. Schelkin is the CEO and co-founder of the Diversity Outreach in Math and Engineering (DOME) Foundation, which promotes math and science education for minority groups.

H. Kim Bottomly, immunobiologist and president of Wellesley College, delivered the opening remarks. She reflected on how fortunate she was to have an advisor in her college years that accepted female PhD students. “Back then, talent and passion weren’t enough” to succeed in science, she said. “You also needed to be lucky. Well, women should not have to depend on luck”.

In the reception before the awards, fourth-graders Jackie Park and Carmen De Benedictis were demonstrating one of the engineering experiments they performed at the club— six cylindrical pillars made from tightly wound index cards, each having a circumference a little bigger than a quarter. Park explained how the distribution of pressure points allowed the pillars to support a heavy book, and even a person standing on top of that book. Park said she likes science because “it answers all our questions” and “is really cool” to boot.

The speakers made clear that the mission of Science Club for Girls is larger than simply preparing women for careers in the lab. Bottomly reminded the audience that science was served not only by the academics, but by “lawyers, lobbyists, and writers”. Hammonds echoed the sentiment, telling the girls in attendance that even if they did not become scientists themselves, they should strive always to be “champions of science.”

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Running the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is a lot like running a startup. We spend most of our time raising money. We are underpaid (in fact, we aren’t paid). Day or night, weekday or weekend, the job never really stops. There is very little formal authority (meaning our team has no real reason to listen to us except that they share our passion for promoting entrepreneurship at MIT and beyond). We hope for huge success stories in the form of $100M+ acquisitions and IPOs. And, it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives.

When the MIT $10K launched in 1989-1990, the competition received 54 submissions and awarded $10,000 in prize money. Behind these accomplishments was a founding team of MIT students and faculty with extraordinary vision. The vision: to motivate student entrepreneurs across the MIT campus-engineers, research scientists, MBAs, and more-to share ideas that would wed MIT-borne technologies with promising market opportunities.

Today, the MIT $100K stands out as the premier student-run business plan competition in the world, offering more prize money, networking opportunities, and mentorship to participants than any other student contest. To date, the $100K has produced several huge success stories. Two of the most well known are Akamai, which went public in 1999, and Harmonix, the technology behind Guitar Hero and Rockband, which was acquired by MTV in 2006. In total, 120+ companies have launched out of the $100K and generated market value in excess of $12.5 billion…yes, billion!

In 2009, we attracted 260 team submissions-the most ever across our 6 industry tracks-and distributed nearly $300,000 in prize money. And while we require each team to have an MIT student, almost 30% of our 900 individual entrants were business professionals and another 15% were students from leading universities across the United States. So how have we been able to maintain this momentum?

Every year, the organizing team of the $100K changes, leaving tremendous opportunities for leadership ingenuity but also the challenge of building upon the momentum of previous years. When we became Co-Managing Directors 6 months ago, we knew our first challenge would be to close enough sponsorship money to fund our prizes, events, and operating expenses. Despite it being a recession year, we were able to retain nearly all of our sponsors from 2008 and actually bring a number of new sponsors onboard, including companies that generously provide in-kind services to our finalist teams. For example, this summer, the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC)—the leading provider of office space and services to entrepreneurs-will provide our six $100K finalist teams not only with flexible, cost-effective physical space and services, but also a unique opportunity to meet an impressive mix of entrepreneurs working out of the CIC.

In some sense, the $100K has achieved a tipping point. Through word of mouth and an enormous network of distinguished alumni and supporters, from VCs to law firms to industry leading companies, the $100K now has the brand value to attract a fiercer level of competition each year. And make no mistake, the key driver of the $100K’s future success will be the caliber of teams we attract. This year’s six finalists proved that they are more prepared than ever before to hit the market with game-changing innovations. Watching these incredible teams present at the Finale, we felt like this year’s mission had been accomplished. Tomorrow, we get to work on next year-raising prize money, recruiting teams, and enjoying the best unpaid job we’ve ever had.

(If you would like to learn more about the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, and even get ready for next year, please visit www.mit100K.org).

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Well, here I am again, as promised. Yes, winning the $100K is exactly as you imagine it: limo rides, overflowing bottles of champagne, invitations to smoke-filled back rooms, and high-stakes poker games. Very high-stakes poker games. And you know, you really can’t fit that big check into an ATM. But I’ll talk about that at the end of the post. Instead, I want to focus on what I promised I’d focus on: a description of the big day, and a wrap-up of the awards ceremony.

