high technology : Innovation + Job News

Being chosen to present at this year's Wharton Business Plan Competition Venture Finals was a surprise to at least one of the eight teams participating in the April 30 event: The founders of ThirdEye are not even Wharton students (yet) -- they’re freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania. But their technology, an app joined with a wearable Google Glass-type device, has major potential for helping those with visual impairments live more independent lives.
 
ThirdEye co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Rajat Bhageria (author of What High School Didn’t Teach Me) isn’t wasting any time in the quest to build world-changing technology. He teamed up with Ben Sandler (ThirdEye founding head engineer and a computer and cognitive science major), Philippines native David Ongchoco (founding head marketer and media maven), and founding engineer Joe Cappadona (an "athlete, musician, and computer programmer") to develop the technology and business plan almost as soon as they arrived at Penn.
 
"I want to leave a dent in the universe by creating things that people want," explains Bhageria, a Cincinnati native and computer science engineering major. "We believe in empowering visually impaired individuals."

There are a lot of people who could use their technology -- there are about 300 million visually impaired people in the world; they generate over $41 billion in spending on assistive technologies annually.
 
The ThirdEye glasses and app work by verbally identifying common objects for wearers who can pick them up, but can’t see them. For example, its camera and voice can tell blind people what denomination of money they’re handed or what kind of pill bottle or household item they’re holding. (Check out the ThirdEye website for a video demo.)

Other uses include identifying street signs and even being able to read books, menus and newspapers. Bhageria says future updates could incorporate facial recognition software, language translation for travelers, and recognition of individual medications and foods.

They’re already partnering with the National Federation of the Blind to bring the product to market.

Though the young men aren’t enrolled in grad school yet, "we have been leveraging every opportunity at Wharton we can get our hands on," enthuses Bhageria. The team talks to professors weekly, joined Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program startup incubator, participates in Wharton events and competitions, and takes Wharton classes.
 
All that learning and networking -- and the intense time put into current competition -- is already paying off. The company began building their product last September and are already in beta testing with visually impaired individuals. They’re heading for a clinical study this summer with up to 20 participants, with a national beta launch in view for later in the year.
 
As for the April 30 pitch-fest itself, initially the team "had no expectation of doing well considering that most of the participants -- MBA students -- have years of industry experience over us," says Bhageria, but their confidence has been growing.
 
"Now we’re not just in it for the experience," he insists. "We’re in it to win it."

There’s $128,500 in cash and in-kind awards at stake, including the $30,000 Perlman Grand Prize. That would be a great boost to the team as they head into clinical trials, and "could be fundamental in opening doors for insurance to cover our product."
 
The Wharton Business Plan Competition Venture Finals featuring 20-minute presentations from the "Great Eight" finalists is happening 1 - 6 p.m. Thursday, April 30 at the Wharton School.
 
Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Rajat Bhageria, Third Eye

A Penn State team has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support its promising research on brain repair.

"Our revolutionary technology holds promise as a potential treatment for many brain injuries and disorders," explains Gong Chen, a biology professor and the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences, who heads the research. "We recently discovered a way to transform one type of a patient's own brain cells -- called glial cells -- into healthy, functioning nerve cells that can replace those damaged by Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, brain trauma, spinal-cord trauma or stroke. For the first time in history, our revolutionary technology now can reverse glial scars back into functional neural tissue inside the brain."

According to an article written by Penn State spokeswoman Barbara Kennedy and originally published in the Centre Daily Times, Chen’s team has published research describing its success: "Even in very old mice with Alzheimer’s disease, [they were] able to regenerate many functional neurons from the internal glial cells of these mice and to replenish the lost neurons in the brains of the mice. This research raises the hope that neural-replacement therapy might someday help human patients."

The new month-long crowdfunding campaign has a $50,000 goal and ends at the end of April. The money will allow the lab to purchase critical equipment and materials, and to proceed more quickly to clinical trials. 

