A painless and temporary tattoo, a teacher management and effectiveness measurement system and a wind energy technology company are among the six finalists for this year’s Olin Cup Competition.

The Olin Cup Competition is a cross-campus entrepreneurship competition that began in 1988 and has been providing seed investment for teams that are affiliated with Washington University, either as students, alumni, faculty or staff. The competition is organized by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

This year, four of the six teams are composed of current students while the other two are made up of alumni.

The Olin Cup awards $75,000 annually, and awards are typically split $50,000 for the first-place team, $20,000 for the second-place team and $5,000 for the top student team, regardless of rank.

II Luscri, student services coordinator at the Skandalaris Center, says that the cross-campus aspect of the competition allows medical students, law students and business students to come together to form a cohesive business plan.

“Teams that are formed that are interdisciplinary are really fun to see,” Luscri said.

The competition has grown from 38 entries in 2008 and 45 entries in 2009 to 49 entries this year, an all-time high.

“It’s good to see the number of entries up. But what’s more important is the quality of entries has gone up as well,” Luscri said. “Because the entries are better, it’s harder to decide.”

Human Canvas, the group behind creating a semi-permanent tattoo that would fade after a period of time, is among the six finalists.

The team consists of doctoral students, professional MBAs, an MBA and an undergraduate engineer. Lucy Li, a doctoral neuroscience student in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences of the Washington University School of Medicine, says that she was inspired by a process she came across in her work: Dye can be injected through the mouth to the brain, where it can spread.

Li thought that this idea could be applied to the concept of tattoos.

Li says that the diverse backgrounds of her team members have allowed each teammate to bring his or her own strength to the project.

“I’m really appreciative of the big team because they all have their special insights into this venture. For the MBA students, they [know] how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to do financials, how to do business models,” Li said.

But she said that she was also surprised by her teammates’ wide breadth of knowledge.

“My other teammates, besides knowledge in their fields, know a lot about business,” Li said. “We have to learn so fast and have picked up so many things in this competition.”

Luscri says that the quality of the entries reflects the seriousness of the intentions of the entrants. Many past winners have gone on to start their own companies or are in the process of starting their own companies.

QuadConnect won the $5,000 student prize in last year’s competition and will be launching next semester. QuadConnect is a platform that offers an event filtering and searching system for campus communities.

Morgan DeBaun, QuadConnect’s co-founder and chief operating officer, says that the experience of writing a business plan and of pitching the business before an audience of CEOs and business members is invaluable.

“The competition really allowed our company to get guidance and seek feedback on our idea and concept,” DeBaun said.

DeBaun says that the cash prize was helpful in alleviating funding pressure since many start-ups are often funded out of the founders’ own pockets.

“$5,000 gives a lot of flexibility in being able to hire lawyers and with outsourcing the technical or design work we needed,” DeBaun said.

Teams are now preparing their business plans, which are due Jan. 4, 2011, and their final presentations are Jan. 20. Winners will be announced Feb. 3.