Johns Hopkins University works not only to foster startups whose products have the potential to improve the well-being of people worldwide, but it also aims to produce savvy investors with technical skills, business acumen and sense of market dynamics.

Earlier this year, a team of Johns Hopkins graduate student investors-in-training won the Entrepreneurs’ Choice award at the 2015 mid-Atlantic regional final of the Global Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), at Georgetown University, during which judges evaluate the competencies of teams of student venture capitalists.

Ali Afshar, a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was a member of the winning team. A founder of the Technology Entrepreneurship Club, Afshar has served as the technical advisor for several technology-related events on campus.

Business_School_Wall_Photo[2]“There is a growing understanding that in order to be a successful investor you must understand the technical strengths of the products that you are evaluating,” says Afshar, who plans to pursue a career in investing. “That’s where an engineering background is extremely helpful.”

Each year graduate students at 70 business schools worldwide participate in Global VCIC competitions. Throughout the competitions, students act as venture capitalists, evaluating real start-ups and interacting with entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists judge the teams on their ability to evaluate the startups, according to VCIC’s website.

At this year’s Global VCIC mid-Atlantic regional final, hosted by Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, the Johns Hopkins team of Afshar, Christopher Bailey, Sean Grant, Tim Xu and Kimi Yang ranked third in the meeting and negotiations category in addition to winning the Entrepreneurs’ Choice award. The team was the first Johns Hopkins VCIC team to win the entrepreneurs’ award.

A week before the regional final, Johns Hopkins hosted an internal VCIC competition to determine a winner to represent the university at the regional competition. The winning team of Afshar, Bailey, Grant, Xu and Yang competed against 13 other self-formed, multidisciplinary teams of Johns Hopkins graduate student venture capitalists.

This internal competition was organized by The Johns Hopkins University’s Innovation Factory, a student-led organization promoting entrepreneurship and innovation, and was judged by nine venture capitalists from across the country. The teams each evaluated four startups affiliated with Johns Hopkins—Quantified Care (specializing in medical technology), Proscia (bioinformatics), Urban Pastoral Collective (hydroponics) and Full Society (payment applications).

The Johns Hopkins team had only one week to gear up for the Global VCIC mid-Atlantic regional final after winning The Johns Hopkins University’s internal VCIC competition, but they pulled it off.

“The fact that our team won the Entrepreneurs’ Choice award shows what a multidisciplinary Johns Hopkins University team can accomplish in short order,” says Jim Liew, assistant professor of entrepreneurial finance at the Carey Business School and one of the participating judges. “I was extremely impressed by their enthusiasm, professionalism and intensity.”

The Johns Hopkins University Team

Sean Grant is a trusted advisor to numerous enterprises and startup ventures worldwide. He is currently a second year MBA student with a concentration in finance. Following graduation from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in 2015, Sean is joining Citi’s Healthcare Investment Banking team in San Francisco.

Ali Afshar is currently a PhD Candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a Master’s in Applied Mathematics and Statistics as a joint program. He is also the president and founder of Technology Entrepreneurship club and has served as technical advisor and mentor for several technology-related events. Ali was named as one of the “50 Leaders” in the Mid-Atlantic region, competitively selected from eleven top universities and institutions at the 2015 Leaders of Tomorrow Summit (LoTS ’15) held in March, in parallel with the Maryland Regional Biotech Forum, which was hosted by AstraZeneca and its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune.

Christopher Bailey is a fourth year medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Before entering medical school Chris completed his BA in psychology at New York University. He went on to work at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the departments of psychiatry and neuroscience where he assisted with several neuroimaging projects aimed at elucidating the underlying causes of mood and anxiety disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

Tim Xu is a second year medical student at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He recently completed an MPhil in Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, where he made his first foray into entrepreneurship by founding the cancer diagnostics company Radial Genomics.

Kimi Yang is a Master of Finance Candidate at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Kimi is passionate about mathematics and modeling, and is interested in the area of risk management, hedge funds, investment banking and quantitative finance.