YongoPal Wins UW Biz Competition

YongoPal, a Web startup that enables English conversations between people in Korea and the U.S., won the grand prize of $25,000 at tonight’s University of Washington Business Plan Competition. Empowering Engineering Technologies, a company that seeks to help disabled people to walk again, won the $10,000 second place award, while Emergent Detection and Febris each won $5,000 prizes. I wrote about the last two companies last month, during an earlier round of the competition, when I served as a judge.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.