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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Research Park

    Media Mentions

    EnterpriseWorks Features Media Mentions News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    EnterpriseWorks Graduate Eden Park Illumination Featured in Wall Street Journal After Pivoting Technology to Address COVID-19

    Eden Park Illumination, a faculty-founded startup that launched at the  EnterpriseWorks incubator at Research Park, drew the attention of the Wall Street Journal for pivoting its UV light technology to address COVID-19. In the process, it has rejuvenated the company and has experienced unprecedented growth. Wall Street Journal reporter Ruth Simon profiled the company in her recent story, “Covid-19 Shuttered More Than 1 Million Small Businesses. Here Is How Five Survived.” Wrote Simon, in the Journal’s August 1 editions: “Eden Park Illumination Inc. had one product to sell before Covid-19: an ultraviolet light that distinguished real diamonds from fakes. The spread of a deadly virus across the globe shifted the focus of the tiny Champaign, Ill., startup to another ultraviolet light application that it had not planned to introduce for at least two years. This one would disinfect crowded spaces. Within weeks, the 10-person company began shipping prototypes. Eden Park has since delivered more than 1,000 of the lights and added a dozen workers, including a head of manufacturing.” Eden Park Illumination was founded by Gary Eden and Sun-Jin Park, then University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign electrical engineering faculty members (Eden is now an emeritus faculty member). It graduated from EnterpriseWorks in 2009. Eden and Park remain part of the company; it recently hired a new CEO, John Yerger. Now based on the west side of Champaign, the company manufactures flat panel, thin 222 nm UV lamps that “may provide immediate relief in mitigating COVID-19 outbreaks in populated indoor spaces, including factories, submarines, aircraft carriers, planes, waiting rooms, restaurants and more.” The company has also been profiled on Fox Business News with other mentions on ABC News and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  For more about the company and its technology, visit the Eden Park website.

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    EnterpriseWorks Features Media Mentions News Research Park

    EarthSense TerraSentia Featured in Successful Farming

    EarthSense, an agtech startup based in EnterpriseWorks, was featured by Successful Farming for their innovative robot, TerraSentia. 80 of these robots have been deployed as of July 2020, and the company intends to produce 100 before the year ends. Corteva Agriscience, a publicly traded, global pure-play agriculture company with a research and development center in Research Park, currently uses EarthSense’s TerraSentia “to develop hardware as well as analytics to get the best possible data for our product development,” explained Neil Hausmann, Corteva Agriscience Field Sensing Lead and Distinguished Research Fellow.  Although Corteva began using drones in 2015, TerraSentia is unique since it is designed to “automate in-field plant trait collection” where drones cannot reach. “Using computer vision and machine learning, the autonomous robot is currently being taught to measure early vigor, corn ear height, soybean pods, plant biomass, and to detect and identify diseases abiotic stresses.” Hausmann said that TerraSentia is essential for Corteva because it “improves the outcomes for the grower not only to achieve higher yields, but also to help create more stable products for his operation.” EarthSense was founded in 2016 by Chinmay Soman and Girish Chowdhary. The company develops ultracompact autonomous robots that use machine vision and machine learning to collect and convert field data into useful information. TerraSentia, their first robot, is revolutionizing agriculture.  EarthSense received a Phase II SBIR award from the National Science Foundation in April 2020, was selected by the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator to join its seventh cohort in May 2020, and received accelerated funding from the National Science Foundation to transform TerraSentia into an autonomous sanitizing robot in June 2020.

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    Community Media Mentions News

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign EDA University Center Issues Report on Economic Gardening in the State of Illinois

