high technology : Innovation + Job News

Twenty years of research and clinical trials led to the recent announcement that 7-year-old Emma Whitehead's luekemia was in remission. It was the moment that T-cell immunotherapy technology burst from the laboratories of Penn Medicine into the national headlines. Now a commitment from Novartis to build a $20 million Center for Advanced Cellular Therapy (slated for 2013) will speed up FDA approval and enable treatment in greater numbers.

For something as large and complex as cancer research, philanthropic and federal funding only goes so far. "We’re so fortunate to have the opportunity, with this alliance with Novartis, to hand off what we’ve developed in an academic medical center," says Bruce Levine, director of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.

Just how big is the breakthrough?

The Penn team is already building t-cell programs to treat pancreatic cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer. Eventually, this treatment could affect tens of thousands of lives.

Understandably, Penn medicine has been deluged with calls from patients worldwide. In an effort to coordinate a response, the Ambrason Cancer Center has launched a separate section on their website for access to detailed trial information, physicians and additional clinical trials.
 
It’s hard to measure the full impact T-cell immunotherapy will have on economic growth for our region, but Levine anticipates a "ripple effect." In addition to the construction, staffing and management jobs necessary for a $20 million facility, a greater number of clinical trials leads to more opportunities for care providers and researchers. For now, Penn Medicine’s technical groups are offering highly skilled positions while Novartis builds up their expertise.

"It’s huge," says Levine. "We’ve seen from [Penn] University and Penn Medicine a great commitment to facilitating this research." 

Source: Bruce Levine, Penn Medicine
Writer: Dana Henry

Mobile technology presents a marketing conundrum: Personal devices gather valuable specifics about the viewer, including location and activity, but render web advertisements distorted and invasive. Malvern-based TapCLIQ is changing all that.

After 14 years directing software development and strategic partnership at SAP AG,  founder and CEO Chirantan Bhatt created a "customer engagement platform" that responds to user-generated feedback in real time. The company recently graduated from Project Liberty Digital Incubator and is hiring data scientists, software engineers, and marketing and sales directors.

Bhatt says he’s always the first to try a new gadget, but finds "an abundance of annoying and unrelated advertisement constantly appearing on mobile applications." When his four-year-old daughter came to him with a file downloading over the game app she was playing Bhatt realized the problem was urgent. 

"Advertising completely interrupts the user," says Bhatt. "[Mobile devices] can’t have ads like a web page."

According to a 2012 study by Azullo, 80 percent of smartphone users have already forgotten all the mobile ads they’ve seen in the past 6 months. Yet internationally, spending on mobile advertisement is predicted to reach $28 billion by 2016 (based on reports from International Data Corp.).

Big ad companies—including Google, Real Media 24/7 and Flurry—are still stuck on display ads, explains Bhatt. TapCLIQ, conversely, doesn't asks users to leave their app and offers related purchases and commenting options for their current activity. Now in private beta, the company has created 1 million interactions with over 20,000 mobile users.

"We have an intense focus on user experience," says Bhatt. "That means better ads, coming at the right time, with more relevance to the customer."

Source: Chirantan Bhatt, TapCLIQ
Writer: Dana Henry

It’s not every day a plainclothes professional opera singer performs to the hum of industrial knitting machines. Nonetheless, it was the perfect display of synergy for the opening ceremony of Drexel’s Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center at the University City Science Center. Held on Wednesday, November 28, the celebration showcased surprising STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) combinations and permutations.

"In academia, it’s hard to collaborate outside your department," says Dr. Youngmoo Kim, director of the ExCITe center and professor of computer engineering at Drexel. "The whole purpose [of ExCITe] is to create multidisciplinary projects at this nexus between technology and the arts. There’s so much synergy there."

The 11,000-square-foot facility features conference rooms, countless desktops, sound equipment and a knit lab, all available to Drexel faculty, staff and students, regional partner institutions and other universities. The space will host hackathons and other tech and arts related events.

Opening demos included an app for understanding live classical music and a digitally-enhanced grand piano. ExCITe also houses and provides seed funds to three startup projects: a Microsoft Kinect therapy game for people with cerebral palsy; a virtual reality opera project made in partnership with the Philadelphia Opera Company; and Sonic City, a Breadboard project incorporating city sounds into musical pieces.

The Shima Seiki Haute Technology Knit Lab houses four top grade fabric machines, a donation from Shima Seiki Manufacturing in Japan worth $1 millon. The facility is unheard of in academia and, according to Kim, rivals Nike’s Design Lab. Each apparatus prints items designed on CAD software; during the grand opening event, the machines produced knit kitchen gloves, custom seamless dresses and three-ply blankets.  

