PHILADELPHIA – The winners of the Wharton Business Plan Competition rang the NASDAQ Stock Market closing bell in Times Square in New York City today.

Students from the University of Pennsylvania and The Johns Hopkins University formed Cortical Concepts and won the $20,000 Michelson Grand Prize in the 2010 competition for developing a device for use in spinal surgery that increases the strength of fixation in osteoporotic bone. The inventors have applied for a provisional patent and are seeking to move the technology toward clinical use.

The Cortical Concepts team leader is Stephanie Huang, a student in the Penn School of Medicine.  The team members, from Johns Hopkins, are Jason Hsu, Christopher Komanski, Evan Luxon and Nicolas Martinez.  The team advisor is Jay Khanna of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Emily Cieri, managing director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs, also participated in the closing-bell ceremony.

The WBPC is among the leading university-run business plan competitions.

It was launched in 1998 by the Wharton Entrepreneurship Club and is now part of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs, which co-manages the event with a student committee.

The WBPC is open to all students at Penn and annually draws more than 150 student teams comprising nearly 400 participants from schools across Penn.

Penn’s Wharton School and Johns Hopkins are NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation partners.