As it turns out, the winner of the $100K doesn’t get selected until the day of the ceremony. There’s a dress rehearsal at noon, and in the afternoon, each of the finalist teams was given 15 minutes to present its 12-slide pitch deck to the grand prize judges, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A.

We entered the judging room—which was much more full than I expected. It was one of those long, 12-seater conference tables. Except there were what seemed like 20 people there. “Okay, Waseem,” I thought to myself, “time to be Chairman of the Board. But not in the Frank Sinatra sense. This is not an appropriate time for your rendition of New York, New York.” So we presented, and I’ll admit, I did feel just a little bit like we were top of the list, king of the hill, A-number one. (Still Sinatra here, not Minnelli. Unless you’re reading this, Liza, in which case your version is clearly the definitive one.)

Fast forward to the awards ceremony. Rodney Brooks (CSAIL professor and co-founder of iRobot and founder of Heartland Robotics) gave a terrific keynote. I’m not going to be able to do it justice, so just pull up the webcast and watch it (it starts about a fifth of the way in). If you like robots or Australian accents, you’re going to like it. It was a mini-life-story, peppered with sound pieces of advice, funny anecdotes, and just an all-around authenticity that I really enjoyed.

I was nervous about following up an act like that, because next up were the three-minute pitches from each of the finalist teams. We (Ksplice) went first, followed by YouTea, MeterLive, Cambridge Eyenovations, Levant Power, and Global Cycle Solutions, in that order. The audience then voted (by text message, American Idol-style) for the winner of the Audience Choice Award (prize: $10,000). Global Cycle Solutions snatched it up, and they deserve it. I’m certainly not going to complain about funding for a business that is essentially working to improve the lives of villagers in Africa.

My other personal favorites are Levant Power and Cambridge Eyenovations. They’re tackling very real problems with appealing solutions. If they succeed in delivering on their promises, how can they not have a serious impact?

After this, there’s not really a lot for me to say. Dr. Brooks called out our name as the winning team, we raced up on stage, and got the giant check. It’s actually a little bit smaller than I had imagined. I guess I was hoping for a check so huge that it would take two of us to carry, presented by Uncle Pennybags. Anyway, of course we dashed out of there and hit the clubs.

Except not really. I’m kind of embarrassed to tell you what we did do, just because it’s so anticlimactic. We mingled with the audience for a while, and then went home. I made cheeseburgers, and then we responded to some e-mails. The giant check is proudly sitting on our mantle, though it’s also sitting next to some old light bulbs, a roll of tape, our router, and some Linux stickers. (Seriously, we’re still keeping the burn rate super-low around here.)

Anyway, the $100K has been a blast—highly recommended. And it doesn’t organize itself, so I want to give a quick shout-out to the people (students, mind you!) who worked incredibly hard to put it all together. Finally, remember: Ksplice, when taken in combination with a high-fiber, low-fat diet, and regular exercise, can dramatically reduce your risk of heart disease. Sorry, wrong pitch. Anyway, keep your eyes open for us, because we’re going to be out there, fighting to eliminate those pesky reboots.

And hey, maybe Bob will even let me post here again sometime. Thanks for reading.

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It’s not every day that someone posts a guest column for Xconomy in the morning and wins $100,000 in the evening. But that’s exactly what happened with Ksplice, which is working on technology that lets computer users install software updates while applications are running, avoiding a system restart and the lost productivity that can come with it. The Cambridge, MA-based company, which consists of four recent MIT graduates and one current student at the Institute, has just won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

This morning, Waseem Daher, Ksplice’s COO and occasional “Chef Executive Officer” (he likes to cook cheeseburgers), posted a guest column in our Forum about the company and its long road to the finals. We had asked him to write the piece figuring it would offer a unique insight into the competition. We didn’t know we were also getting a post from the winning team.

You can read Daher’s post here. He has promised an update, but for now, we’d just like to congratulation him and the Ksplice team.

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We were checking in at the front desk for one of the $100K events, and the security guard asked me, “So, the 100K—the ‘K’ is for kilometers? It’s some sort of race?”

