North Carolina Startup: Nanoly Wins Duke Startup $50,000 Spring Challenge

(photo: Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle)

A women owned startup called Nanoly has just won the Duke startup $50,000 spring challenge. Duke University’s $50,000 spring startup competition ran from February until this week. The startups in the challenge had to fit into one of three tracks; the functional track, special interest track or pilot track. Within the functional track were 5 categories; Clean Energy, Healthcare and Life Sciences, IT, Internet and Media, Social Enterprises and other. The grand prize winner came from the Healthcare and Life Sciences category.

Ting Ting Zhou (Duke University), Nanxi Liu (Berkeley) and Crystal Lee (Stanford) founded Nanoly with one common goal, to use a nano-sized solution to solve a macro sized problem. While you may not think about it the problem that these three women are hoping to solve is actually a big problem and one as Americans we may take for granted.

Zhou explains in her pitch video that while developed countries have access to vaccines and diseases like small pox are pretty much eradicated, emerging countries don’t have access to vaccines. One of the main reasons emerging countries don’t have access to vaccines can be boiled down to refrigeration and electricity.

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