"It will take at least an estimated $1 million per year to hire highly skilled people and to carry out vital tests on several specific disorders," says Chen. "With [funding] we can move our lab research to human clinical trials much faster, perhaps shortening the delivery of drug therapy to patients from 10 years to five years."

Source: Barbara Kennedy, Penn State University
Writer: Elise Vider

Girls just want to have…parity in the tech world.

With the aim of addressing gender inequality in the sector, Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio is working with the Philadelphia nonprofit TechGirlz to create a virtual game design class that will be made available, free-of-charge, to schools and students nationwide.

This set of self-contained, online instructional videos and educational materials will guide middle school and high-school-age students – and their teachers – through a basic game design curriculum. 
 
"Our goal is to give young women a little taste of game design," explains Frank Lee, an associate professor in Westphal College of Media Arts & Design and founder of the Entrepreneurial Game Studio. "Many of them are already playing video games, but we’re hoping our workshops will inspire them to ask questions about how they’re made, and think about how they could make them better. We want to make a program that is useful and engaging enough that students will get enough basic coding knowledge to make a simple game."

"Our goal for this program is to make sure girls understand what technology is all about and how they can be part of it," adds Tracey Welson Rossman, founder of TechGirlz. "This particular program is targeted to increase the number of girls who understand how cool creating games can be."

Participants in TechGirlz’ ongoing workshops and summer programs are currently testing the game design curriculum for an anticipated fall launch. According to Welson Rossman, the nonprofit is also planning to expand its workshop offerings nationwide. 

Source: Tracey Welson Rossman, TechGirlz and Drexel University
Writer: Elise Vider

In the sounds-like-science-fiction department comes BioBots, a Philadelphia startup developing high-resolution, desktop 3D printers that generate living tissue.

"BioBots is like a 3D printer, but instead of using plastic filament to create 3D structures, it uses mixtures of biocompatible materials (like collagen) and living cells to create 3D tissues," explains CEO Danny Cabrera. "The finished product that comes out of the BioBot is alive."

The first-generation BioBots 1 printer can generate a dozen different cell types. 
  
With over 120,000 patients in the United States on organ-transfer waiting lists, building replacement organs is a long-term goal for the company. For now, the printers are primarily used for research.

"Biofabrication technology is definitely becoming more and more accessible in functionality, ease of use and cost, and that is going to greatly accelerate the pace of development," says Cabrera. "We are currently focusing on making the best research tool for our customers, taking structures out of lab note books and onto lab benches. It’s only a matter of time before those same structures start leaking out of the lab and into the clinic." 

Co-founder Ricardo Solorzano started working on printing 3D tissues -- and built the first prototype -- in his University of Pennsylvania dorm room. In August, he and Penn classmates Cabrera and Sohaib Hashmi launched the company. The startup initially grew at the DreamIt Health incubator and recently received funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. 

BiotBots is also opening a seed round of funding; actively promoting its beta program; offering testers a bioprinter and support for $5,000; and recruiting for its R&D team.

"The BioBot 1 is exciting, but it’s definitely not all we have up our sleeves," insists Cabrera. "Look out for a radical change in a few healthcare-related industries and new industries being created by our technology."

Source: Danny Cabrera, BioBots
Writer: Elise Vider
 

Eleven early-stage companies -- everything from a bagel bakery to a company that prints living tissue -- are recipients of $1.9 million in new investments from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. 

Philadelphia's BioBots expects that within 20 years its 3-D bioprinters will allow patients with organ failure to receive custom replacement organs built by and constructed out of their own cells.

Another Philadelphia company, EnviroKure Inc., uses proprietary technology to produce liquid organic fertilizers. Their unique product upcycles chicken manure in a fully sustainable, highly efficient process to meet the needs of the fastest growing fertilizer markets in the United States: large-scale organic farming and natural turf management.

In Chester County, Essential Medical is developing X-SealTM and MANTATM, two innovative vascular closure devices for both small bore and large bore femoral closure. Vascular closure devices (VCDs) are used to close incisions in the leg artery after cardiac catheterizations.