A knit-bot machine prints three-dimensional fabrics complete with electronic sensors. At the opening, a staff member hooked a spiraled piece of fabric into a control system and rolled it across the table remotely. Observers seemed impressed by the novelty, but Kim says knit-bot technology has implications for the future: One day you might be able to change the color and cut of your shirt with the press of a button, and sensors-enhanced fabrics could help individuals monitor health and weight. In addition, skins from these textiles could make plastic robots more resilient, while external sensors could help disaster-relief androids respond immediately to challenging environments.

Kim runs Drexel's Music Entertainment Technology Labratory, home to robots that dance and play music. He conceived of the center nearly two years ago while holding cross-departmental faculty meetings as a solution to academic silos. It wasn’t long before other key local institutions, including the Science Center, the Philadelphia Opera Company and the Franklin Institute, joined the planning.

"We can do great things here with Drexel folks, but there’s great people with ideas at Penn, UArts, Philadelphia University, Temple and Swarthmore," says  Kim. “They’re people that we know. A lot of people throughout the region, not just in academia, helped shape this."

Source: Youngmoo Kim, Drexel ExCITe
Writer: Dana Henry

Washington Avenue West—the gritty home to plumbers, mechanics and supply outlets—is the new landing spot for Philly’s next generation of fabricators. After months of construction, NextFab Studio is set to reopen in a 21,000-square-foot workspace nearly five times the size of their former University City location. Unfortunately, due to some delays, the grand opening celebration has been moved to January 17, 2012.

NextFab has helped springboard a local ecosystem of high-tech creative entrepreneurship, a community that now includes Breadboard Philly and Drexel’s ExCITe. In addition to readily available 3D printers, laser cutters and robotics paraphernalia, Philly’s “Gym for Innovators” will now feature a loading dock, a crane, an industrial textile machine and an auto lift. Stay tuned for more information on their new facilities and grand opening party.

Source: NextFab
Writer: Dana Henry

Last year Eyal (Al) Azoulay, co-founder and CEO of Rumble and self-proclaimed news junky, bought his first tablet. He expected to view his favorite titles on the go, but there was not a single app for his choices. He was not alone in his disappointment—according to a study by Kontera, mobile accounts for 27 percent of all content consumed on the web (up 430 percent from last year) and news outlets, particularly traditional print media, continue losing readership as they struggle to adapt.
 
Rumble, based in Philadelphia and Tel-Aviv, and accelerated at the Project Liberty Digital Incubator at the Inquirer/Daily News offices, is a catchall content distribution system for mobile devices poised to conquer this digital divide. They’ve secured $1 million in investments and are hiring rapidly: Seven positions are currently open in sales and marketing.
 
Over the past five years, the print to web shift has resulted in billions of lost revenue for the newspaper industry. Mobile content represents an entirely different set of complex technologies and user interaction issues, and can be overwhelming to newspaper managers who are down to 70 percent of their heyday budget and workforce. "[Newspaper managers] honestly don’t even have the time to think about a strategy across mobile, let alone execute one," says Azoulay.
 
The problem is even more severe for mega publishers such as Conde Nast, Gannett, Lee, Knight Rider and Mcklechy—often each title will create individual apps. "As a mega publisher, your network of titles is completely fragmented," says Azoule. "Rumble offers the mega publisher one platform to unify all titles over all mobile devices and leverages the entire network as one."
 
Newspapers, Azoulay points out, are experts in content creation, not software. With the fourth version of the iPad rolling out after just two years, it’s hard to justify the major upfront investment required for the print-mobile switch. Rumble offers a backend system that publishes across all mobile devices and hosts a complete set of content-related features, including mobile-specific layout, performance tracking, revenue modeling and social media tools. After newspapers, Azoulay and his cofounders—Itai Cohen and Uyen Tieu, who’s served in executive sales and marketing positions for Microsoft and Viacom—expect to add trade publications and television news clients with similar needs.
 
There are over 1,600 newspapers and 2,000 university publications. Currently, news media gains only $1 from mobile platforms for every $9 they’ve lost, but Azoulay believes that’s all about to change. Mobile usage reveals not just consumers’ demographics and preferences, but where they are and what they’re doing. Of the $30 billion dollars spent annually on advertising, seventy percent come from local ads and no one is more capable of capitalizing on that revenue than newspapers.
 
"If you couple that with the highly sophisticated targeting available through mobile, you get one of the best combinations you can leverage," he says. "There’s no question that we will learn how to monetize on mobile devices very well."

Source: Eyal Azoulay, Rumble
Writer: Dana Henry

In just a few years, WizeHive has established a successful track record selling their collaborative platform as an application review tool and is ready to expand into new verticals. The Conshohocken comapny is hiring several positions including high-level web developers, web designer, experienced sales lead, and business development expert.

