RUSTON - A team of five Louisiana Tech University students will compete Monday in the Global Venture Challenge 2008 semifinals.

The business plan competition is designed to foster entrepreneurship by bringing students and the industrial, governmental and investment communitiess together in the development of innovative ideas. This year's focus is energy.

The five students competing are Josh Brown, of West Monroe; Josh Raley, of Winnsboro; Steven Bearden, of Ruston; Joseph Cannon, of Coushatta; and Fernando Puno, of Katy, Texas. Raley is studying for his master's in engineering and technology, the other four are working on their doctorates in the College of Engineering and Science.

"We placed second in a similar competition last year," said Jon Pratt, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology. "These kinds of competitions are invention to product; (teams) come up with a good product that can be made from a technology and that can solve a problem and prove there is a market for it."

The Louisiana Tech team is using one of Brown's technologies in the competition: converting methane gas in landfills into usable fuels such as gasoline or diesel. Raley, Brown and four students who have since graduated won the 2007 Top Dawg Business Plan Competition at Louisiana Tech using the same technology.

The team will compete Wednesday through Friday at Oak Ridge National Laboratory against 16 other teams.

"We were mostly selected by our understanding of how research gets commercialized," Raley said. "We will present (Wednesday) and, based on our first round of presentations, our written documentation and a 15-minute Q-and-A session, they will select the final teams. We will have to do well and convince (the judges) this is a worthwhile technology and worth turning into a business product."

Raley added that previous experience in invention-to-product competitions and the Association of Business, Engineering and Science Entrepreneurs helped them advance this far in the contest.

"This is a good competition, and we'll meet some good employer contacts and industry people there. We wouldn't be able to compete if it weren't for ABESE, the joint group of engineers and business people. They organized the business plan competition that helped us prepare for this one."

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http://www.globalventurechallenge.com/