Philadelphia's Fitly is a Digital Health Accelerator company. Fitly’s mission is to empower anyone who needs to eat healthy by making cooking easy, delicious and affordable. 

LifeVest, a Philadelphia nonprofit, sits at the intersection of physical and financial health. Using evidence-based science and behavioral economics, LifeVest motivates users to invest in their own wellbeing by rewarding them for learning about, tracking and improving their health.

Livegenic in Philadelphia delivers technology to enhance the customer service environment. It provides an easy way to gain a real-time video from the customer’s point of view through something most customers already have: a smartphone. Livegenic helps organizations reduce support costs, improve customer and employee satisfaction, and minimize business-related risks.

Mitochon Pharmaceuticals is a Delaware County biotech startup that focuses on developing drugs targeting the mitochondria for a host of serious diseases. The company’s development programs are primarily focused on neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases including Huntington’s, Batten Disease, Stroke, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson Disease and severe burns, and secondarily on metabolic disorders due to over-nutrition (diabetes, obesity and NASH). Ongoing research has linked these diseases to various malfunctions of the mitochondria. By correcting them, Mitochon aims to open the way for a broad range of disease modifying therapies.

Montgomery County’s NETMINDER produces a unique protective coating, offering an environmentally acceptable way to protect aquatic gear such as salmon, cobia, and bluefin tuna nets; oyster cages; trays and bags; crab pots and other gear from the high costs of fouling.

Also based in Montgomery County, PAST offers its Software as a Service (SaaS) to help doctors efficiently distinguish patients who can safely use controlled substance prescription medication from those who require more complex care or additional safety considerations.
 
Locating in Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood, Sweet Note Bakery is a gluten-free and allergen-free bagel manufacturer.

Montgomery County’s Zuppler is a global Internet commerce solution for restaurants and caterers. Zuppler powers millions of mobile and web food-ordering transactions using their proprietary SaaS platform. This enables consumers to order food from their preferred restaurants and caterers using any device via the restaurant’s branded website or mobile app.

Source: Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania 
Writer: Elise Vider

Last week, we took a look at how the graphene technology developed at the University of Pennsylvania is shaping the global marketplace, and now, a pair of Penn students has won the annual Y-Prize contest for applying this rapidly-growing field to the problems of fracking.

Winners Ashwin Amurthur and Teddy Guenin are both fourth-year students of dual-degree programs at Penn Engineering and the Wharton School. Guenin, a Lancaster native, is doing his undergrad work in bioengineering, marketing and management, with a master’s in mechanical engineering on deck after that, and Amurthur, from Princeton Junction, N.J., is majoring in bioengineering and finance.

This year, the Y-Prize contest invited students to develop a new application for existing Penn nanotechnology, and drew a record 19 entries. Four finalists presented their concepts to a panel of judges on January 28, and Guenin and Amurthur nabbed the $5,000 first prize. The funds aren't the only reward: they also receive the framework for a non-exclusive license to the Penn technology, an important first step in commercializing their proposal.

Guenin says the controversy of natural gas drilling's environmental effects loomed large as he grew up in central Pennsylvania. Together, the young men have applied Penn’s graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) technology to the detection of benzene in groundwater.

Currently, drilling companies who suspect leaks in the underground casings of their equipment -- and local governments and consumers worried about water contamination -- don’t have a reliable way to confirm and pinpoint those leaks. Groundwater can be tested for levels of various chemical ions and compounds like chlorides, but since these can occur naturally in some water samples regardless of the side-effects of fracking, the tests don’t offer conclusive answers.

"The oil companies want to know for sure, do we have a leak or not?" Amurthur explains.

The Y-Prize team’s answer is GFETs for detecting benzene, a carcinogenic compound used in fracking fluid that usually does not occur in groundwater naturally.

