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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Research Park

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    Community News Partnerships & Acquisitions Recognition & Awards Research Park

    New Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation Has Significant Ties to Research Park

    Champaign – The National Science Foundation has awarded a $15.5 Million grant to four Illinois universities, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to create an Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI). The aim of the IMSI is to bring powerful mathematical ideas to bear on key contemporary scientific and technological challenges. Laura Frerichs, executive director of the University of Illinois Research Park, has been selected for one of the seven IMSI Board of Trustees. In addition to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IMSI will include a collaborative group of mathematicians and statisticians from the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The $15.5 million grant will be provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the next five years. “The project builds on the leadership of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,” said Matt Ando, associate dean for life and physical sciences at the College of LAS, who played a key role in forming the institute. “The university’s outstanding record of success with interdisciplinary institutes, such as the Beckman Institute and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and the innovative record of the departments of Mathematics and Statistics in workforce development, in collaboration with the University of Illinois Research Park, were important strengths of the proposal.” Researchers at the new IMSI will build a platform that efficiently applies mathematical and statistical techniques into solutions for urgent real-world applications. Some of these applications include climate change, health care, quantum information theory, artificial intelligence, data science, economics, and materials science. IMSI will also have a sustained focus on communication with researchers in other fields, and in educating the public about how mathematics and statistics can be used for everyday problems and social issues. IMSI will sponsor outreach and workforce development programs aimed at K-12 students, teachers, undergraduates, and graduate students. With the goal to introduce participants to career opportunities in mathematics and statistics, especially to communities who traditionally have been underrepresented in STEM. To read more about the IMSI grant, click here.

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    News Recognition & Awards

    COUNTRY Financial® Project Leveraging DigitaLab Interns Selected by 50+ Insurer CIOs for Novarica Impact Award

    July 7, 2020 (BOSTON) — COUNTRY Financial® will receive an Impact Award from the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council, a peer community of hundreds of insurer CIOs. More than fifty CIO council members reviewed dozens of case studies to select the winners for the 9th annual awards. COUNTRY Financial leveraged its DigitaLab, a partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to move two apps to new strategic cloud platforms while developing student intern talent. The project saved nearly $40,000 in vendor costs and enabled platform consolidation. “Novarica’s research shows that more than half of insurers say talent is a top challenge, but many have difficulty prioritizing it against other pressing needs. COUNTRY’s Impact case study shows how insurers can cultivate talent for recruitment while simultaneously leveraging it for innovation and delivering real business results,” says Matthew Josefowicz, President/CEO of Novarica and moderator of the Council. “Utilizing our DigitaLab partnership to re-platform to the cloud allowed our interns to innovate and contribute nearly 550 hours of programming and technology implementation, which is a key reason they look to us for an internship experience,” said Brad Hildestad, Chief Information Officer at COUNTRY Financial. “Their work assists us in delivering faster solutions to our clients and positions COUNTRY Financial to successfully scale our work during weather-related claims when our clients need us most.” COUNTRY Financial’s case study, along with case studies of seven other winners, and more than 20 additional cases considered for Impact Awards, was published this week in Novarica’s 9th Annual Impact Case Study Compendium, online at https://novarica.com/compendium2020/. Novarica has published more than 220 case studies through this program since 2012. About the Novarica Impact Awards The Novarica Research Council Impact Awards are the largest purely peer-juried awards in insurance technology. CIO council members vote annually to recognize the efforts of their peers to use technology to drive business value in digital, data/analytics, core systems, and IT operations. No vendors, consultants, journalists, or members of the Novarica team participate in the selection committee, making the Novarica Impact Awards distinctive in being a purely peer-juried award. The Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council is a free, moderated, knowledge-sharing community of more than 300 insurer CIOs and senior executives. In addition to recognizing successful initiatives through the Impact Awards, members participate in anonymized studies and private, vendor-free events. More information at https://novarica.com/council/ The Council is managed by Novarica, a research and advisory firm that helps more than 100 insurers make better decisions about technology projects and strategy through published research, advisory services, strategic consulting, and special programs. https://novarica.com/ About COUNTRY Financial® COUNTRY Financial serves about one million households and businesses throughout the United States and offers a full range of financial products and services from auto, home, business, farm and life insurance to retirement planning services, investment management and annuities. Press Contact Emily Lecaque media@novarica.com 833-668-2742

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    EnterpriseWorks Features News Recognition & Awards

