C-Crete Technologies wins $100K

New concrete means lower carbon footprint

Jun. 4, 2010

3099 100k — C-Crete, winners of the 100K MIT Entrepreneurship Competition, receives a check to help start their business in making nano-engineered concrete. The 100K competition accepts entries in five different “tracks”: energy, development, life sciences, mobile, products and services and web/IT. The winners were announced in Kresge on May 12. C-Crete defeated five other finalist teams and claims that their product will severely reduce carbon dioxide emissions, saving billions of dollars on sequestering carbon while providing a stronger alternative to current forms of concrete.
Sean Tang—The Tech

The winner of this year’s annual MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition was C-Crete Technologies, a team of MIT graduate students and collaborators who nano-engineered a new formula of concrete that would both improve material stability and decrease carbon dioxide emissions and cost.

Along with winning the one hundred thousand dollar cash grand prize at the final awards ceremony held May 12 in Kresge Auditorium, C-Crete Technology also won the Elevator Pitch Contest segment of the $100K competition last November and was a finalist in MIT’s clean energy prize, as the $100K Energy finalist.

“We were happy when we heard the good news as our passion and efforts including plan writing, conducting field stud[ies], consulting with many industry experts, etc, finally paid off,” said team leader Rouzbeh Shahsavari, a graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“Our next step would be to build a prototype, which is scalable and can be used by the cement and concrete industry on a large scale,” he said.

Shahsavari also said that the team of students worked closely with the help of their advisors, Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm and Prof. Rolland J. Pellenq, for which their guidance throughout the project they are grateful.

Aukera Therapeutics, the life sciences track finalist of the competition, won the $10,000 voter’s choice award at the awards ceremony.

Couchange.org won this year’s new TWITCH Contests, gaining the most “retweets” online via Twitter and winning a $5,000 cash prize.

As part of an unexpected event, the MIT $100K TWITCH Contest Winners also received a $19,000 donation from keynote speaker of the night’s ceremonies, Reebok Founder Paul Fireman.

Adding to the night’s festivities, $100K organizers also presented the crowd-pleasing YouTube video entitled “A Day in the Life, Year 2030 via MIT $100K,” which can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcePtVm2SMA.

To learn more on the finalists and competition details, see http://www.mit100k.org/.