If the team can develop their benzene GFETs and bring them to market, "you could more conclusively say that you do have a leak," Amurthur continues. It’s vital information for municipalities, drilling companies and consumers alike, and could ensure more rapid and accurate repair of leaking casings, enhanced safety, increased profits and a protected environment.

Though there’s a lot of work yet to be done to bring this concept to market, Guenin is excited about the opportunities for networking and the support the Y-Prize win will bring.

"It’s awesome that we were able to get this," he says. "And we’re really really excited to move forward with it."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Sources: Ashwin Amurthur and Teddy Guenin, GFET-Frack Technologies
 

When you need to give your loved one an ETA or figure out the quickest way to your next meeting, there are many ways to do it: A peek at the clock, your calendar and maybe Google maps, a bit of mental math, and opening up a messenger app to tap out a quick note.

Wait. Too many steps? 20-year-old Ari Weinstein thought so, and decided to give a new meaning to the word "workflow."

In his new app, released last December with partner Conrad Kramer (an 18-year-old Cherry Hill native), workflow has become a singular, individualized concept. For example, here’s a workflow for you: I have a picture on my phone that I want to share on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all at once. I want a button on my home screen that’ll do all that automatically. Or, I'm viewing a website, and I want to make, save and send an instant PDF of it. Thanks to the Workflow app, there’s "a workflow" for that -- in other words, a way to customize and automate multi-step digital tasks you need throughout the day -- and pretty much anything else you want to do on your smartphone.

"One way to describe it would be that Workflow lets you automate different things that you do every day, so you can do them just with a push of a button," explains Weinstein. "You can sort of make these really personalized experiences that automate things that only you do.

You can get creative and make your own workflows or you can engage with an online community sharing the workflows they’ve invented.

Weinstein (son of Philly Office Retail president Ken Weinstein) is a West Mt. Airy native who graduated from Germantown Friends School, took a "gap year" before college to work in California, and then started at MIT in 2013. But in December of that year, he and Kramer applied for a Thiel Fellowship, granted every year to 20 college students under the age of 20 nationwide. The fellowship offers the winners $100,000 over two years to pursue a passion outside of the classroom. (Workflow is Weinstein’s second app launch; he also developed DeskConnect.)

Weinstein and Kramer, now based in San Francisco, found out they’d been selected for the fellowship in May 2014.

Since then, things have moved quickly.

"The launch went incredibly well," recalls Weinstein. Apple selected Workflow as an editor’s choice in the app store, showing it on a banner to everyone who visited the site.  

"It was the no. 1 most downloaded app on the [paid] app store for four days," he continues. "We’ve just been thrilled with the way people have taken advantage of it. People have made hundreds of thousands of workflows, some of which are really cool that we never would have thought of."

There are now three guys on the startup's team: 18-year-old Nick Frey, from Iowa, has joined Weinstein and Kramer.

And this is still just the earliest version of the app -- Weinstein hints at "a big update" they hope to launch by February.

So does he want to go back to school?

"That’s a hard question," he muses. "I’m not sure I can make that call right now."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Ari Weinstein, Workflow

Imagine conducting an instantly accurate test for Lyme disease or Syphilis -- or potentially hundreds of other illnesses -- right in your doctor’s office with a single drop of blood. Mike Patterson, a Wharton MBA alum and CEO of the University City Science Center-based Graphene Frontiers, says it’ll happen within a few years.

The company was founded by Dr. Charlie Johnson, Dr. Zhengtang Luo and Patterson in 2010 out of the University of Pennsylvania’s UPstart program. Recently recognized as one of 18 Pennsylvania Companies to Watch in 2015, Graphene Frontiers just landed their first Keystone Innovation Zone (KIZ) state tax credit.

But what is graphene, and why do we need it?

Put on your science hats.

Researchers at the University of Manchester first isolated this material in 2004, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.

"Graphene is simply a single atomic layer of carbon," explains Patterson.

