Water filter project wins Kenan-Flagler Carolina Challenge (Fall, 2008)

September 26, 2008

Carolina Liquid Assets team members gather to celebrate their Carolina Challenge victory.

“Carolina liquid assets,” part of Carolina Global Water Partnership, run by a team of students from both the public health and business schools, took first prize in the 2008 Carolina Challenge entrepreneurial business-plan competition sponsored by the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

The team won the $15,000 John Stedman Social Entrepreneurship Award for their business plan to manufacture and distribute ceramic water purifiers in Cambodia. They hope eventually to scale the operation throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.

Public health students and faculty took second prize, too. Applied Microproducts, Inc., won $7,500 in the competition’s commercial category. The company, developed by Environmental Sciences and Engineering Professor Dr. Frederic Pfaender, in conjunction with others, makes environmentallyfriendly wood-treatment products for industry utility poles to replace the hazardous materials currently used.

For more information, visit www.sph.unc.edu/news/entrepreneurs.html.

Carolina Public Health is a publication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. To subscribe to Carolina Public Health or to view the entire Fall 2008 issue in PDF, visit www.sph.unc.edu/cph.