ITHACA, N.Y. -- An idea that may lead to more-accurate mammogram readings -- and fewer breast cancer deaths -- took first place, and an award of $10,000, in a Cornell University contest for the best business idea.

Now in its second year, the annual Business Idea Competition is sponsored by the Big Red Venture Fund at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. The contest is open to any team with a business idea and at least one member with a Cornell affiliation -- students, alumni, faculty or staff. The winners were announced at a special awards ceremony on campus Friday, April 26.

The idea behind this year's first-prize-winning idea is a unique approach to screening mammograms. The winners proposed using mathematical formulas to analyze mammography data that will help the radiologist and provide more-accurate readings. The management team includes Cornell alumnus Vishal Mehta, who holds recent M.Eng. and MBA degrees from Cornell and who is currently doing advanced research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.

"One out of every eight women in the U.S. may develop breast cancer during her lifetime," said Mehta. "Early detection is a woman's best weapon against breast cancer; 97 percent of those diagnosed and treated early will survive more than five years. Unfortunately mammogram screenings miss 10 to 20 percent of detectable breast cancers." The intellectual property that Mehta and his team members hope to market under the trade name of Contata will act in concert with radiologists to double-check initial mammogram readings.

While the prize money comes with no strings attached, Mehta's team plans to use it to build their business plan beyond the incubation stage so that they can attract additional capital to make and market their product. In addition to the prize money, the team will get advice from successful entrepreneurs, most of them Cornell alumni, whose gifts support the Big Red Fund. "By working with them, we hope to help them develop the idea into a business we'll want to invest in," said O'Keeffe. The Big Red Venture Fund, which encourages entrepreneurship and invests in business startups, is the only investment fund at a U.S. university that is 100 percent student managed.

"A lot of people have strong entrepreneurial concepts," said Brian Culley, MBA '02, a Big Red Fund student manager. "Through the competition, we try to provide them an opportunity to test out their ideas in a professional, yet fully cooperative, arena."

"The idea behind the prizes is to stimulate a flow of ideas about businesses in a university environment," said David BenDaniel, professor of entrepreneurship at the Johnson School, who is faculty adviser to the students.

Mehta and his partners won out of a pool of 138 entries (up from 85 last year). The winners were chosen by a panel of student managers of the Big Red Fund, plus two fund advisers who are Cornell alumni.

Earning the second-place prize of $2,500 was a team that included three Cornell faculty members -- two in engineering and one in human ecology -- a student and an alumnus who hope to start a business called Nanofabrica. They'll use non-traditional materials and processing technologies to produce and market devices with a range of applications, including large, high-resolution visual displays. Earning the third-place prize of $1,000 was a team of researchers who have created a specialized drug delivery system that they hope to market under the name Lifesonics. One of the team members will join Cornell's College of Engineering faculty next fall. For more information on the Business Ideas Competition, see: http://www.brv.cornell.edu .

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