If you’re feeling fancy, call it an allotrope of carbon, like graphite or a diamond. It’s incredibly strong: proportionally 100 times stronger than steel, yet flexible, transparent, and the best conductor of heat and electricity mankind has ever discovered. It has myriad applications, from solar cells to touch screens to desalinization. 

Take your pencil’s core. Imagine cutting it so thin you have a slice of graphite only one atom thick. Bingo: graphene.
But it’s not so easy.

Graphene manufacturers don’t shave carbon down. Instead, they use a carbon-containing gas like methane and a process called chemical vapor deposition to build the graphene literally atom by atom.

What Dr. Luo discovered and patented in a physics lab at Penn was a way to do this at normal atmospheric pressure, instead of in an expensive, unwieldy vacuum chamber, like everyone else has been doing until now.

With the help of a two-step National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grant totaling almost $900,000, Graphene Frontiers entered the global market.

Forget little strips of graphene. The company is pioneering a way to grow it in massive rolls on copper foil, and then remove it from that copper with hydrolysis (an electric current that separates the hydrogen and oxygen in an electrolyte/water solution) rather than using what Patterson calls "a really nasty bath of chemicals" to dissolve the copper and collect the graphene.  

"We can just bubble off the graphene and re-use the copper," he says. "[It's] very important for cost and environmental concerns."

Right now the company is focused on graphene in biosensor applications, and hopes to partner with a major diagnostics firm. Patterson says the future of point-of-care diagnostics will be the graphene field-effect transistor (GFET). In short, a strip of graphene ten microns wide (one-tenth the width of a human hair, for us mortals). A specific antibody attached to it will, with the help of an electric current, be able to instantly detect bacteria or proteins in a tiny blood sample (instead of testing multiple vials of blood for an immune response).  

In other words, no lab technicians with pipettes and goggles.

So what will Graphene Frontiers do with the new tax credit? It’s not just about physics and chemistry. The money will help the company hire a new production engineer and lab technician to produce more GFET applications and tests.

"It’s all about the people," insists Patterson.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source. Mike Patterson, Graphene Frontiers
 

Most art pieces invite the viewer to bring their own perspective, but rarely does the art itself shift before you can look away. With "Blueprint," a new two-piece installation in lobbies at the University City Science Center’s 3737 Market Street, members of London's United Visual Artists (UVA) have taken the laws of science -- in fields like biology, software and genetics -- and married them to the light, color and texture of art.

When Flying Kite caught up with UVA's Nick Found and Ben Kreukniet in early December, it was a busy week for the internationally acclaimed arts group, which works on projects that encompass sculpture, installation, live performance and architecture. UVA recently installed pieces in Seoul, London and Philadelphia -- that's three exhibitions on three continents opening in the same week.

Each rectangular Blueprint piece is eight feet high and four feet wide, and weighs over 286 pounds. They’re a combination of color-shifting LED lights glowing through a translucent acrylic matte broken into 1,536 rectangular cells thanks to an aluminum grid (or aluminium, depending what side of the pond you’re from).

"We’re not very pro using off-the-shelf products," explains Found, referring to the painstaking year-long process of creating the works by hand, not to mention the software that powers Blueprint’s undulating look.

Because if you look at Blueprint for more than a few seconds, you’ll notice that the colors are constantly shifting and shading, fighting each other for chunks of the board, constantly spreading and receding in different ways. Occasionally, the board resolves into one solid shade before the waves of color pulse back to life.

It’s all thanks to an algorithm "inspired by the building blocks of life," explains Kreukniet. "Instead of deciding the composition [of the piece], we’re deciding on a set of rules."

Think the natural laws that govern things such as weather patterns, soil conditions and evolution. The rules are constant, but the practical outcomes -- from drought to monsoons or frogs to giraffes -- are infinitely varied.

Found and Kreukniet have a curious relationship to their Blueprint creations, each of which plays host to two distinct software "organisms." As long as the installation is turned on, the two computer-engineered entities, representing themselves with different colors, wrestle each other for control of the board's grid, within the rules of their co-existence.

