Membrion, Inc. (formally Ionic Windows), a start-up company that originated in Prof. Lilo Pozzo’s lab at the University of Washington Chemical Engineering, will compete with some of the world's top universities for more than $1 million in prizes at the 17th annual Rice Business Plan Competition at Rice University, April 6-8, 2017.

As part of the competition, the 2017 People’s Choice Competition is underway. Team members, fellow students, alumni, family and friends can vote for Membrion via a Facebook survey. People can participate by going to https://poll.fbapp.io/2017rbpc. The winner will be announced, Saturday, April 8 at the awards banquet. More than 16,000 votes were cast in 2016.

Membrion, headed by ChemE alumnus Dr. Greg Newbloom, makes high performance membranes that can lower the cost and improve the performance of flow batteries. Flow batteries are identified as the ideal choice for grid-scale energy storage, but they remain expensive because of a single component: the ion exchange membrane. The team saw this as an opportunity to develop high-performance, low-cost membranes, entering into the flow battery market. 

The winner will take home a grand prize valued at more than $450,000, including seed funding and the opportunity to ring the closing bell at NASDAQ Marketsite. Judges select the winner based on the company that represents the best investment opportunity. The teams for this year's competition were chosen from nearly 350 entrants, and more than 163 former competitors have gone on to successfully launch their ventures and are still in business today and another 20 have successfully sold their ventures. Past competitors have raised in excess of $2 billion in funding and created more than 2,000 new jobs. For more information on the 2017 Rice Business Plan Competition and past competitors’ success stories, visit www.rbpc.rice.edu.