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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

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    Events Features News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    AgTech Innovation Summit a Success Once Again

    The AgTech Innovation Summit was a success again this year. The 2020 AgTech Summit brought together the brightest minds in agtech for the fifth year. This year’s event included remarks from industry thought leaders including Bayer’s Senior Vice President of Open Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Allen Christian who said, “The future of agricultural innovation lies in the hands of the next generation of talented students. The AgTech Summit is a great example of how bringing people from across scientific disciplines together can help shape a more sustainable future for one of the world’s most important industries. At Bayer, we are proud to partner with the University of Illinois through our Innovation Center in the Research Park and as a sponsor the AgTech Summit.” The 2020 panels included discussions on investment, collaboration, and digital disruption in the agtech industry, including a discussion from growers and producers at the front lines of farming in a digital age. In addition to the unique mix of panel discussions, startup companies gave brief presentations on their technology, their company, and their plans for the future. The day concluded with the AgTech Showcase and Networking Event, a first for the Summit. The showcase not only allowed agtech companies to show off their technology, but it also provided the opportunity for the community to connect with Research Park companies, discover innovative technologies and network with industry leaders. The AgTech Summit is a collaboration between the University of Illinois Research Park, the University of Illinois, College of ACES, and the Office of Corporate Relations. Thank you to the generous sponsors who make this year’s event possible:  Bayer and The Climate Corporation, John Deere, Kin + Carta, Google Cloud, Corteva, COUNTRY Financial, AGCO, Land O’Lakes, and the Illinois Center for Digital Agriculture. 2020 Agenda Wednesday March 4, 2020 7:30 AM: REGISTRATION AND CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST 8:00 AM: WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS Laura Frerichs | Executive Director, University of Illinois Research Park Chancellor Robert Jones | Chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 8:10 AM: PLATINUM SPONSOR REMARKS Sam Eathington | Chief Science Officer, The Climate Corporation 8:25 AM: MORNING KEYNOTE ADDRESS Keith Narr | Vice President, Digital Labs and Data, Cargill 9:15 AM: COMPANY PRESENTATION Chinmay Soman | Co-Founder & CEO, EarthSense 9:30 AM: INVESTMENT IN AGTECH: A MATURING INDUSTRY? Moderator: Harlee Sorkin | Managing Director, Common Place Holdings Dennis Beard | Managing Partner, Serra Ventures Nancy Sullivan | CEO & Managing Partner, Illinois Ventures Dean Didato | Partner, Innova Memphis Abby Taubner | Partner, Gener8tor 10:20 AM: BREAK 10:35 AM: COMPANY PRESENTATION Rex Hess | Director of Science, Epivara 10:50 AM: COMPANY PRESENTATION Gabriel Burks | Senior Polymer Scientist, FrostDefense Envirotech 11:05 AM: DIGITAL DISRUPTION IN AGRICULTURE: MODERNIZING THE VALUE CHAIN Moderator: Vikram Adve | Co-Director, Center for Digital Agriculture Mark Moran | Director, John Deere Technology Innovation Center John Rahiya | Senior Manager, Business Development Global Fuse at AGCO Scott Hermes | Senior Director of Solution Delivery, Kin + Carta 12:00 PM: LUNCH 12:20 PM: AFTERNOON KICKOFF 12:35 PM: MOORE INNOVATION PRIZE 12:40 PM:  COMPANY PRESENTATION Kaiyu Guan | Chair, Aspiring Universe 12:55 PM: AFTERNOON FIRESIDE CHAT Moderator:  Laura Frerichs | Executive Director, University of Illinois Research Park Teddy Bekele | Chief Technology Officer, Land O’Lakes 1:30 PM: BREAK 1:45 PM: GROWERS AND PRODUCERS: PREPARING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION Moderator: Holly Spangler | Editor, Prairie Farmer Michael Ganschow | Farmer & Co-Owner, Ganschow Farms Jake Nims | Agricultural Engineer, Frank & West Environmental Engineers Leslie Cooperband | President & Co-owner, Prairie Fruits Farms & Creamery Jason Lakey | Farmer, Lakey Farms Brian Corkill | Owner, B.A. Farms Michael Haag | Past President, Illinois Pork Producers Association 2:45 PM: COMPANY PRESENTATION Daphne Preuss | Co-founder & President, BlooMD Shawn Carlson | Senior Scientist, BlooMD 3:00 PM: CORPORATIONS AND COLLABORATION: INDUSTRY LEADERS ON THE STATE OF AGRICULTURE Moderator: Dean Kim Kidwell |  Dean, University of Illinois College of ACES Allen Christian | Senior Vice President, Open Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, Bayer Crop Science Neal Gutterson | Chief Technology Officer, Corteva Agriscience Paul Bloom | Vice President of Process & Chemical Research, ADM Aaron Schacht | Vice President of Innovation Regulatory & Business Development, Elanco Animal Health 3:55 PM: CLOSING REMARKS 4:00 PM: AGTECH SHOWCASE AND NETWORKING EVENT