Found and Kreukniet are pleased with the location of the pieces -- these permanent installations are free for everyone to view and consider, outside of a rarefied gallery setting.

"Every time you see the piece, it’s doing something different," says Found.

Blueprint is funded by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority’s Percent for Art program, which teamed with the Science Center and its 3737 Market Street development partner, Wexford Science + Technology.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Sources: Nick Found and Ben Kreukniet, United Visual Artists
 

In November, Flying Kite brought you the announcement of the latest round of Startup PHL grant and seed-fund recipients, and all of the chosen CEOs were men. DreamIt Ventures’ Archna Sahay was in the audience, and she can tell you that this scene is all too common in the tech and venture capital world.

In October, Sahay was tapped to head a new accelerator at DreamIt Ventures: DreamIt Athena. She says there have been virtual, online-based accelerators or temporary "ad hoc" accelerators dedicated to women with big business dreams, but Athena is the world’s first permanent top-tier accelerator focused especially on women entrepreneurs.

The deadline for Athena’s first round of applications -- which Sahay predicted would draw up to 500 applicants from across the country -- was December 8. A $491,930 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development made the new program possible (there is already enough funding for a second round of the accelerator).

A minimum of four slots will be open for the Philly-based program, which will run from February through May of 2015 at the DreamIt headquarters at Innovation Center @3401 (a collaborative space run by Drexel and the University City Science Center).

Remember that saying about history being written by the winners? Born in India, raised in Virginia, and now a Philly resident with a decade in the finance world under her belt, Sahay has her own twist on that one.

"The future is being determined by those who are funding it," she says, and right now, most of those people are white men.
And there’s nothing wrong with white men, she insists. She appreciates all her colleagues.

"It’s not about dissing anybody. It’s celebrating diversity and celebrating the differences,” she continues. "We also have to recognize that the infrastructure has to be different to support and nurture and grow this diverse talent."

Sahay cites a recent Babson College study finding that in 2013, just 18 percent of all venture capital-funded businesses had a woman on the executive team, and less than three percent of those had a female CEO. And despite this under-representation in venture capital boardrooms, U.S. women are founding businesses at one and a half times the national average. That said, they receive less than 10 percent of the funding, delivering 12 percent more revenue with a third less capital than their male peers.

And, vitally important to Sahay, the study also found that venture capital firms with women partners are three times more likely to invest in women CEOs.

The tech-focused DreamIt Athena accelerator will connect participants to a national slate of mentors, speakers, investors and managers, and offer free workspace at the DreamIt headquarters.

"We’re really trying to get more women on that investing side of the table," explains Sahay. It’s valuable "to see someone [who] looks like you, and maybe is five years ahead of you in the game," and to learn how they achieved success.

"I think that’s really powerful."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Archna Sahay, DreamIt Ventures
 

On November 12 at Philadelphia's Innovation Lab, PIDC, First Round Capital and the City of Philadelphia announced the launch of the Startup PHL Angel Fund.

Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Alan Greenberger, who spoke at the event, said that many people have asked him whether investments like this are a risk the City should be taking.

"The answer is simple," he said, speaking to a large crowd of local startup leaders, packed with aspiring millennial entrepreneurs. To continue transforming Philadelphia into a notable draw for the country’s best ideas, "we cannot afford to do nothing."

Two years ago, the City of Philadelphia, PIDC and First Round Capital teamed up to launch the Startup PHL Seed Fund, and at this event, leaders announced the Seed Fund’s latest investment: $400,000 for Velano Vascular, a medical device company based in Philadelphia and San Francisco, that has pioneered a way to draw blood without needles.

Startup PHL has many other facets, including its Call For Ideas grant program and Startup PHL Funds, the latter of which has given a combined $1 million in seed or angel investments to six companies over the past year.

