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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Research Park

    EnterpriseWorks

    EnterpriseWorks Features Graduates Media Mentions News

    EnterpriseWorks Graduate Serionix Featured in NASA’s Spinoff

    EnterpriseWorks graduate, Serionix was featured in the NASA’s 2019 Edition of Spinoff, an annual publication that features commerical technologies that have origins to NASA-backed research. Serionix was founded in 2011 by two Materials Science and Engineering PhD students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. While at EnterpriseWorks, Serionix was awarded multiple SBIR awards from the Johnson Space Center. These awards allowed the company to research and design filters for spacesuits and spacecrafts. However, this technology used to filter space can also be used in the home to improve indoor air quality and reduce pet odors. “All of the challenges that we have here are simply magnified up in space. That’s the environment up there, and people’s lives depend on solving those problems,” he says. “The challenges of deploying the technology in space definitely serve us well in making a more robust product for our customers on Earth,” said Co-Founder and President James Langer in the the Spinoff article. Learn more about Serinox’s partnership with NASA and their filtering technology here.

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    EnterpriseWorks News Partnerships & Acquisitions

    Veriflow, 2017 EnterpriseWorks Graduate, Acquired by VMware

    Ajay Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of VMware, announced on August 15, 2019, that the company is acquiring Veriflow, a startup that graduated from EnterpriseWorks in Research Park in 2017. “Veriflow is an innovator in network certification, assurance, and troubleshooting…. Once the acquisition is closed, VMware plans to invest in and integrate Veriflow into vRealize Network Insight to increase our overall network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities and adding new dimensions of network verification and What-If analysis directly to the platform,” Singh said. In 2016, Veriflow was selected as the Barclays “Innovation Challenge Winner,” beating out over 100 competing companies. It was the first networking company to use continuous network verification to eliminate network outages and vulnerabilities. The startup also announced that they had raised over $8 million in Series A funding that same year. In 2017, their success continued as Brighten Godfrey, co-founder and CFO of Veriflow, was awarded the Bay Area CIO of the Year in the Community Champion category by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and the San Francisco Business Times. The University of Illinois Research Park congratulates Veriflow on its multitude of successes. To read the full article, click HERE.

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    EnterpriseWorks Media Mentions News

    Interview with Tushar Pandey, SimBioSys Inc., CEO

    Tushar Pandey, Chief Executive Officer at SimBioSys Inc., spoke with The News-Gazette on July 21, 2019, about what he does for the company and what the company is accomplishing. The company’s work focuses on cancer, and the SimBioSys team has “created a platform to computationally simulate tumor response to drug regimens to help oncologists in treatment planning phase.” A patient’s tumor can be made virtual, which allows for deeper understanding that impacts drug delivery, chemical interactions, and metabolism. Essentially, a cancer is modeled in order to monitor its behavior. The company has a complete product for early-stage breast cancer, and clinical trials are already underway. SimBioSys is also working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to gain regulatory approval for their device so it can be used in medical settings. The goal of the company is to have a complete suite for all solid tumors within the next few years, and the first cancer targeted will be lung cancer. Initial work was funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute and from angel investors, and SimBioSys aims to secure another round of funding in late 2019 to speed up their work. To learn more about SimBioSys, click HERE.

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    EnterpriseWorks News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    Reconstruct Named One of Crunchbase’s 50 Hot Tech Companies in 2019

    Crunchbase published a list of the 50 Hot Tech Companies Globally in 2019, featuring Reconstruct, a Research Park startup. The companies were filtered based on Crunchbase data. Each of the companies listed has raised between $10 and $30 million in the last six months and has not exited via IPO or acquisition. Reconstruct has raised $10.1 million in total funding from investors, including Cultivation Capital, Serra Ventures, and Harbor Street Ventures. Reconstruct’s AI and digital twin capabilities help project stakeholders by providing indoor/outdoor views, enabling them to track and resolve issues in a virtual environment before actual impact on cost and schedule, revolutionizing construction management.

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    EnterpriseWorks News Research Park

    Board of Trustees Votes to Transfer Research Park Oversight

    CHAMPAIGN – The University of Illinois Board of Trustees today transferred oversight of the University of Illinois Research Park from the U. of I. System to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Trustees approved the Research Park in 1999 and authorized the University of Illinois Research Park LLC in 2000 as the formal entity to develop and operate research parks in support of the university’s economic development mission. On the endorsement of President Tim Killeen and Urbana campus Chancellor Robert Jones, the limited liability company’s Board of Managers voted in October to recommend that the Board of Trustees change the legal entity’s scope to focus solely on the Research Park in Urbana-Champaign. With its vote today at its bimonthly meeting on the Springfield campus, the board of trustees completed the transfer. “This will make our campus an even stronger contributor to the economic well-being of our community, and help to fulfill the missions of the Illinois Innovation Network and the Discovery Partners Institute,” Jones said. “We look forward to more deeply integrating activities of the campus faculty members, students and staff with those of the Research Park and EnterpriseWorks.” Susan Martinis, the interim vice chancellor for research at the Urbana-Champaign campus, said the total workforce at the Research Park represents the third-largest employer in the community. “Aligning the Research Park more closely with our campus strongly supports our research, teaching, public engagement and economic development missions,” Martinis said. “It’s a powerful pipeline for students to connect with companies for experiential learning, and for companies to connect with students to harness cutting-edge skills.” The Board of Trustees also approved four new members of the UIRP LLC Board of Managers, Wilbur Milhouse and Scott Rose from the private sector and Gies College of Business Dean Jeff Brown and College of ACES Dean Kim Kidwell to fill two faculty board positions. Read the entire news release HERE. News coverage:The News-Gazette