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    Events Features News Research Park

    SBIR Road Tour to Make Champaign-Urbana Visit in June

    UPDATE: This event has been postponed until Thursday, October 22. More information is available on the SBIR Road Tour website https://www.sbirroadtour.com/. The U.S. Small Business Administration announced today the launch of its 17-state SBIR Road Tour, which includes a stop in Champaign-Urbana on June 3-4, hosted by University of Illinois Research Park at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The Road Tour will connect entrepreneurs working on advanced technology to one of the country’s largest source of early stage funding – the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. “SBA is focused on helping small businesses grow and expand. The $4 billion in federal early stage funding is often a critical piece to maturing an entrepreneur’s research idea into a product or service. The Road Tours bring the federal managers to the entrepreneur and target areas and individuals that are underrepresented when it comes to receiving federal R&D funding,” said SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza. “This tour reflects our continued commitment to ensure those innovators are aware of SBIR/STTR program resources.” This will be the sixth year of the SBIR Road Tour, led by the SBA’s Office of Investment and Innovation together with 11 participating federal agencies. More information, including a detailed agenda and registration, will be released in March. NATIONAL SBIR ROAD TOUR SCHEDULE 2020: The Midwest Tour will run from June 1-5, with stops in Omaha, Nebraska; St. Louis, Missouri; Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and Bloomington, Indiana. The Southeast Tour will run from April 13-17, with stops in Richmond, Virginia; Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina; and Atlanta/Athens, Georgia. The Rockies Tour will run from August 10-14, with stops in Bozeman, Montana; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Laramie, Wyoming. Finally, the Central Southern Tour will run from November 2-6, with stops in Jackson, Mississippi; Shreveport, Louisiana; Dallas, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Fayetteville, Arkansas. Small technology firms, innovators, scientists or researchers seeking more information on the SBIR Road Tour, including a schedule of stops and participating agencies should visit: https://www.sbirroadtour.com/. For more information about SBIR/STTR programs, please visit https://www.sbir.gov/. About SBIR/STTRSBA coordinates the SBIR/STTR programs, also known as America’s Seed Fund, which each year provides more than $3.7 billion in early stage seed capital totaling over 5,000 awards to small businesses. Eleven participating federal government agencies announce funding opportunities as either grants or contracts to address their research and development needs. Companies supported by the SBIR/STTR programs often generate some of the most important breakthroughs each year in the U.S.  Additional information about the programs, as well as past and current topics can be found at www.sbir.gov. About the U.S. Small Business AdministrationThe U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 and is a Cabinet-level agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve free competitive enterprise and to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation.  The SBA helps Americans start, build and grow businesses, and recover from disasters.  Through an extensive network of field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations, the SBA delivers its services to people throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. To learn more about SBA, visit www.sba.gov.

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    Features News Research Park

    Research Park 2019 Year in Review

    2019 was a great year for the University of Illinois Research Park. In 2019, employment in the Research Park grew, ground was broken for several development projects, and many tech startups graduated from the EnterpriseWorks incubator. Here is a glimpse of the Research Park 2019 Year in Review: Research Park has experienced significant employment growth in the past five years. In 2015, the number of employees at Research Park was at 1,574. In 2019, employment reached a record of nearly 2,200 employees including 875 student interns from multi-disciplines. Three new innovation centers joined the Research Park in 2019. BP, Procter  & Gamble, and Motorola Solutions opened their doors at the Park to advance their technology and engage with the campus community. In addition to the new additions to the Research Park, several startups graduated from EnterpriseWorks. Most of these companies stayed local to the Champaign-Urbana area. In fact, 70% of EnterpriseWorks graduates remain in the State of Illinois. In 2019, three projects broke ground in the Research Park. The Illinois Conference Center expansion, the addition of a Greenhouse to support the “Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency” (RIPE) project, and the construction of a multi-tenant building on Fourth Street are in the works with expected completion dates in 2020. On July 1, the governance of the Research Park was transferred from the U of I system to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. The scope of the Research Park will focus solely on the Urbana-Champaign campus. Throughout 2019, the Research Park hosted over 200 events including the AgTech and Big Data Summits, Women in Tech luncheons, entrepreneurial and intern workshops, and networking and recruiting events. 2019 Year in Review