No, it’s not a race, it’s MIT’s entrepreneurship competition. We’re the Web/IT track winner, and tonight we’ll be competing for the $100K grand prize in Kresge Auditorium at MIT. Rodney Brooks (co-founder and former CTO of iRobot and the founder and CTO of Heartland Robotics) will be giving a keynote, each of the track winners will give a three-minute pitch, and one lucky team will take home a giant check. It’s also the 20th anniversary of the competition, and they’ve promised to put on quite a show.

Getting this far has required some endurance, though, so maybe the guard wasn’t so wrong after all. Our company, Ksplice, has developed technology that can install software updates while applications are running, without a system restart. You know those annoying, “You must reboot to install new updates” pop-ups? We make those obsolete.

World domination scheme? We plan to license this technology directly to vendors. Your SAN, routers, virtualization layer, OS, database, ERP, and mail server are all critical to your business—and all need rebootless updates. It’s basically impossible to find a piece of audio equipment without a Dolby logo on it. Similarly, any self-respecting application or device will be Ksplice-enabled.

So who is Ksplice? Jeff Arnold, Tim Abbott, Anders Kaseorg, Nelson Elhage, and Waseem Daher (me). We’re all MIT engineers (four recent graduates and one, Nelson, still in school), and we’ve been working together on challenging software projects for quite some time now.

In fact, the initial spark that led to Ksplice came in 2006, from a problem Jeff encountered while maintaining servers at MIT. A new security update came out in the middle of the week, over the summer. Jeff was working a summer job at the time, so he decided to put it off until the middle of the night on the weekend, since the systems’ many users would not appreciate an outage during the day. Of course, this decision proved painful—the machine was compromised mid-week, and everything had to be wiped and reinstalled.

Naturally, Jeff cursed the powers that be, shook his fist at the cloudy sky, and vowed revenge as the rain came pouring down on him. But he was vindicated: his award-winning master’s thesis … Next Page »

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The five track winners for the MIT 100K business plan competition were announced on Friday. These teams will compete in the finals on Wednesday, along with the winner of its sister contest, the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition (that team will be announced next Tuesday). All five track winners, and three of the five Energy Prize finalists (all those with MIT ties), gathered Friday night at Bob Metcalfe’s house in the Back Bay for a small celebration of their making it so far.

Metcalfe, now a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners, has hosted a party for the 100K finalists for many years. As is also the tradition, finalists select one team member to stand on the stairs leading to the second floor, while guests gather in the foyer below them to hear their very short (60-second or so) pitches. I’ve been to several of these gatherings, and others that are similar—and always enjoy them. This year, though, the teams seemed to have risen to another level in terms of both their poise and the sophistication of their pitches. For the first time, I came away pretty sure that not only would a few of these plans turns into real businesses, but that one or two might even be significant businesses. (So, hey—remember when Xconomy spotted you.)

Below are my capsule descriptions of the eight finalists (out of some 260 that entered the two competitions), along with a few impressions. Congratulations to all:

—-Ksplice (100K Web/IT track winner): This teams wins the prize for most rarin’ to go, for sure. When someone asked who wanted to start things off, Waseem Daher’s hand shot up as fast as an Olympic badminton player reacting to a smash. What he was so eager to talk about is technology that enables the installation of operating system and application updates on running systems, without the need for rebooting the computer or restarting the application. The initial target market is enterprise systems, where such updates mean downtime and lost productivity, according to Daher. Although Ksplice only works on Linux systems right now, he envisions every operating system and application employing the technology for software updates. Impression: strikes a universal chord in computer users—big potential royalty market.

—YouTea! (100K Product and Services track winner): Urinary tract infections strike 11 percent of women each year, according to team spokesperson Alex Herzlinger. YouTea! has a new way to deliver a preventative medicine through “a low-calorie, great tasting” drink, I guess called YouTea!. The team was also a finalist in the Harvard Business Plan competition, where it said it planned to the deliver YouTea! first in powdered form, then in a bottle. Impression: Big market need, but might consider a new name (I thought they were saying UT, as in the University of Texas, hook ‘em). And, even if it really does taste great, there’s always the question of how many people will take preventative measures in the first place (see Cambridge Eyenovations below).

—Sun Point (Energy prize finalist, winner of renewables category): Eric Cohen described a passive solar tracker, with no motors, gears, or drive train (at least I think I got that right). It goes … Next Page »

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