University City : In The News

Phorum 2012, the inaugural technology conference for business and IT executives that will explore cloud computing, is giving away a pair of tickets for its March 28 event at World Cafe Live.

To win, all you have to do is tell us – in 140 characters – what possibilities you see for cloud computing in your business.  Just write to us on Twitter @PhorumPhilly. Our panel of industry leading judges will choose the 2 they find most creative and compelling.

You can submit entries from March 12th at 12 noon to March 19th at 12 noon. We’ll only accept one entry per Twitter handle, and the ticket is nontransferable.  It has no cash value and you’re on your own for transportation.

Original source: Phorum 2012
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Baltimore Ave.'s Dollar Stroll in University City makes MonkeyDish's list of 50 great ideas among national restaurant innovations.
 
Each Stroll has attracted over a thousand patrons who don’t mind waiting in line to sample the familiar at shops such as Milk & Honey Market, which specializes in local cheese, produce and their own urban honey, and far-away cuisines at Desi Chaat House and Vientiane Cafe.

Original source: MonkeyDish
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CNN includes Chuck Sacco's story, including co-founding PhindMe Mobile in 2007 and merging with Movitas in Bryn Mawr two years later, in a feature on managers who strike out on their own.

Another way Chuck Sacco, the PhindMe Mobile founder, helped his business: He discovered that teaching an entrepreneurship course at Drexel University was a great way to meet low-cost interns for his young business. Never taught before? Not a problem. Break in by volunteering to speak at a business-school class. Colleges and universities have an insatiable appetite for adjunct professors like Sacco, who also happens to have an MBA -- from Drexel.

Original source: CNN
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The Star-Ledger writes about Drexel University engineers who kicked off national Engineers Week by displaying seven adult-sized humanoid robots on Monday.

"These are world-class, state-of-the-art robots, says Youngmoo Kim, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. "No one has ever seen that many on the same stage before. Never in the world, and never in history."

But don't get excited just yet. "They are not ready to sweep the floor," says Kim, who also is assistant dean of media technologies in the College of Engineering and director of Drexel's Music and Entertainment Technology Laboratory. While the HUBOS (a contraction from "humanoid" and "robot") stand about 4 feet tall and weigh in at about 100 pounds each, developmentally, they seem a lot like babies. "We're working on getting them to walk without falling over," Kim says, "getting them to climb stairs, pick up small objects." They also can't talk or see or hear (which, actually, makes them also a bit like teenagers...). The computer-driven robots will be outfitted with cameras, microphones and tactile sensors and other apparatus that will allow them to make their way around in the real world, Kim says.

Original source: Star-Ledger
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Drexel University materials scientists Alexander Moseson and Michel Barsoum have created a low-tech, low-energy cement they hope will reduce carbon output as developing countries build more sidewalks, roads and housing.

Potential demand for lower-carbon building materials has sparked a race to replace Portland cement featuring a handful of manufacturers and scientists. Some claim to sequester carbon within the cement itself. Others use alternative fuels. Still others tap unconventional feedstocks, such as magnesium silicate, that require lower kiln temperatures.

Moseson and Barsoum are trying the latter, mixing recycled iron slag or fly ash with readily available limestone. "We literally used a bag of garden lime from Home Depot," Moseson said. Instead of a coal-fired kiln, they use a bucket with a spoon at room temperature.

Original source: Daily Climate
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As part of a feature that names eight reasons why incubators are better than business school, DreamIt Ventures is among the hottest startup destinations.

The incubator puts up $5,000 for each company, and another $5,000 for each co-founder. It takes a 6% equity stake in return. DreamIt also works with Comcast Ventures to run the Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program (MEAP), which funds and mentors minority-owned startups.

Original source: Forbes
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TechCrunch reports on the inaugural class of Blueprint Health's startup accelerator in New York City, which includes Philadelphia-based Meddik.

Led by Tim Soo and Ben Shyong, Meddik is a search engine for health that ranks results based on a user’s symptom set, clinical attributes, and demographics.  Tim is a Penn medical student and programmer who built Invisible Instrument, a Wiimote & iPhone gestural-based instrument that won an MTV Award.  Ben is a Web-developer and programmer, having built a real-time transit tool for the Philadelphia transit system and started a bubble-tea restaurant.

Original source: TechCrunch
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VentureBeat covers the Wharton School's Innovation Tournament, in which MBA students aim to create an internet business in four days.

At the end of the workshop, the organizers announced the winners of the Innovation Tournament. Each team won on a specific metric, such as most pageviews for the business website or best real world application.