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    EnterpriseWorks Features Media Mentions News

    EarthSense, Featured on OneZero about Autonomous Tractors

    EnterpriseWorks agtech startup EarthSense was featured in an OneZero Article about the regulations on autonomous tractors in January. This article stresses the importance of the freedom to send autonomous tractors over farm fields without much, if any, regulatory interference or risk of injuring humans helps speed the development of better technology. Cofounder Girish Chowdhary says “The challenge with agriculture is that the environment can be very different in different fields.” EarthSense, a company that develops ultra-compact autonomous robots was founded in 2016 by University of Illinois researchers and entrepreneurs Chinmay Soman and Girish Chowdhary. This past month, the company received Phase II SBIR funding from the National Science Foundation. This award will allow the startup to continue work toward large-scale deployment of TerraSentia for agricultural research and product development.  To read the full article by OneZero, click here.

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    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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    Community Features News Research Park

    Campus Conversation with Susan Martinis, Interim Vice Chancellor for Research

    Susan Martinis, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign‘s Interim Vice Chancellor for Research, spoke with Julie Wurth from The News Gazette on September 18, 2019, about efforts on campus to reduce campus sexual harassment, her experience as a woman in STEM, and the impact of ownership within the Research Park. In regards to the latter, Martinis noted that, “I think that it’s given us a few more players to think about. And I think with a few more players and getting to know our partners, it’s also given us some more opportunities…. They are interested in growing the Research Park, which again is my mission, to double the Research Park in whatever capacity that means.” Martinis provides leadership for campus-wide interdisciplinary research institutes while promoting research initiatives and overseeing appropriate research conduct at the University of Illinois. Her research focuses on leucyl-tRNA synthetase, and she currently leads a W.M. Keck Foundation-supported team to characterize mammalian variants of the synthetase. To hear the full episode, click here for the article.

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    EnterpriseWorks Features Media Mentions News

    The 21st Broadcasts Live From Enterpriseworks

    Illinois Public Media made a very special trip to the Research Park on Tuesday, September 25 to broadcast their radio show, The 21st, live from the EnterpriseWorks incubator. The broadcast discussed startup culture in the Champaign-Urbana area, focusing on promising innovation from student entrepreneurs and startups within the incubator. Host Niala Boodhoo spent the morning at the EnterpriseWorks incubator speaking with Director Laura Frerichs. Frerichs said the Research Park “is a hotbed of startup activity. There’s so much science happening at the University and ample opportunity to bring that to the market through the ingenuity of students, faculty, alumni that see an opportunity for new products and new technologies that can truly be disruptive.” They talked all about the startup workforce in Champaign-Urbana and how it contributes to technological growth. Boodhoo also spent some time speaking with Research Park startup owners and iVenture entrepreneurs about their companies. She began with EarthSense founder Chinmay Soman and later interviewed Petronics co-founders Michael Friedman and Dave Cohen about the future of their businesses. She also spoke with iVenture participants Teresa Yang of PhantomCor and Kendall Furbee of Cut To The Case about their experience as student entrepreneurs. To listen to “this very special 21st, live from EnterpriseWorks at the Research Park,” access the entire broadcast online here.

