Accio Energy, Inc.
Alter­na­tive Energy

Accio Energy, Inc. is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based early-stage renew­able energy com­pany led by expe­ri­enced and suc­cess­ful pre­vi­ously venture-backed exec­u­tives.  The com­pany is devel­op­ing unique “turbine-less” wind energy gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­ogy to deliver clean, sus­tain­able energy to peo­ple around the globe. The company’s pro­pri­etary Aero­voltaic™ sys­tems gen­er­ate elec­tric­ity using wind and a charged water mist. Accio Energy’s world class engi­neer­ing team is the first ever to design, test, and repeat­edly demon­strate mean­ing­ful net pos­i­tive energy with mul­ti­ple pro­to­types that incor­po­rate a patent-pending elec­tric field man­age­ment design break­through. Accio has devel­oped the first ever com­pre­hen­sive 3-D multi-physics model of sys­tem poten­tial; going beyond the largely ana­lyt­i­cal approaches of other researchers. The com­pany has proved its tech­ni­cal con­cept and has a path to scale the tech­nol­ogy into a com­mer­cially pow­er­ful game-changer.  With the abil­ity to improve on key tur­bine weak­nesses, Accio is devel­op­ing highly man­u­fac­turable mod­ules that win on both fea­tures and costs for onshore and off­shore dis­trib­uted and utility-scale instal­la­tions closer to pop­u­la­tion cen­ters.  As a man­u­fac­turer of Aero­voltaic™ wind energy gen­er­a­tion sys­tems, Accio Energy will lever­age the sophis­ti­cated auto­mo­tive sup­ply chain infra­struc­ture in Michi­gan to deploy wind energy sys­tems glob­ally that will dis­rupt the entire wind energy sup­ply chain cost struc­ture.  Accio’s attrac­tive and game-changing sys­tems will over­come wind tur­bine objec­tions by being as silent, sta­tion­ary, and mod­u­lar as solar pan­els, and more cost effec­tive than wind tur­bines in its tar­get markets.

Advanced Bat­tery Con­cepts, LLC
Alter­na­tive Energy

Advanced Bat­tery Con­cepts, LLC (ABC), has invented GreenSeal® tech­nol­ogy, an elec­trode that rev­o­lu­tion­izes bat­tery design.  GreenSeal® dra­mat­i­cally improves the per­for­mance and func­tion­al­ity of large-format, recharge­able bat­ter­ies. The Com­pany has built hun­dreds of bat­ter­ies, clearly demon­strat­ing that lead-acid bat­ter­ies built with GreenSeal® prod­ucts store twice energy, have up to 10 times the power, and are antic­i­pated to last four times longer than con­ven­tional lead-acid bat­ter­ies. Yet, they have lower mate­r­ial and pro­duc­tion costs. The GreenSeal® elec­trodes are chem­istry agnos­tic, allow­ing the com­pany to quickly move to other chemistries includ­ing lead car­bon ver­sion of the bat­tery for Smart Grid appli­ca­tions fol­lowed by a metal air ver­sion for use in trans­porta­tion appli­ca­tions.  The intro­duc­tion of patent pend­ing GreenSeal® tech­nol­ogy in the lead-acid bat­tery mar­ket will gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant cost and weight advan­tages. In addi­tion, flex­i­bil­ity in pack­ag­ing com­bined with weight sav­ings and the abil­ity to build high volt­age bat­ter­ies will enable new appli­ca­tions to become fea­si­ble for lead-acid bat­ter­ies.  The appli­ca­tions will include smart grid, solar and wind backup power, elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of vehi­cles and other motive appli­ca­tion such as elec­tric wheel chairs, e-bikes, golf cart, min­ing cars, floor scrub­bers and med­ical carts. ABC has proven the tech­nol­ogy and is start­ing its commercialization.

Advanced Cool­ing Ther­apy, LLC
Med­ical Devices

Advanced Cool­ing Ther­apy is devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive devices to solve the crit­i­cal prob­lems health­care providers face in con­trol­ling patient tem­per­a­ture. ACT’s novel, patent-pending bio­med­ical devices pro­vide a rev­o­lu­tion­ary approach to induce mild ther­a­peu­tic hypother­mia, main­tain nor­moth­er­mia, and reduce fever in patients after car­diac arrest, dur­ing surgery, and in the inten­sive care unit. ACT’s approach is safer, more effec­tive, and easier-to-use than exist­ing meth­ods, while dou­bling patient sur­vival at less than half the cost of com­peti­tors. ACT’s dis­pos­able, high-margin med­ical devices replace the stan­dard naso­gas­tric tube (main­tain­ing access to the stom­ach for impor­tant diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic pur­poses), attach to exist­ing exter­nal heat exchang­ers, and can be placed by nurses or emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians at the point-of-care.  The U.S. mar­ket for tem­per­a­ture man­age­ment is com­prised of 5,000 hos­pi­tals treat­ing up to 1 mil­lion car­diac arrest patients, 3 mil­lion ICU patients, and 10 mil­lion surgery patients annu­ally, sup­port­ing over a $1 bil­lion annual mar­ket, grow­ing at more than 15% per year.   Founded in 2009, ACT has strate­gi­cally part­nered with the Michi­gan Med­ical Device Accel­er­a­tor in Kala­ma­zoo to lever­age the region’s tal­ent and med­ical device exper­tise, with an impact of up to 50 jobs cre­ated in Michi­gan in the first five years.