The team that won based on pageviews and marketing created Chow4You, a service that helps you find meals based on nutritional value and dietary needs. Rohan Mirchandani, the acting CEO of Chow4You, said, "The workshop was focused on learning the steps to take to make a business viable, especially focusing on user experience, which I found to be the most important topic." The program is just a prototype now, but based on his experience in the course, Mirchandani said he felt confident that he could launch Chow4You as a real business.

Original source: VentureBeat
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Young Upstarts takes a peek at Philadelphia's Storably, launched in September by Wharton graduates and on the verge of bringing its platform -- likened to Airbnb for storage -- to other markets.

The founders started working in a basement from May this year, putting together mockups and building the site with an off-shore development team. However, the quality wasn’t quite what they expected. Kowitt and Gupta then hired a full-time VP of Engineering, Nick Shiftan, who rebuilt the site from scratch. They later brought on Brendan Lowry as a community manager. The site was formally launched in Philadelphia on September 21, and the startup intends to expand nationally soon.

Original source: Young Upstarts
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The Wall Street Journal spotlights the rifle teams at USciences, a college known more for its pharmacy program than marksmanship training.

For the past 35 years, the USciences shooting program was led by coach Paul Klimitas, who is widely credited with spurring the team, known as the Devils, on to numerous victories. It ended last season ranked 15th out of the 38 NCAA teams in the country -- tied with one of the top military academies, Virginia Military Institute.

"They're competing against people who are training to be soldiers and spending hours every day doing military exercises," says Marling "Newt" Engle, a member of the NCAA Rifle Committee, of the UCSciences team.

Original source: Wall Street Journal
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Technically Philly sits down with Dr. Chad Womack, a nanobiomolecular entrepreneur who is trying to increase opportunities  in science, technology, education and mathematics (STEM) for city children.

Womack’s America21 Project is focused on empowering urban centers and communities through STEM education and workforce development, high-growth entrepreneurship and access to capital. With his new venture, he’s still actively engaging the District around STEM priorities.

Original source: Technically Philly
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A study at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and published in this month's Nature Genetics has proved significant, identifying gene variants associated with 10 percent of all ADHD cases, reports USA Today.

"Members of the GMR gene family, along with genes they interact with, affect nerve transmission, the formation of neurons, and interconnections in the brain, so the fact that children with ADHD are more likely to have alterations in these genes reinforces previous evidence that the GMR pathway is important in ADHD," study leader Dr. Hakon Hakonarson, director of the Center for Applied Genomics at Children's Hospital, said in the news release.

"Our findings get to the cause of the ADHD symptoms in a subset of children with the disease," he added.

Original source: USA Today
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Drexel University researcher Dr. Yury Gogotsi believes figuring out why cell phone and laptop batteries die prematurely will help create a sustainable energy grid, reports Nanowerk.

"A dramatic expansion of research in the area of electrochemical energy storage has occurred over the past due to an ever increasing variety of handheld electronic devices that we all use," Gogotsi said. "This has expanded use of electrical energy in transportation, and the need to store renewable energy efficiently at the grid level. This process has been accompanied by the chase for glory with the arrival of new materials and technologies that leads to unrealistic expectations for batteries and supercapacitors and may hurt the entire energy storage field."

The main type of energy storage device addressed in the article is the supercapacitor. Supercapacators, which are built from relatively inexpensive natural materials such as carbon, aluminum and polymers, are found in devices, ranging from mobile phones and laptop batteries to trams, buses and solar cells.

Original source: Nanowerk
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A University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine study found that converting vacant lots into small parks or community green spaces can reduce crime in distressed neighborhoods, reports The Atlantic.

Vacant lot greening was associated with significant reductions in gun assaults across all four sections of Philadelphia in the study and with significant reductions in vandalism in one section. Greening was also associated with the reporting of significantly less stress in one of the sections of the city and with more exercise in another. Cholesterol numbers were lower to a statistically significant degree for the greened areas across all four city sections.

Original source: The Atlantic
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A Wharton School MBA is working with a University of Pennsylvania team on a local startup that aims to make transferring money overseas more efficient, reports el-emergente.com

Edrizio De La Cruz, a recent MBA graduate from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, founded Regalii and leads the UPenn team working on it. For Edrizio, It’s a personal mission. "I grew up in the Dominican Republic," Says Edrizio, "and immigrated to New York's Washington Heights neighborhood, which was probably 110 percent Dominican. But I went to high school in Queens, where I used to play basketball with Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians and Salvadorians. I quickly assimilated to each subculture. But my social circle was pretty homogeneous. Almost everyone around me was an immigrant. So I assumed that only immigrants sent money or remained connected to family in Latin America."

Original source: el-emergente.com
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