On Tuesday night at the Ferst Center for the Arts the awards ceremony for the Georgia Tech Reseach & Innovation Conference (GTRIC) was held. The winner of the 2011 Innovation Competition was Craig Tashman of LiquidText. 

GTRIC brings together 400 Georiga Tech graduate students presenting their research to the Tech community. The event gives graduate students the opportunity to compete for monetary prizes for their research, in order to fund commericalization, continued research, or travel expenses for students to continue to make presentations across the country. This year the conference awarded a total of $85,000 in prizes, the largest being the Georgia Tech Edison Prize.

The Georgia Tech Edison Prize is a $15,000 award that goes to the winner of the event's Innovation Competition. The Georgia Tech Edison Prize was established in 2010 to foster the formation of startup companies from research conducted at the university. Graduate students work closely with Georgia Tech’s ATDC Venture Lab arm to tune their ideas and presentations prior to the event. Approximatley 100 graduate students entered the Innovation Competition.