By SCBIZ Staff

The 2007 New Ideas for a New Carolina statewide business idea contest announced Monday night the winners of this year’s competition.

The Grand Prize of $3,000 seed money, a scholarship to FastTrac entrepreneurial training programs and access to a Dream Team of Mentors to help cultivate the idea into a business went to Wilson Floyd from Chester County. His idea is an environmentally- friendly fluorochemical reactant, to bring the benefits of reactive fluorochemical performance without the environmental problems of current technology. Winners were announced at the ThinkTEC Innovation Summit in Charleston.

There were also winners in 10 specific business categories, a College Student category and a People’s Choice category, which was voted in by the citizens of South Carolina. 

Judging was “blind,” meaning only the idea was viewed, no name or location of the entrant. Each will receive $1,500 to cultivate his or her idea and a scholarship to FastTrac. The runners-up in each category will receive $500.

Winners and runners-up in each category were as follows:
Advanced Materials & Engineering
• Runner-Up: Lew Wayburn, Lexington County – Qool Breeze; With the great move of people to the outdoors, we will provide efficient “outdoor comfort” systems, an umbrella with integrated “special” fan with true cooling capability for refuge in heat of the day that doesn’t merely create a hot wind, but a cool breeze.

Advanced Security/Military, Defense, Homeland
• Winner: W. David Findley and Brian Bannister, Richland County – Electronic Vehicle Tag (E-Tag); An electronic license plate that give the issuing authority the capability to change the plate display status by a wireless signal, regardless of the vehicle location.

Automotive
• Winner: James Poch, Charleston County - Plug-in Hybrid Battery; Manufacture, sell, and install next generation battery kits that enable hybrid vehicles to be charged from a standard electrical outlet.
• Runner-up : Basil Garzia, Richland County - Vehicle "Go" Light; An indicator light on the front of a vehicle which helps pedestrians, construction workers, safety officers and other motorists in recognizing the forward motion of the vehicle.

Alternative Fuels
• Winner: Worth Ketchem, Charleston County – Micro Kinetic Energy Capture; Interconnected energy capture, storage, and release devices aggregated as a scalable and sustainable distributed generation solution
• Runner-up: Tom Davis, Richland County - Syngas Hydrogen Recovery; Hydrogen biomass recovery for energy production.

Biotechnology/Life Sciences/Medical Devices
• Winner : Sebastiano Gattoni-Celli, Charleston County – Lou Gehrig’s Vaccine; Immune-based treatment of Lou Gehrig’s disease for transgenic animal models and future human studies

Community Enhancement & Education
• Winner: Jonathan Brown, Charleston County – Sandlapper Clean Fuels Alliance; The Alliance will create public/ private partnerships to establish clean fuels infrastructure and demonstration projects in South Carolina’s eight coastal counties to overcome the immediate, real-world barriers to the adoption and public availability of alternative fuels.

Creative Industries
• Winner: Gary Davis, Charleston County – Cineventure South; An organization designed to promote the funding of a dramatic and documentary feature film/video production industry in South Carolina.
• Runner-up: Pat Jobe, Charleston County – South Carolina Interactive Innovation Variety Show; An interactive television show combing an 800 phone number and an interactive Web site with music and art from South Carolina to promote positive social change in the state.

Environmental Sustainability
• Winner: Wayne Loveless, Charleston County - Offshore Renewable Energy; Harnessing the energy of offshore currents and wind with recycled oil platforms fitted with a combination of undersea turbines and windmill power generators.
• Runner-up: Bobby Pilch, Charleston County – Hotelmilieu; The first LEED certified, franchiseable hotel that continuously embraces sustainable operational practices and technology, in order to conserve energy, reduce waste, and achieve bottom-line results for the long-term.

Information Technology/Software/Internet
• Winner : Josh Staples, Charleston County – Community Tours; Community Tours is a Web 2.0 website which allows members to create and share geo-tagged audio-tours via a Google Maps interface while using Google's AdSense to drive spatially appropriate advertising to generate revenue.
• Runner-up: Sherri Miller, Dorchester County – The Key; A hardware USB device that runs a customized full computer access control over your child’s computer.

Tourism
• Winner: Dr. Ron Fulbright, Spartanburg County - Data Spritz; A data spritz is a postage-stamp-sized data storage device affixed to or near a tourist attraction containing textual and graphical information about the attraction and wirelessly transmits the information to a hand-held reader when brought in close proximity.
• Runner-up: Dr. Ron Fulbright, Spartanburg County – Digital Guest Directory; The digital guest directory replaces the standard static printed guest directory in a hotel room with a sheet of ultra-low-power, thin-film, dynamic display technology called digital paper (or electronic ink) that displays up-to-the-minute information to the guest in a way that is indistinguishable from printed text and graphics.

College Student
• Winner: Randi Eaton, Dorchester County – Designed by Me Denim; A customizable denim jeans company where people can be measured, pick out colors, styles, and customizable options to create the perfect pair of jeans.

People’s Choice
• Winner: Wilson Davis, Laurens County - Aquatic Muscle; A body suit designed to teach children how to swim which allows a child to build up swimming muscles along with confidence to learn to swim at his/her own pace

The seventh-grade classroom at Andrew Jackson Middle School in Lancaster County made it a class project to vote in the Wildcard category, choosing their favorite ideas.  Their votes helped push Aquatic Muscle over the edge to win the People’s Choice award.

“Entries came in this year from 27 counties,” said Bill Mahoney, CEO, SCRA and acting president, SC Launch! “Once again we have proven that there are a plethora of innovative people in this state. Our expectations and objectives are that some of these great business ideas eventually will create new companies, new jobs, new energy and new knowledge economy wealth for South Carolina.”

The New Ideas Dream Team is made up of a coalition of representatives from SC Launch!, New Carolina – SC’s Council on Competitiveness, FastTracSC , ThinkTEC, InnoVenture, and other organizations around the state.