Mayor Michael Nutter, First Round Capital founder Josh Kopelman and PIDC president John Grady were all on hand to help announce the latest addition to the Startup PHL initiative: the Startup PHL Angel Fund, which will dole out investments of $25,000 to $100,000 dollars to "very early-stage companies."

The inaugural Angel Fund recipients briefly took the microphone. Jason Rappaport's Squareknot is a new app that applies the principle of Google Maps -- where users can see and compare different travel routes -- to the creation of crowd-sourced step-by-step guides for other tasks.

Locating in Philly was "a very deliberate bet" that it was right atmosphere for his startup, said Rappaport, who also considered Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston.

This year's other Angel Fund recipients are Tesorio, a service that helps companies self-finance their daily operations, and VeryApt, a new app that combines user reviews with "big data analytics" to streamline and personalize the apartment-hunting process.

"If we’re going to ask the private sector to do something, 99 times out of a 100, the public sector’s going to have to jump in too," said Mayor Nutter. "If you're an entrepreneur, Philadelphia is the place for you…and we want you right here."

The evening also included an announcement from the Commerce Department -- the third round of Startup PHL’s Call for Ideas grants is now open; over $200,000 has already been invested in ten different initiatives and organizations.

Greenberger urged attendees to apply with their most robust ideas. The deadline for applications is Friday, January 2, 2015.

 Writer: Alaina Mabaso

Bringing a new concept from pitch to actual business is intense enough, but how about attempting it all in one weekend? That’s the idea behind Philly's ninth annual Startup Weekend, coming up November 14 through16. That’s fifty-four hours, to be exact, for participants to muscle their entrepeneurial ideas "from concept to launch."
 
The Startup Weekend, a Seattle-based nonprofit, got its start in Boulder in 2007. Thanks to a grant from the Kauffman Foundation, Startup Weekend is now an international name that has reached almost 30,000 aspiring entrepreneurs at over 325 events. This November, Philly is far from the only spot hosting a Startup Weekend. Cities such as Accra, Ghana, and Auckland, New Zealand, will join in, along with many U.S. cities.
 
In an exciting twist, this is the first year local winners will go on to compete for a shot in the 2014 Global Startup Battle, which is welcoming 30,0000 participants to events in 100 countries.
 
Philly Startup Weekend spokesperson Alisha Hettinger says this year’s incarnation, taking place at Drexel’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law (3320 Market Street), is expected to kick off with "anywhere between 100 to 150 pitches."
 
Attendees will listen to the one-minute pitches and then vote on which ideas they like most. The most popular concepts will get an instant team of advisers, designers and developers for two fast-paced days of work. (In past years, web and mobile applications have gotten the most play.)
 
On Sunday evening, the teams will make a five-minute pitch to a panel of three judges, including Drexel University’s Charles Sacco. The top three teams will win access to a host of business services and move on to compete in regional Global Startup Battle events, which offer a range of major support services as prizes.
  
For more information or tickets to the pitching event or the Sunday night presentations, click here.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Alisha Hettinger, Philadelphia Startup Weekend
 

Four early-stage companies, including one making its first foray into the U.S. market, are settling in at the University City Science Center's Port Business Incubator. 

CETICS Healthcare Technologies is a medical device company based in Germany. With its analysis technology and digitalization of sample profiles, the company's products drastically simplify how in-vitro diagnostics are used, opening new application areas in quality control, chemical stability testing, toxicology, and process optimization and control.

In Philadelphia, the company is launching a new product for genotoxicity testing. The TOXXs Analyzer is an automated method for fast quantification of DNA strand breaks and DNA repair capacities. 
 
In the longer term, CETICS is developing a new generation of breakthrough in-vitro diagnostic products known as "Spectral Biomarkers" that can provide early, non-invasive diagnoses of Alzheimer Disease, prostate cancer and liver fibrosis.

HaRo Pharmaceutical, another new Port company, is conducting research and development focused on the treatment of high-risk neuroblastoma, funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). HaRo was the only small molecule therapeutic company -- out of 75 startups nationwide -- admitted to the Innovation Corps Team Training Pilot Program (ICORPS),  an NCI/National Institutes of Health-sponsored intensive commercial development course.
 
