FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas teams took two of the top three places Wednesday in the graduate division at the 2015 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition.

Kordate Solutions Inc., a start-up pharmaceutical company that specializes in using a novel chemical to treat the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, finished second and won $15,000.

Baby Booster, which developed a prenatal protein formula for women, placed third and took home $10,000.

Baby Booster also took first place in the agriculture category and won $5,000.

Kordate Solutions advances to the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Awards May 27-28 in Las Vegas, where the team will compete against the top two graduate and undergraduate teams from Nevada and Oklahoma.

Conner Innovation, an undergraduate team that developed a tool to clean debris from clogged culverts and low water bridges, won the undergraduate innovation award and $5,000.

This year, 47 teams from 12 Arkansas colleges and universities submitted business plans in the competition for a share of the $152,000 prize pool. Prizes were awarded at a luncheon at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. 

Under the guidance of Carol Reeves, associate vice provost for entrepreneurship, the U of A’s competitive graduate student teams have won more than $2.3 million in cash at state, regional, national, and international business plan competitions since 2002.

Kordate Solutions and Baby Booster, M-Power and BioBridge — the four U of A teams that advanced to the Governor’s Cup graduate division finals — formed last fall in the New Venture Development graduate course taught by Reeves, holder of the Cecil and Gwendolyn Cupp Applied Professorship in Entrepreneurship in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Three students in the executive Master of Business Administration program in the Walton College formed Baby Booster: Jonathan Marshall, Kyle Oschman and Darren Quinn.

Kordate Solutions grew out of the research and intellectual property from the lab of Shannon Servoss, an associate professor of chemical engineering at the U of A.

The Kordate Solutions team includes:

• Vincent Audo, an executive M.B.A. student in Walton College
• Kenny Bierman, an M.B.A. student in Walton College
• Rob Ekwerekwu, an M.B.A. student in Walton College
• Michael O’Brien, a master of accountancy student in Walton College
• Joseph Post, an M.B.A. student in Walton College
• Phillip Turner, a doctoral student of chemical engineering in the College of Engineering

Conner Innovation’s members are Grant Connor, Jack Guo and Thomas Lynch – all freshmen pre-medical students – and Olivia Dyer, a freshman pre-nursing student.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.