Rotman Team Wins International Entrepreneurship Competition.

Toronto – A team from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management has won the inaugural event of the MBA World Trophy held in Dublin over the past weekend.  The event brought entrepreneurs from seventeen different universities around the world to compete against each other with their start-up businesses in front of venture capitalists and other business leaders.
 
Jason Mitakidis, MBA’14, Kate Rootman, MBA’14, and Elizabeth Chak, MBA’15, who are students in the Rotman School’s Morning and Evening MBA programs, won the top prize for best business for Cyclica Inc, a life sciences technology company leveraging big data to develop new medicines, more cheaply. Their start-up was selected to represent the Rotman School at the event by the Rotman Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Association. The Association’s outgoing president, Chris Siemieniuch, MBA’13, also attended the event.

“We are very excited to have been chosen as the winners of the MBA World Trophy by such a distinguished judging panel from the global VC and entrepreneurship community! We are also thankful to the Rotman School of Management and the University of Toronto for their generous support in developing Cyclica as a business. This support has included mentorship and angel investments from faculty members and Dean Roger Martin,” says Jason Mitakidis , who is Founder & CEO of Cyclica Inc.
 
Further information on the MBA World Trophy is online at mbaworldtrophy.com.
 
Cyclica is a big data technology company that is developing indexed, multi-scale biological databases and software for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The company's core technology is an innovative and proprietary data integration and drug testing platform – The Ligand Explorer™ Computing Environment – that is addressing the rising cost of R&D in drug discovery and low regulatory approval rates of pre-market pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical products. For more information, visit, cyclicarx.com.
 
The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more information:

Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
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E-mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
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