Hyalo Technologies is a biotech and pharmaceutical company developing an innovative nanotechnology drug delivery system that promises to drastically reduce systemic side effects and increase patient compliance. Potential applications include cancer, pain management, wound healing and dermatology.

Legal Science Partners (LSP), spun out of Temple University's Beasley School of Law in 2013, builds tools for the legal profession. LSP's knowledge management platform, The Monocle, allows easy, low-cost access to legal information across jurisdictions and topics. Meanwhile, products such as LawAtlas.org and Workbench convert unstructured legal text into structured question-and-answer formats.

LSP is currently building custom platforms in particular areas of law such as Prescription Drug Overdose Prevention Laws for the National Institute for Drug Abuse and Everytown for Gun Safety, and is planning to release a prototype in the coming weeks of its 50StatUS, which will include pay-per-use statutory data in the business law sector.

Source: Kristen Fitch, University City Science Center
Writer: Elise Vider

The University City Science Center has partnered with Flying Kite to showcase innovation in Greater Philadelphia.
 

For many aspiring entrepreneurs and small businesses, finding the money to design and prototype their ideas can be a tremendous challenge.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners (BFTP) helps bridge that gap through its various programs and grant offerings, and a new alliance with EFE Laboratories will provide young companies with even more of the connections, technical expertise and financial capital they need to bring their products to market.

Led by majority owner and engineer Kip Anthony, EFE is a leading manufacturer of controllers, communication tools, medical devices, and other electrical and mechanical engineering solutions.

With 35 employees and growing, the Horsham-based lab has already helped clients obtain matching Ben Franklin FabNet (BFFN) prototyping grants.

For example, its work with SureShade has allowed founder Dana Russikoff to both expand the company's market reach, and move the design and manufacturing of its retractable boat shades back to the Philadelphia area.

Not content to simply refer clients to the BFFN program, EFE actively reaches out to growing companies facing various developmental challenges and a lack of R&D capital.

"I’m trying to make sure that, through the network and connections I have, clients receive the help they need to move their manufacturing process forward," says Anthony.

An established engineer with an MBA, Anthony understands the vital role manufacturing plays in the economy, and is passionate about sharing EFE's capabilities and experience with the larger entrepreneurial community.

"There are a lot of good people behind this," he insists, discussing how EFE's new alliance might help bring manufacturing jobs back to the region. "[There’s] a lot of shared passion, and a lot of drive and desire to succeed."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Kip Anthony, EFE Laboratories
 

If you've ever left a doctor's office with an order for lab tests, you’re likely familiar with the inconvenient and stressful experience of waiting days for results that may or may not provide a definitive diagnosis.

Fortunately, thanks to a recent $1.6 million series B seed funding effort led by Trimaran Capital Partners, Science Center-based nanotech startup Graphene Frontiers is poised to put an end to many such experiences by "creating a major paradigm change in medical diagnostics," says CEO Mike Patterson.  

That paradigm change will come from unique biosensor devices that can actually identify antibodies, proteins and other markers of infection and disease.

Graphene has already developed a proprietary and highly efficient process to produce the graphene used in the sensors. The upcoming product will allow testing from a single drop of blood that can be drawn and processed right at your doctor’s office, providing near-immediate results.  

Patterson explains that the company is also working on using its biosensors as a preventative tool -- doctors will be able to monitor changes to a patient’s specific health markers over time. 

While Graphene's early business model relied primarily on providing its namesake material to other researchers, recent seed funding will allow Graphene to "refocus and expand their efforts into more industry changing applications with the [ultra-thin graphene] material," says Patterson.

In addition to job growth and a lab expansion at the Science Center campus, the company plans to pursue opportunities in the consumer electronics industry through a new partnership with the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany.

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Mike Patterson, Graphene Frontiers