Today is the final day for first-round voting in the Transformative Technologies 2011 tournament – at 5pm ET 32 contestants will advance to the second round – 32 go home.
Among those “on the bubble”, where a strong voting surge either way could decide the contest:
OPX Bio leads Elevance 52-48, UOP leads GlycosBio 52-48, Enerkem leads Syngenta 53-47, Ceres leads Synthetic Genomics 53-47, Algenol leads Monsanto 51-49, Mascoma leads PetroAlgae 51-49, and KiOR leads Butamax 51-49.
In upsets that looks increasingly likely to happen, DSM is pulling away from Neste Oil 55-45, Abengoa is now comfortably ahead of Raizen (Shell, Cosan, Iogen) at 56-44, and OriginOil is now leading Genencor 57-43.
It has proven to be a tough first round for “name brands” like Genecor, Raizen, Syngenta, Neste Oil, Monsanto, and Synthetic Genomics. Generally, the higher seeds have prevailed, although #2 seed KiOR is having a tough time with Butamax, and #5 seeds UOP, Algenol and Ceres are in tighter contests than they would have hoped.
The complete tournament bracket, with the most up to date scoring, is available for download here.