Tepper School Start-Up to Ring Nasdaq Stock Market Opening Bell

  Winner of Global Moot Corp(R) Contest Developed Innovative Technology To

                   Extract and Preserve Adult Stem Cells



    PITTSBURGH, Aug. 13 /EMWNews/ -- A team of students from the Tepper

School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University will ring The NASDAQ Stock

Market Opening Bell at 9:30 a.m. ET on Friday, Aug. 15 in New York City.

The event is one of the coveted prizes from the team's win at this year's

Global Moot Corp(R) competition, the annual business school contest known

as the "Super Bowl of Business Plan Competitions."



    



    The students' winning venture -- a medical technology company called

NeuroBank -- beat out 37 other teams from leading business schools around

the globe for this year's top honor. NeuroBank has developed a breakthrough

proprietary technology to harvest, isolate, expand and store neurologic

stem cells from cerebrospinal fluid, a clear bodily fluid around and inside

the brain. The technology allows minimally invasive extraction, isolation,

expansion and cryopreservation of these stem cells, which could be used to

develop treatments for Alzheimer's disease, stroke or traumatic brain

injury, among others. In addition, the technology will allow patients to

store healthy neural stem cells to receive cutting-edge treatments for

diseases they might develop later in life.



    The NeuroBank team is comprised of MBA candidate Dr. Raymond Sekula and

Sasha Bakhru, a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon's College of

Engineering. The team's advisors are Arthur A. Boni, the John R. Thorne

Chair of Entrepreneurship; S. Thomas Emerson, the David T. and Lindsay J.

Morgenthaler Professor of Entrepreneurship; and Thomas J. Hajduk, associate

teaching professor of business management communication and

entrepreneurship. As Moot Corp(R) winners, they received a prize package

valued at $100,000, including $25,000 in cash, one year of strategic

business consulting and mentoring, prosecution of the first American patent

by Ropes & Gray and consulting from the University of Texas McCombs School

of Business entrepreneurship faculty.



    "NeuroBank is a perfect example of how today's technology and medical

industries can intersect with business for the betterment of society," Boni

said. "The success of this venture is the latest in a rich legacy of

entrepreneurial excellence at the Tepper School, and we are extremely proud

of their accomplishment."



    This year's Moot Corp(R) win marks the fifth time that top honors have

been awarded to a team from the Tepper School of Business, making it one of

the most frequent honorees in the 25-year history of the contest. In the

last five years alone, the Tepper School has achieved three first-place

finishes and one second-place finish. Long considered a leader in

entrepreneurial education, the Tepper School was one of the first business

schools to offer formal entrepreneurship courses and is home to the Donald

H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship, which brings together several of

Carnegie Mellon's other renowned schools, including the School of Computer

Science, the Carnegie Institute of Technology (engineering) and the Mellon

College of Science, to offer exceptional interdisciplinary entrepreneurial

education programs and resources to students.



    The opening bell is available from 9:20 to 9:35 a.m. on Galaxy 28 C/9,

downlink frequency 3880 horizontal, or Waterfront fiber 1623. An audio

transmission of the opening bell is also available on uplink IA6 C

band/transponder 24, downlink frequency 4180 horizontal. A live Webcast and

high-resolution photographs of the market opening will also be available at

http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/marketsite_events.stm.

    About the Tepper School of Business: Founded in 1949, the Tepper School

of Business at Carnegie Mellon (http://www.tepper.cmu.edu) is a pioneer in

the field of management science and analytical decision making. The

school's notable contributions to the intellectual community include six

Nobel laureates, a Nobel Prize record that is unsurpassed by any business

school worldwide. It is also among the schools with the highest rate of

academic citations in the fields of finance, operations research,

organizational behavior and production/operations. The academic offerings

of the Tepper School include undergraduate studies in business and

economics, graduate studies in business administration and financial

engineering, and doctoral studies.