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    Features Media Mentions News Recognition & Awards

    Oso Technologies Product Inspires Letterman “Top Ten” and Conan

    The “Top Ten List” segment from David Letterman’s Late Night show on Feb. 7 was inspired by Oso Technologies’ PlantLink system. Its product was also mentioned on Conan, CBS This Morning, and Drudge Report the week of Feb. 4. Top Ten Things House Plants Have To Say Thursday, February 7, 2013 10. “Watching you eat salad is creepy” 9. “Please ask the dog to stop ‘watering’ me” 8. “I had the most amazing photosynthesis last weekend” 7. “Your wife is sleeping with the UPS guy” 6. “I’m not going back on tour with Led Zeppelin” (Oh, I’m sorry, that’s what Robert Plant has to say) 5. “I absorb the CO2 you exhale–maybe try a breath mint” 4. “I’d like to thank the people of Colorado and Washington for legalizing me” 3. “For the love of God, put on some pants” 2. “With my ass in the dirt all day, I feel like the 49ers defense–Hey-o!” 1. “Your cactus is a real prick”  

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    Features Media Mentions News Recognition & Awards

    Forbes Cites University of Illinois Research Park as a Technology Incubator Changing the World

    CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Forbes.com’s list of technology incubators that are changing the world included the University of Illinois Research Park. The Champaign park was included in an April 16 online story — “In Depth:10 Technology Incubators That Are Changing the World” –because of it’s the combination of established firms and start-ups in close proximity, student employment in companies and the history of innovations from the University of Illinois. The University of Illinois Research Park was lauded for having a combination of large corporate operations alongside new technology startups. This creates an opportunity for interaction that allows small firms to learn from large corporations and for the established firms to develop entrepreneurial approaches to innovation. “The Research Park at the University of Illinois has effectively attracted and grown operations for large corporations and also supported technology commercialization,” said Avijit Ghosh, U of I vice president for technology and economic development. Located on campus, The Research Park at the University of Illinois opened in 2001 and has grown rapidly. Currently the park has 80 companies and 607,000 square feet of building space. The Research Park has been developed as a public-private partnership between the University of Illinois and Fox/Atkins Development. The Research Park at the University of Illinois provides an environment where technology-based businesses can work with the research faculty and students at the Urbana campus to take advantage of opportunities for collaborative research and easy access to University labs, equipment and services. Publically traded firms in the Research Park include: ADM, Abbott Laboratories, Caterpillar, Deere & Company, QUALCOMM, Littelfuse, Riverbed, SAIC, Sony, State Farm and Yahoo. “One of the secrets to our success has been the growing employment of students by Research Park companies,” said Laura Frerichs, associate director of Research Park and Incubation Facilities. Research Park companies employ 440 students in positions that are typically year-round placements and provide hands-on learning in paid positions.   “This continuity of employment allows companies to leverage student talent all year, reduce workforce costs by hiring students as research staff, achieve a flexible staffing model and create a recruiting pipeline of future talent to cherry-pick after graduation,” said Frerichs. The article and full list of incubators selected by Forbes is available at:http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/16/technology-incubators-changing-the-world-entrepreneurs-technology-incubator_slide_8.html.                                                              #### University of Illinois/Research Park contacts Research Park website: researchpark5.wpenginepowered.com Avijit Ghosh, Vice President for Technology and Economic Development (217) 265-5440 vpted@uillinois.edu Laura Frerichs, Associate Director of Research Park and Incubation Facilities  (217) 333-8324 lfrerich@illinois.edu Fox/Atkins Development, LLC Peter FoxManaging Member(217) 351-1430peterf@fox-companies.com About the University of Illinois: The University of Illinois is a world leader in research and discovery, the largest educational institution in the state with more than 71,000 students, 24,000 faculty and staff, and campuses in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield. Since its founding in 1867, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has earned a reputation as a world-class leader in research, teaching, and public engagement. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a long history of innovations and technology invented by students, faculty, and alumni that have changed the world including: the first public demonstration of sound on film; Prof. John Bardeen’s theory of superconductivity and his previous work inventing the transistor; Illiac, the first digital computer built and owned entirely by an educational institution; Mosaic, the first popular graphical browser for the World Wide Web; Plato, the first computer based education system; nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) that led to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); You Tube developed by former computer science students Steve Chen and Jawed Karim; PayPal founded by Max Levchin; Siebel Systems founded by UI alumnus, Thomas Siebel; and Beckman Instruments founded by UI alumnus, Arnold Beckman. About Fox/Atkins Development, LLC: In a joint effort with the University of Illinois, Fox/Atkins Development, LLC, a partnership that was formed between Fox Development Corporation and The Atkins Group, was selected to develop The Research Park at the University of Illinois. www.foxcompanies.com.

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