Algal Sci­en­tific Cor­po­ra­tion
Prod­ucts and Services

Waste­water treat­ment plants release “allow­able” lev­els of nutri­ents includ­ing nitro­gen and phos­pho­rus, into nat­ural water­ways and coastal zones.  These dis­charges in the US cost soci­ety $4.3B annu­ally due to the impair­ment of fish­ing, recre­ation, and pub­lic health. The EPA and states are now impos­ing stricter new reg­u­la­tions on over 180,000 munic­i­pal and indus­trial facil­i­ties, man­dat­ing invest­ments in new plants and treat­ment processes to assure pollution-free water dis­charge.  Algal Sci­en­tific designs, builds, sells, owns and oper­ates algae-based waste­water treat­ment sys­tems.  In com­par­i­son to exist­ing bac­te­ria based tech­nolo­gies, its Hyper­trophic™ treat­ment sys­tem costs less, per­forms bet­ter, and is envi­ron­men­tally supe­rior.  It recov­ers nutri­ents in the algal bio­mass, which will be sold as fer­til­izer, ani­mal feed, and poten­tially high value nutraceu­ti­cals.  The found­ing team has sci­en­tific and busi­ness expe­ri­ence: exec­u­tive lead­er­ship in entre­pre­neur­ial com­pa­nies and pri­vate and pub­lic ven­tures; sci­en­tific expe­ri­ence with algae, water pro­cess­ing sys­tems and chem­i­cal pro­cess­ing; and indus­trial expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing waste­water treat­ment plants pro­cess­ing mil­lions of gal­lons of water each day.  Algal Sci­en­tific was founded in 2009 after win­ning the DTE Clean Energy Prize, and is head­quar­tered at the Michi­gan Life Sci­ence and Inno­va­tion Center.

Apo­Life, Inc.
Life Sci­ence

Apo­Life, Inc. is a pri­vately held, rev­enue stage biotech­nol­ogy com­pany which has devel­oped a pro­pri­etary yeast pro­duc­tion plat­form.  The yeast plat­form has been val­i­dated to pro­duce anti­bod­ies, anti­body fusion pro­teins and pro­teins that are dif­fi­cult to pro­duce in other expres­sion sys­tems.   For Biotechs and Phar­mas ApoLife’s yeast plat­form has poten­tial to shorten the dis­cov­ery phase for anti­bod­ies by 30%, reduce the man­u­fac­tur­ing cap­i­tal costs by 50% of the cur­rent method and pro­duce anti­bod­ies with bet­ter ther­a­peu­tic effect. The busi­ness model of the com­pany is to license the plat­form to bio­pharma and pharma com­pa­nies for an upfront fee and roy­al­ties and develop its own pro­pri­etary prod­ucts.  Apo­Life has licensed the pro­pri­etary yeast strains and vec­tors to sev­eral large pharma and also demon­strated in house pro­duc­tion of anti-cancer fusion pro­teins as well as car­dio­vas­cu­lar pro­teins for cus­tomers. The mar­ket for bio­log­ics and biosim­i­lars is the fastest grow­ing seg­ment with over $41B in world­wide sales in 2010. ApoLife’s team includes a lead­ing bio­pharma licens­ing expert and expe­ri­enced sci­en­tific team.  Suc­cess­ful exits by other anti­body plat­form com­pa­nies such as Gly­coFi (acquired. by Merck for $400M) or Cru­cell (acquired by JnJ for $2.1B), demon­strate the mar­ket value of ApoLife’s yeast pro­pri­etary plat­form technology.