ElectNext has grown membership by 1,000 percent for four straight months. Having partnered with 40 media sites and secured more than $750,000 in investments, the civic-engagement startup is moving fast to keep up with upcoming federal elections and their own ambitions. They are hiring data scientists and engineers.
 
According to Dave Zega, National Director and CMO of ElectNext, political campaigns operate like a corporate marketing agenda: They purchase personal information, available via internet, and deliver highly tailored messages to individual voters. So how do you know who you’re really voting for? ElectNext turns the tables by collecting data on the politicians from multiple sources, including interest group ratings, campaign finance records, and politicians’ websites, to reveal candidates’ true stance on various issues. Members sign in, answer a series of issue-related questions, and receive their best voting ‘match.’
 
“What do we know about our politicians?” Zega asks. “Most of us can’t even name them and that is a huge data divide. That is why we are building the big dataset on your politicians and putting it together with a recommendation engine, so that anyone, anywhere can use our data and technology to engage on their most important political issues, every day.”
 
As elections approach, voters seek the company’s partner news sites, which include national and local outlets, driving traffic to ElectNext. Upon discovering their match, new members can publicize their results on social media platforms, sparking political conversations and civic activity while creating more potential members.
 
Collectively, the answers members provide illustrate the policy positions of the voting public. ElectNext generates profit by leasing access to this aggregated data to broadcast media, search engines, and educational nonprofits, without revealing anyone’s personal information.
 
So far, the “big dataset” accounts for federal elections, but ElectNext expects to build state and local elections into their platform in 2013.
 
“Some of our most important issues happen on a daily basis in our communities,” Zega says. “Think community centers and public parks, property taxes and the neighborhood school. So that is where we most want to help you engage.”
 
Co-founder Keya Dannenbaum, worked on several campaigns before entering Wharton’s demanding MBA program and losing all civic awareness—it’s difficult to balance political research with real life. ElectNext aims to better connect estranged voters with authentic politics. They’re continued success could help make super-packs and fact-checking frenzies a thing of the past.  

Source: Dave Zega, ElectNext
Writer: Dana Henry

Tech incubator Dreamit Ventures has announced its Fall 2012 Philadelphia lineup. Moving three blocks up the street to 3701 Market Street but still at the University City Science Center, Managing Partner Karen Griffith Gryga says Dreamit will be leveraging its proximity to the Science Center's Quorum.

"There is a great deal of programming planned for this class," says Gryga. "In addition to the one-on-one mentoring that we establish for the companies based on their particular needs and the frequent meetings with the DreamIt partners, we have speakers from leading VC firms, leading industry players and operational experts as well as workshops on technologies and operational components. We have investor office hours with ventures capitalists from across the country as well as angel investors."

Gryga places a high value on accelerator participants' interactions with each other,and reports that Dreamit will hold more regular social events to add some fun to the mix.
 
Speaking of fun, this year, recipes and bridesmaids dresses are the focus of two companies. "The entrepreneurial team is the critical decision area and less so the idea because we know that with the right team we can always refine or reformulate a market/customer centric solution.  Over the years, we have had many consumer facing opportunities and, in fact, had both Bazaart and TopShelf in the New York program this summer and KeepRecipes the New York summer before."
 
As in years past, the Dreamit teams come to Philadelphia from locations worldwide. Five of the companies are part of the DreamIt Access program, a dedicated effort to launch 15 minority-led startups over the next 12 months. Comcast Ventures is an investor in the DreamIt Access program.  Here's a detailed listing of this year's companies.
 
The 14 startups in the program are:
 
- Altair Prep, Philadelphia:  Performance-based homework platform that analyzes learning trends and customize curricula
- Applique, New York, NY:  Drag-and-drop ease for building iPhone and iPad Apps
- Betterific, Washington, DC:  Crowdsourcing platform aims to improve products and brands by allowing consumers to submit ideas and suggestions
- brandREP.me, Los Angeles, CA:  Crowdsources brand marketing campaigns to student
- Brideside, Chicago, IL:  Oline boutique for bridesmaids dresses.
- CallGrader, Denver, CO:  Marketing analytics and rich data for phone calls
- Charlie, Chicago, IL:  Mobile app provides vital contact information whenever you need it
- CloudConfidence, Philadelphia:  Platform for analytics-driven cloud monitoring and management
- FlagTap, San Francisco, CA:  On-site rewards that are easy to manage
- mor.sl, Washington, DC:  Recipe recommendation platform that personalizes based on tastes, cooking skill and allergies
- Peeractive, Sydney, Australia:  Social commerce technology with real-time analytics 
- The Whoot, New York, NY:  Short-term social planning
- Tripkno, New York, NY:  Travel guide incorporates social and e-commerce to help people find things to do
- Zenkars, Philadelphia:  Online used car retailer

Source: Karen Griffith Gryga, Dreamit Ventures
Writer: Sue Spolan