Michael Callahan Wins National Entrepreneurship Honors

Michael Callahan, the 24-year-old UIUC entrepreneur, and founder of Ambient Corporation was voted "Best Emerging Venture Investment Opportunity" taking home the first place at the 4th Annual Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (S.E.E.D.) competition. The contest was held March 2nd and 3rd at the Hotel Andalucia in downtown Santa Barbara, California. Student venture teams were pre-screened in December from business plans submitted from 55 college and universities all over the country, and nine ventures, including Callahan's Ambient Corporation, were invited to present their businesses at SEED. Callahan continues to demonstrate his entrepreneurial spirit, as his innovative company delivers hope to disabled people. His technology called "the Audeo" gives people the ability to communicate for themselves through a device that turns neurological thoughts into spoken words and can also drive a "mind-controlled" wheelchair. In fact, a recent breakthrough has allowed Callahan's team to produce fluent speech with 70% accuracy from patients' neurological signals. It is his hope that in the future, this innovation will restore communication for millions of disabled people.

Other competition achievements have helped pave the way for Callahan's thriving company growth. In February, the UIUC graduate student in Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering, was awarded the first $30,000 Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize, designed to reward outstanding student invention. Callahan and his team also received the prestigious Social Venture Division of the V. Dale Cozad Business Plan Competition Award for the best new venture plan in the 2006 event sponsored by the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership and The Technology Entrepreneur Center at UIUC.