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    EnterpriseWorks Events News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    TellTail Honored with 2019 Edwin Moore Family Agriculture Innovation Prize

    Champaign, IL — TellTail, a startup that uses predictive and forecast algorithm technology to improve the management of pig production systems, is the recipient of the 2019 Edwin Moore Family Agriculture Innovation Prize. The award, generously funded by University of Illinois alumni and their families, rewards University of Illinois entrepreneurs focusing on agricultural innovations. Members of the Moore family presented the award to TellTail co-founders Angela Green-Miller, Andy Miller, and Chris Harbourt during the Agriculture Technology Innovation Summit on March 6 in Champaign. TellTail’s primary goal is to improve pig management in a way that reduces mortality, encourages desirable production traits, and increases profitability of production facilities. Its technology directly addresses its customer’s desire to produce more pork with fewer resources; its algorithms improve efficiency as well as animal welfare. The team who developed TellTail’s includes Green-Miller, an associate professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The company just moved into its own office at EnterpriseWorks, the technology incubator in the Research Park. The Edwin Moore Agriculture Innovation Fund was established in 2016 with a generous gift to EnterpriseWorks, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s technology incubator. Its goal is to encourage startup companies engaged in development of new innovative technologies that may lead to increased productivity and/or efficiency in farming, or to create new agricultural opportunities, including new processes, new crops, and new food production systems. Previous winners include EarthSense (2018) and Soil Diagnostics (2017). In addition to the prize given at the AgTech Innovation Summit, a second Edwin Moore Agriculture Innovation Fund award is at stake as part of the Cozad New Venture Competition, the university’s signature competition for student startups. It will be awarded in April. The award honors the legacy of Edwin E. Moore (1924), who graduated from the University of Illinois College of Agriculture and began farming in Will County. Throughout his agricultural career, he and wife, Iva, used innovative farming practices for both crop production and livestock management. Two of their four children became farmers, Edwin and Thomas (1953, College of Agriculture), and continued use of innovative farm practices. Subsequent generations of Edwin Moore’s family have continued to pursue farming and ag related careers capturing the same innovative spirit.

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    EnterpriseWorks News Partnerships & Acquisitions Research Park

    A Vision for “Research Park Commons” and EnterpriseWorks Incubator Expansion

    The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s recently released campus strategic plan includes several references to increasing investments in the University of Illinois Research Park and the EnterpriseWorks incubator with the express goal to grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem and support economic development in the region. The Research Park Master Plan, adopted in September 2018 by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, aims to double its size and continue attracting more companies, employees, and private development. At Monday’s University of Illinois Research Park LLC Board of Managers meeting, members discussed a vision toward those goals, called the EnterpriseWorks Expansion and Research Park Commons. This vision is a concept for a new building that would address two known factors impacting the future growth of the Research Park: 1) a lack of adequate lab facilities for growth-stage startup companies, in the community and throughout the state of Illinois; and 2) the need for additional Research Park community spaces providing an environment for creative collisions between the companies, employees, and faculty. No formal action was taken by the UIRP LLC Board of Managers. The study was commissioned by the University of Illinois Research Park LLC and completed by Clark Enersen Partners, a firm out of Kansas City that specializes in scientific buildings on college campuses.

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    EnterpriseWorks Media Mentions News

    EarthSense One of 8 Ag Tech Start-ups Worth Watching in 2019

    EarthSense, a company that develops ultra-compact autonomous robots for crop breeders, agronomists, and growers, has been featured in Successful Farming’s 8 Ag Tech start-ups worth watching in 2019. The company was founded by University of Illinois entrepreneurs, Chinmay Soman and Girish Chowdhary. Their headlining agricultural robot, TerraSentia, provides field phenotyping from the ground level up. The creation of TerraSentia was inspired by the recognition of the fact that most of the important events on a field start under the canopy. The start-up sold out of its 2018 Early Adopter Program, where they sold 25 robots. In the feature, Soman talks about the three key problems that EarthSense aims to tackle, which include promoting the creation of the more sustainable next generation crop varieties and resolving issues posed by herbicide-resistant weeds with the use of robots performing mechanical weeding. Read more on the feature here.  

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    EnterpriseWorks Graduates News Recognition & Awards

    EnterpriseWorks Graduate Runtime Verification Thrives in Urbana

    It’s not rare for a University of Illinois deep-tech startup to fly under the radar. One such startup — founded by a University of Illinois computer science faculty member and a graduate of the EnterpriseWorks incubator –received a bit of notoriety from online tech magazine Chicago Inno. Runtime Verification is now located in downtown Urbana, and has grown to have 30+ employees. Founded by Grigiore Rosu, uses runtime verification-based techniques to improve the safety, reliability, and correctness of software systems. “Runtime Verification, based in Urbana, has developed tools to improve the safety and reliability of software systems. Its technology can automatically detect bugs that are lurking in a company’s software, and identify problems before a program crashes. Runtime’s customers include a handful of high-profile clients—such as Boeing, NASA, Toyota and the National Science Foundation—who use the startup to make sure their code is error free.” For the entire article, please visit Chicago Inno.

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