    CHAMPAIGN — The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s EDA University Center published a report on how downstate Illinois communities are utilizing — and can continue to employ – economic development strategies that focus on enhancing and growing the existing assets of each community. The report, authored by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urban Planning Professor Marc Doussard, was supported with funding from the university’s EDA University Center. The report points out successful examples of economic gardening strategies already happening in downstate communities, such as:– Building up fermentation expertise and resources in Carbondale– Students gaining business experience by operating arts-based ventures in Decatur– A partnership between a university medical system and local healthcare system that supports medical entrepreneurs in Peoria. The report identifies further opportunities to leverage assets such as healthcare systems, agricultural resources, and an abundance of highly educated, experienced human capital. “In our work with the University Center meeting with communities across downstate Illinois, we realized there was a need for incubator and entrepreneurship assistance along with “economic gardening” fundamentals to grow jobs and companies based on community assets and opportunities,” said Laura Frerichs, director of the University Center. “We worked with Professor Marc Doussard to develop strategies to help communities and assess the differing economic potential in downstate Illinois, and incorporate challenges and opportunities we experienced in regional economies.” Some of the report’s findings:– Whether entrepreneurs make software, whiskey or biomedical devices, most communities can support them by identifying ways to mitigate some of entrepreneurship’s basic and enduring challenges such as funding and risk.– Most economic gardening strategies can be initiated quickly, simply and without extensive up-front costs.– Retirees, students and immigrants all stand out as under-realized sources for new businesses. The full report is available online at https://go.illinois.edu/GrowOurOwnIL. The University of Illinois Economic Development Association (EDA) University Center exists to promote and foster entrepreneurship in Illinois south of Interstate 80. This program is supported by federal grant funding from the United States Economic Development Administration. For more information, please contact us at research-park@illinois.edu or 217-333-8324.

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign EDA University Center Issues Report on Economic Gardening in the State of Illinois Read Post »

    EnterpriseWorks Graduates Media Mentions News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    Co-founders of Quicket Solutions Recognized as Crain’s 20 In Their Twenties

    The two co-founders of Quicket Solutions, a graduate from the EnterpriseWorks incubator at Research Park, have been recognized as one of Crain’s Chicago Business’s 20 In Their Twenties.  Christiaan Burner graduated from the Gies College of Business and Akshay Singh graduated from The Grainger College of Engineering. The beginnings of their successful data cloud software company began during their tenure in EnterpriseWorks. It has been recognized for its noteworthy accomplishments, innovation, high performance, and the potential to achieve even more in the technological world. Now it is located in downtown Chicago with a team largely consisted of the University of Illinois alumni.  Quicket is cloud-based data software to increase efficiency for handing out tickets, organizing the government data, and document hearings and payments. Through this software, police departments are able to digitize data, reduce ineligibility, and perform duties more efficiently. Transitioning from a paper system to a digital world provides ease and efficiency in the government workloads.  For more information on Quicket Solutions, visit here.

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    EnterpriseWorks Media Mentions News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    AgTech Startup EarthSense Featured in New York Times

    EnterpriseWorks agtech startup EarthSense was featured in an article in the New York Times in its February 13 edition. In the article, co-founder Girish Chowdhary discussed EarthSense’s TerraSentia, a farm robot that uses advanced machine-learning skills to collect and report data in the fields. EarthSense was founded in 2016 by University of Illinois researchers and entrepreneurs Chinmay Soman and Girish Chowdhary.  Since their start, the company has developed an agricultural robotics and AI platform with three key applications: (1) developing the next generation of more productive and sustainable crops, (2) helping growers obtain actionable intelligence from their fields, and (3) managing problems like herbicide resistant weeds.

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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 Graduates Media Mentions News

    Personify Named One of Crain’s Chicago’s Most Innovative Companies

    EnterpriseWorks graduate Personify landed in the top 10 on Crain’s Chicago’s Most Innovative Companies list. The company was named number 4, but this isn’t the first time Personify has appeared on the Most Innovative Companies list. Crain’s Chicago Business named Personify tenth on the list in 2018. Personify was founded in 2009 by University of Illinois Professor Sanjay Patel and his colleagues Minh Do and Wen-mei Hwu. The company has developed advanced video technology that allows users to have an immersive video experience. Users can use Personify’s “virtual green screen” to blur video background or customize their background. Learn more about Personify’s technology 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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    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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    Media Mentions News Research Park

    Interview with Troy Kollman, Brunswick’s i-Jet Lab Director

    Troy Kollman, the site director for Brunswick Corporation’s i-Jet Lab within Research Park, spoke with The News-Gazette about the key contributions of interns and the current direction of the company on July 14, 2019. “The Research Park at the UI is fairly unique among large universities. It offers corporations a collaborative environment to exchange operational ideas with other companies that operate in an innovation space,” he explained. The i-Jet Lab has worked with over 50 University of Illinois students from a wide range of backgrounds, including business, design, and mechanical engineering. They play a large role in supporting Brunswick as they seek to focus resources on the recreational boating industry. Kollmann and his colleagues act as mentors for interns as they all work cohesively as a team, overcoming roadblocks and redefining the marine industry. To learn more about the i-Jet Lab and the future direction of Brunswick, click HERE.

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