The Johns Hopkins Business and Consulting Club hosted the fourth annual Johns Hopkins Biotech Case Competition this past weekend at Homewood Campus, with participating teams from Johns Hopkins and five other universities.
Image caption: A team from Johns Hopkins won the $2,000 first prize; the team members were Haili Tan, Ik Joo Kim, Nindhana Paranthama, and Yuki Uchino.
Image credit: Jan Trmal
Teams were challenged to develop strategic recommendations for a large pharmaceutical company interested in expanding into new product categories. The competition was designed to give participants an opportunity to develop problem-solving, teamwork, and presentation skills over the course of the week-long competition, which culminated on Friday with final presentations and questions from 15 judges representing seven top consulting firms: Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, Clarkston Consulting, Ernst & Young, UMT Consulting Group, ZS Associates, and L.E.K. Consulting.
A team from Johns Hopkins won the $2,000 first prize; the team members were Haili Tan, Ik Joo Kim, Nindhana Paranthama, and Yuki Uchino, who have backgrounds in business, engineering, medicine, and biology, respectively.
The $1,000 second prize went to a team from Cornell (team members were Nicholas Horton, Xiao Hu, Weixuan Zhang, Poornima Gadamsetty), and a Johns Hopkins team made up of Michael Tran, Eric Bielby, and Bibek Karki placed third.
"We were really happy with how successful the event was," the members of the JHBCC case competition committee wrote in a statement emailed to the Hub. "It was great seeing how excited the top teams were to be selected, but even better to see all the participants benefit from feedback and networking with the judges and each other."
This marks the first year that the competition was open to other universities on the East Coast, and it attracted more than 30 applications, including teams from Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Princeton, and UPenn. Twenty teams were selected to participate.
The final presentations were followed by an inspiring keynote address by Bernard Ferrari, dean of the Carey Business School, and a networking reception for participants, judges, and guests.
The event was organized by the JHBCC case competition committee (Ying-Ying Wang, Iraj Hosseini, Po-Yuan (Robert) Hsiao and Yuanming Suo) with assistance from other JHBCC board members and Jan Trmal as photographer. It was sponsored by the above mentioned consulting firms, PrepLounge, as well as the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Graduate Representative Organization, the Graduate Student Association, and the School of Public Health Student Assembly.
JHBCC is a student-led group whose mission is to introduce graduate students, medical students, staff, physicians, scientists, and post-doctoral fellows of Johns Hopkins University to the world of business and consulting. Through case competitions and other events, JHBCC helps members develop business knowledge and skills, as well as network with consultants from elite firms.
Posted in Science+Technology, Student Life
