Final presentations of the 4th Edition of the Bio-Innovation Teams This year's BioTeams 2011 took place in the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Lisbon, on July 13th. The 4th Edition of the Bio-Innovation Teams (BioTeams) gathered an audience of PhD students, principal investigators, industry representatives and Sponsors. Bioteams is a mandatory course of the advanced program in Bioengineering Systems of the MIT Portugal Program, with very particular characteristics. During a full semester the students are given real technologies, selected from Portuguese labs, and are asked to engage in a search to evaluate and exploit their market potential. BioTeams goals are, i) Educate PhD students on market research and technology based entrepreneurship; ii) Promote market-oriented projects in Bioengineering; iii) Create a Bio-teams culture in Portugal and iv) Promote the conversion of BioTechnologies developed in Portugal into Economic Value. The BioTeams project was offered for the first time in 2007/2008 and its main objective is to promote teamwork among PhD students. As Professor Miguel Prazeres said "what matters is what is before the business plan", e.g. the purpose is not to write a plan, but first and foremost is for students to ask questions. 
The 2010/2011 BioTeams class had seven teams working on projects that covered several fields ranging from novel biomedical devices and new diagnostic tools to commodity products with enhanced properties. An award ceremony was held at the end of the event in which different recognitions were awarded to the projects, namely: Best Integrative solutionawarded to the project- “CoatALL: making surfaces better!”; Most Attractive Market assigned to the project - “Fluoroguider: A ray of hope into our lives”; Greenest Idea presented to the project - “The Paper-e: the paper (r) evolution”; Biggest Social Benefit awarded to the project - “MethaFOG to water: make it cleaner, make it greener!”; Sharpest Pitchconsigned to the project - “TECHCells: Screening your ideas”; Strondst Business model awarded to the project - “MagSensis: The next generation of diagnostics”; Nicest Flyer allocated to the project - “CordEX: Expanding lives”. | 
