University of Arkansas Student Team to Close NASDAQ Market Friday

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – On June 11, the University of Arkansas graduate team, BiologicsMD, will ring the NASDAQ closing bell at 4 p.m. EST in New York City. The ceremony will air live on www.nasdaq.com.

On May 9, BiologicsMD was crowned the Moot Corp Global Champions, at the 27th annual Global Moot Corp Competition, hosted by the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

As global champions, BiologicsMD also earned $25,000 in cash and more than $110,000 in in-kind awards for their business plan for a patent-pending, pre-clinical, osteoporosis medication trademarked as OsteoFlor.

The team includes Paul Mlakar, Michael Thomas and Misty Stevens, all students in the Sam M. Walton College of Business managerial Master of Business Administration; and Robyn Goforth, a research professor in biological sciences who is earning a Certificate in Entrepreneurship. Carol Reeves, Walton College associate professor of management, is the team’s faculty adviser.

The NASDAQ is an American stock exchange based in New York City. NASDAQ, which was originally an acronym for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, is the second-largest stock exchange in the United States, in terms of the value of its securities, trailing only the New York Stock Exchange. Many of the world's largest technology companies appear on the NASDAQ, including Amazon, Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft and Sun.

BiologicsMD also won the Rice University business plan competition in April. The University of Arkansas is the third university to have two teams in the finals at Moot Corp. The other two were the University of Louisville, which had two teams last year, and Carnegie-Mellon University, which had two teams in 2004.

This year, Moot Corp featured 40 teams from 12 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, Norway and Thailand. To be eligible to enter the Moot Corp Competition, the oldest new-venture competition in the world, teams must have been the top winners at specified competitions around the world.

Another University of Arkansas team, Silicon Solar Solutions LLC, was second runner up in the Moot Corp competition. This team developed a plan to address the cost and efficiency challenges of manufacturing solar energy by replacing the expensive top layer of solar cells with a thinner, large-grain polysilicon technology that allows the panels to be produced at lower manufacturing temperatures.

The Silicon Solar team includes Stephen Ritterbush, an M.B.A. student in the Walton College; Brent Bertelsen, a Walton College master of accountancy student; and Seth Shumate and Douglas Hutchings, doctoral students in microelectronics-photonics program in the College of Engineering. Reeves, who holds the Cecil and Gwendolyn Cupp Applied Professorship in Entrepreneurship, is also this team’s faculty adviser. The team qualified for the Moot Corp competition after the win at the University of Manitoba.