Project

The development of petroleum-related industries around the world has lead to large amounts of environmental contamination. Alberta, Canada is faced with a specific challenge: the development of petroleum-related industries has led to large volumes of contaminated water, requiring extensive monitoring and remediation before the eventual release of this water back into the environment. Currently, methods of monitoring are either too slow, labour intensive, or inaccurately report on the toxicity of the sample. With increasing government regulation in the petroleum industry, the time for new technology is now. The 2013 Calgary Entrepreneurial team is advancing an electrochemical biosensor for petroleum-related toxins through our early venture: FREDsense. Using a unique sensing platform, our technology is faster, more quantitative, and capable of operating in environments where existing biosensors cannot. With collaborations in both industry and government, we are building better biosensors for the needs of the present, as well as the future.

Our business strategy has been grouped into several categories (listed on the left):

Executive Summary - A quick three minute overview of our business plan and our company description. Start here to learn about everything we accomplished this year!

Technology - Use the technology link to learn more about the science behind our Field Ready Electrical Detector (FRED) technology and how it was developed in 2012 by the Calgary Collegiate iGEM team!

Intellectual Property - Since our group is developing a company out of a former iGEM project from 2012, it was critical that we handle our intellectual property careful. Here we look at intellectual property from the perspective of the iGEM competition, protecting our technology through patents and trade secrets, and having the legal freedom to operate by ensuring we had the support of our mentors and supporters from 2012.

Operations - Managing the day-to-day activities of our company is vital for our success. We must identify strong industry players to collaborate with, and develop our strengths to bring this product to market. Additionally we engaged key manufacturing players to learn about the technical and business challenges relating to manufacturing.

Marketing - Here we evaluate the potential of our market, the oil and gas industry. In addition we outline the size of the general toxin sensing market, and deliver a plan for how we can commercalize our technology and deliver it to the market in a time efficient manner.

Management - A company is never complete without it's team! Here we demonstrate some of the important connections we have made, and the individuals who have become part of the FREDsense team.

Milestones - To ensure that we achieve success in a timely it is vital that we strategically plan our actions. Here we demonstrate how the future of the company will be directed.

Financial Data - How profitable can we be? This summarizes our finds from our manufacturing, market evaluation, and competitive analysis research to show that our ideas are economically worth pursuing.

Risk Analysis - A commercial venture always carries risks! Click here to learn more about some of our risks and how we hope to mitigate them in the future.