Media Mentions

Aadeel Akhtar, CEO of EnterpriseWorks startup PSYONIC, was named to the MIT Technology Review’s list of 35 Innovators Under 35 for 2021. The MIT Technology Review recognized Akhtar as a humanitarian for his innovative approach to designing prosthetics. PSYONIC’s premiere product, the Ability Hand, was released in 2019. The Ability Hand was the first commercially available prosthetic hand to include multitouch sensory feedback. The device utilizes electrical currents to stimulate nerves allowing users to “feel”  what the prosthetic touches. Akhtar launched PSYONIC in 2015 and the company moved into EnterpriseWorks in 2018. PSYONIC has experienced great success since the company launch. Their accomplishments include, winning the Illinois Innovation Prize in 2016, a mention in the Forbes list of 30 under 30, and first place at the 8VC Social Innovation Cup in 2019. Each year the MIT Technology Review publishes a list of 35 Innovators Under 35; more than 500 people are nominated to be included annually. The work of the nominated individuals is then evaluated by a prestigious panel of judges who select the final list. MIT Technology Review acknowledged Akhtar’s commitment to both functionality and affordability. PSYONIC products are inexpensive enough to be covered by Medicare which makes them available to 75 percent of individuals in the US who need them. The prosthetics are also built to withstand the stresses of everyday life without cracking. Akhtar received his PhD in Neuroscience and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois. Read more about Akhtar and PSYONIC in 35 Innovators Under 35 here: https://bit.ly/3xkF8bm

Epivara, a startup based at EnterpriseWorks, was recently featured on WCIA 3 News after receiving a $255,000 SBIR Phase I award from the National Science Foundation. Rex Hess, Epivara’s Director of Science, was interviewed in this news story, and he explained Epivara’s iSpay/iNeuter technology. This funding will go towards the creation of an injection that would act as a permanent alternative to spaying and neutering for cats and dogs. The Research Park is proud to support the Epivara startup team as they continue to develop this technology. Find the full story here: https://bit.ly/EpivaraWCIA

Ed Tech Magazine’s Summer 2021 edition features a two-page spread telling the story of the Verizon 5G Innovation Hub at the University of Illinois Research Park. The article details how the hub became the first of its kind on a college campus, and discusses the advantages of the hub for both the private sector and university researchers. “The result of a partnership with Verizon, the Innovation Hub is bringing together small startups, large companies and university researchers and students to collaborate on new use cases for 5G, says Laura Frerichs, executive director of the Research Park. “My hope is that both our companies and our researchers are able to invent ahead of others what’s possible with 5G,” she says. “Rather than talk about the technology in terms of hypotheticals, they will be able to try it out and learn from each other.”

Girish Chowdhary, co-founder of EnterpriseWorks startup EarthSense, was featured in a BBC article for his expertise in the field of agricultural robotics. Chowdhary explains that largely autonomous farms are just over the horizon, as many emerging technologies, such as robots that can monitor the health of crops, are being put to use in research fields. “A farm is going to need different kinds of robots,” says Chowdhary. “Some of them are going to be very small…others are going to be big, perhaps even as big as the combine harvester. There will be an autonomous system that is co-ordinating this team of robots, telling them what they need to do in order to get different tasks done.” In addition to robots, Chowardly predicts that drones will be increasingly utilized in the agricultural domain. “Drones are really good at covering a lot of space… they can go somewhere and spray something, or take a picture, really quickly,” says Chowdhary. EarthSense is creating dramatic new possibilities for crop breeders, plant protection products developers, crop scientists, and field agronomists. TerraSentia, their first robot, improves the quantity, accuracy, cost, and speed of in-field plant trait data collection, specifically for under canopy plants. EarthSense machine vision and machine learning-based analytics seamlessly convert field data to specific, actionable information about plant-traits.

Kaiyu Guan, founder of EnterpriseWorks startup Aspiring Universe, was a principal investigator to the University of Illinois report, Redefining drought in the US corn belt. This report was featured in a Forbes article.  Stating the climate is now trending warmer and drier, global food security is now increasingly dependent on crops’ ability to withstand droughts, and producers aren’t focused on the right metrics when measuring crop-relevant droughts.  Kaiyu Guan said, “Plants have to balance water supply and demand. Both are extremely critical, but people overlook the demand of the equation, especially in the U.S. Corn Belt. If you only consider rainfall and soil moisture, that’s mostly describing the supply side. Of course, if you have low soil moisture, plants will be stressed by how much water they get. However, the demand side from the atmosphere can also severely stress plants. We need to pay more attention to that drought signal.” Aspiring Universe (ASP) is a farming financial risk modeling company. ASP helps financial institutes, public agencies, and individual producers to quantify, manage, and reduce financial risks in the farming-related business.  They aim to monitor and model every crop field’s financial risks in the United States and worldwide. ASP has developed revolutionary approaches to rate historical and real-time financial risks for each crop field and each farmer, by integrating advancing technology in three domains: satellite/corp modeling, artificial intelligence, and agricultural finance modeling.