    ATSP Innovations, EnterpriseWorks Graduate, Selected for NASA Phase 1 Awards

    ATSP Innovations, an EnterpriseWorks graduate, announced on June 30, 2020, that the company was selected for a Phase I SBIR and a Phase I STTR by NASA.  These awards will be used for “Creep-Resistant Aromatic Polyester Thermosets for Thin-Ply Composites” and “Ultra-High Temperature Elastomer Sealing Materials”. ATSP Innovations was founded in 2010 and is engaged in developing and commercializing a new family of resins (Aromatic Thermosetting coPolyesters, i.e. ATSP) that demonstrate robustness in multiple environments and can be introduced to a variety of high-demanding applications.  In 2019, the company was awarded a Phase I SBIR from NASA for its “Extreme Environment Tribological Characterization of Advanced Bearing Materials”. ATSP was also awarded a Phase II SBIR grant totaling more than $480,000 from the National Science Foundation in 2012. The company was co-founded by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Prof. Emeritus James Economy, a faculty member in the Department of Material Science and Engineering, and Prof. Andreas Polycarpou, a former W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. Learn more about their selection in ATSP Innovations’ News.

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    EnterpriseWorks Investments News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    EarthSense Creating Autonomous Disinfecting Robots to Fight COVID-19 Transmission

    EnterpriseWorks startup EarthSense has received accelerated funding from the National Science Foundation to support the development of autonomous sanitizing robots that can help reduce the transmission of COVID-19, the company announced on June 3. By using innovative robotics and machine learning, EarthSense plans to have robots autonomously build maps of hospital rooms and disinfect them with Ultra Violet (UV) light. EarthSense autonomous sanitizing robots can have applications in offices, schools, and other public areas to reduce community transmission and help relax social distancing measures sooner. The $256,000 Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer Award will engage EarthSense as well as other University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty experts in robotics.  Girish Chowdhary, co-founder and CTO of EarthSense, and Donald Biggar, Willet Faculty Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said, “We felt driven to respond to this staggering crisis by accelerating our plan to create products beyond agriculture. We are making every effort to rapidly deploy our autonomous COVID sanitizing robots. The accelerated funding from the National Science Foundation is a critical validation of our approach to help manage COVID-19 and future diseases.” EarthSense was recently selected for the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator and received a Phase II SBIR award. EarthSense was founded in 2016 by Chinmay Soman and Girish Chowdhary. The company develops ultra-compact autonomous robots. TerraSentia, its first robot, is revolutionizing agriculture by improving the quantity, accuracy, cost, and speed of in-field plant trait data collection. Visit EarthSense’s website to learn more.

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    EnterpriseWorks News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    EarthSense Selected for Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator

    EarthSense, a growing agtech startup at EnterpriseWorks, has been selected by the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) to join the program as a member of IN2’s seventh cohort.  Funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation and co-administered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), this program will allow the EarthSense team to work with crop geneticists in the Danforth Center. EarthSense’s phenotyping data will be validated and commercialized in order to help crop breeders use the next generation of crop breeding technologies. According to Chinmay Soman, CEO and co-founder of EarthSense, “Working with world leading scientists at the Danforth Center and the entrepreneurial ecosystem put together by Wells Fargo and NREL will help accelerate our impact on agriculture, starting with better seeds for farmers.” The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis is where EarthSense will conduct its research and development activities. They have received up to $250,000 in technical assistance with the opportunity for follow-on funding and resources from the Danforth Center, Wells Fargo, NREL, and more IN2 partners. An IN2 Channel Partner was responsible for nominating EarthSense for this program. Other recent accomplishments by EarthSense include receiving Phase II SBIR funding from the National Science Foundation, being selected to participate in John Deere’s 2020 Startup Collaborator program, and being featured in the New York Times. 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. To read on about EarthSense’s accomplishments and their selection for the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator, visit their company website.

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    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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    Community News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    Local Inventors and Entrepreneurs Innovating for COVID-19

