2009 Merage Business Plan Competition

2009 NVC

Grand Prize

Team	Prize	Project
ZeroWatt Technologies Payam Heydari (Associate Professor of EECS & co-founder), Fred Tzeng (PhD student & co-founder), Vipul Jain (PhD student), Howard Ko (MBA student), Thomas Pearson (Merage MBA alumnus)	$15,000 + Best Concept Paper	Low-power data converter ICs to extend battery life in portable electronics

Post-competition outcomes

• ZeroWatt Technologies No public outcome Co-founder Fred Tzeng has moved on to other companies. The SBIR-stage company has no active web presence as a chip-design startup. A separate 'Zerowatt Energy' (India-based industrial-energy AI) is unrelated.
• Happy Sleep No public outcome Researched 2026-05-12. Undergraduate team (Praveen De Silva and Kevin Hung, mechanical / materials science engineering) won the 2009 Undergraduate Division with a Bluetooth wristband alarm concept, $3,500 prize. No fo...