    In addition to companies seeking support from federal loan programs to help sustain their businesses, local entrepreneurs and inventors are creating new products and technologies to help fight COVID-19. Serionix’s novel material filters toxic particles in space. Soon, its creators will know if it protects against the coronavirus in masks. Serionix co-founders Will Zheng and James Langer and their doctoral advisor James Economy from the University of Illinois Department of Materials Science, spent years developing a self-sterilizing material that can filter harmful particles, which is now being applied to face masks. Serionix was a winner of the Cozad New Venture Challenge and graduated from the EnterpriseWorks incubator, the company is now manufacturing its products in Urbana. Read more here. Three Nick Holonyak Jr., Micro and Nanotechnology Lab (HMNTL) faculty members have received NSF Rapid Response Research (RAPID) program grants, all of which aim to shorten the amount of time it takes to process a COVID-19 test. A team led by Rashid Bashir, Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering, has proposed the development of a point-of-care device that uses nasal fluid samples to detect the presence of COVID-19 within 10 minutes. A team led by Prof. Brian Cunningham combines capturing intact COVID-19 viruses with custom-designed DNA nanostructures so they can be immediately counted with a newly-invented type of biosensor imaging.  A team with Prof. Yi Lu (founder of Glucosentient and Andalyze at the Research Park) is working with Lijun Rong from UIC to develop a biosensor that could detect and differentiate infectious SARS-CoV-2 from the SARS-CoV-2 that have been rendered noninfectious by patient’s antibodies or disinfectants. This would allow patients to receive proper treatment in a timely manner, and would allow people who aren’t infected or contagious to be released from quarantine. The SBIR/STTR Technical Assistance program through EnterpriseWorks and the IL University Incubator Network (IUIN) is providing free 1:1 assistance with companies pursuing federal funding opportunities to address COVID-19 opportunities. Examples of federal funding opportunities can be found here, and from G2G.

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    EnterpriseWorks News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    EarthSense Receives Phase II SBIR Award from NSF

    EarthSense, a startup located at the EnterpriseWorks incubator, 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. “TerraSentia is helping create a stronger foundation for agriculture by enabling faster and lower cost creation of the next generation of crops that are more productive, sustainable, and resilient,” said EarthSense co-founder and CEO Chinmay Soman. Major agriculture companies, such as KWS, have already piloted TerraSentia since 2018. Currently, there is a lack of data that is slowing the development of sustainable agronomic practices. This two-year grant from NSF will allow EarthSense to accelerate final product development and achieve rapid global deployment of the TerraSentia platform. Other recent accomplishments by EarthSense include being selected to participate in John Deere’s 2020 Startup Collaborator program and being featured in the New York Times. 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. Read on about EarthSense’s accomplishments and this Phase II funding by visiting their company website.

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    Community News Recognition & Awards

    Team at the University of Illinois Develops Emergency Ventilator

    A team led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering and Carle Health has produced a prototype emergency ventilator to help address the expected surge in the need for respiratory care associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Illinois RapidVent, as the emergency ventilator is known, would plug into the oxygen source available in most hospital rooms or could plug into a tank of oxygen. The prototype has run for more than 75 hours, which is more than 125,000 breathing cycles. Over this time, the device delivered the amount of oxygen necessary and the pressure that patients would need when they are unable to breathe well enough on their own. So far, focused testing in the laboratory shows equivalent performance to commercial products—which are in very short supply. Partners in the Illinois RapidVent project include faculty and researchers from across the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, its Grainger College of Engineering, its Siebel Center for Design, its Applied Research Institute, Carle Health, Tekmill, and Creative Thermal Solutions, Inc. TEKMILL, the Applied Research Institute, and Carle all have facilities in the Research Park. Read the full article on the Grainger College of Engineering’s website here.

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    Events News Recognition & Awards Research Park

    Yahoo turned 25 this week

    Since 1995, Yahoo has been connecting people to their passions and amplifying what matters most to them. Yahoo pioneered communications with Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail as the internet was booming.  As the company grew, Yahoo became the premier destination for content including News, Sports, and Finance. Now, Yahoo is part of Verizon Media  with over 900 million visitors from across the globe. If you would like to build products which impact millions and change the world, see below for the exciting work Yahoo does in the Research Park. Verizon Media Group’s Data Measurements and Insights team works on one of the biggest online advertising and audience data sets in the world. They are responsible for providing fast, clean, and relevant data for VMG’s advertising businesses as well as key measurements and insights about VMG users. Verizon Media is developing next generation technologies to enrich their advertiser and user experience through complex, scalable data platforms, with ever growing and interesting challenges. The Big Data Platforms team powers the most demanding Big Data applications in the industry on some of the largest Hadoop clusters ever built. Yahoo pioneered this level of scale with Hadoop, and Verizon Media continues to be a leader in this space. The team is made up of several PMCs (Program Management Committee members) and Committers in key Apache open source projects like Hadoop, Storm, and Tez, just to name a few. Leadership keeps Verizon Media at the forefront of these projects, both directionally and technically. If you want to work with Hadoop, Storm, or Spark and get a deep understanding of cloud computing, this is the team for you. Fun Fact: Did you know that Yahoo was the first tech company ever to implement emoticons ? Come see what Verizon Media Group is doing in the Silicon Prairie, in Champaign, Illinois!

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