Applied Engi­neer­ing Tech­nolo­gies, Inc.
Prod­ucts and Services

Applied Engi­neer­ing Tech­nolo­gies, Inc. (AET), founded in 2004 by Dr. Saad Ghalib, is a pro­fes­sional engi­neer­ing firm based in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan. AET pro­vides tech­ni­cal sup­port for the mar­ket­ing of an inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­ogy that elim­i­nates untreated Com­bined Sewer Over­flows (CSO), as man­dated by the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA).  Known as “Treat­ment Shaft Tech­nol­ogy”, this patented design received the pres­ti­gious EPA PISCES Award in 2006 (Per­for­mance and Inno­va­tion in the State Revolv­ing Fund — Cre­at­ing Envi­ron­men­tal Suc­cess). In addi­tion, it received Michigan’s “Going Green Award” from Corp! Mag­a­zine in 2011.  Treat­ment Shaft Tech­nol­ogy pro­vides com­plete cap­ture of the required CSO design storm vol­ume, plus skim­ming, set­tling, dis­in­fec­tion and screen­ing of any overflows. The con­cept is based on a ver­ti­cal stor­age tank that is very com­pact, which min­i­mizes land space require­ments.  Treat­ment Shafts can save 25–50% on con­struc­tion costs com­pared to tun­nels and other tra­di­tional CSO con­trol alter­na­tives. In Dear­born, Michi­gan, this tech­nol­ogy has saved approx­i­mately $100 mil­lion. Two major projects using Treat­ment Shafts have been put into oper­a­tion and a third will be com­pleted in 2011. Treat­ment Shafts have been proven to meet the require­ments of the owner, as well as state and fed­eral reg­u­la­tory agencies.

2011 TiE Win­ner
Arbor­Wind
Alter­na­tive Energy

Arbor­Wind will com­mer­cial­ize its recently patented ver­ti­cal axis wind tur­bine tech­nol­ogy and dom­i­nate the small and then the medium wind tur­bine mar­ket which is esti­mated to reach $ 11.8 Bil­lion by 2013 in North Amer­ica alone. ArborWind’s supe­rior design devel­oped by team of expe­ri­enced auto­mo­tive engi­neers is easy to man­u­fac­ture, install and main­tain result­ing in energy pro­duc­tion costs of 9 cents /kWh based on ini­tial phys­i­cal test­ing and com­puter sim­u­la­tions. Arbor­Wind ver­ti­cal axis wind tur­bines are omni-directional which results in over 20% improve­ment in wind energy con­ver­sion as com­pared to the main­stream hor­i­zon­tal axis wind tur­bines on the mar­ket. Fur­ther­more, blade design and man­u­fac­tur­ing has been opti­mized to achieve 50 year life.  Five Beta cus­tomers have signed up to pur­chase the first prod­uct (35 kW tur­bine PT100) as their cal­cu­lated ROI ranges from 16% to 28% based on cur­rent util­ity rates at their loca­tions. The PT100 is a stand alone prod­uct which will sup­ply grid qual­ity elec­tric­ity to the end cus­tomer. Arbor­Wind  cus­tomers will make sig­nif­i­cant profit by uti­liz­ing it’s prod­uct and not have to worry about esca­lat­ing alter­na­tive util­ity and fos­sil fuel energy costs.

are you a human
Infor­ma­tion Technology

Are You a Human is a Detroit based web startup that uses games for human ver­i­fi­ca­tion online.  Our games replace the dis­torted text images used today, known as CAPTCHAs, that users are asked to tran­scribe before cre­at­ing an account or post­ing to a forum.  By being sim­ple, intu­itive, and more secure our game solves the three main pains asso­ci­ated with CAPTCHAs: awful user expe­ri­ence, poor secu­rity, and reduced con­ver­sions.  Our games, called PlayThrus, are quick 5–10 sec­ond chal­lenges that are easy engag­ing and intu­itive for users to com­plete. PlayThrus require dynamic inter­ac­tion and instruc­tion com­pre­hen­sion. This makes it very dif­fi­cult for com­put­ers but easy for humans. Once a user com­pletes a game we ana­lyze their behav­ior and score the human­ness of the inter­ac­tion.  PlayThru also offers a unique oppor­tu­nity for adver­tis­ers to inter­act with con­sumers in a for­mat where they are fully engaged.  We will allow adver­tis­ers to take advan­tage of this space by devel­op­ing branded games, which will allow us to offer our ser­vice free to web­site oper­a­tors.  Web­sites that do not want to have exter­nal adver­tis­ing on their sites have the abil­ity to cre­ate their own unique games.

Art­Jen Con­plexus
Prod­ucts and Services

The world is faced with the twin epi­demics of obe­sity and type 2 dia­betes.  None of the exist­ing treat­ments are effec­tive; Art­Jen has devel­oped an effec­tive and scal­able solu­tion.  For the price of a cup of cof­fee a day we offer an easy to use, nat­u­rally occur­ring dietary fiber in tablet form that removes 500 calo­ries a day or about a 1–1½ pounds of body weight per week; with­out changes to lifestyle or unwanted side effects.  In addi­tion Mirafit fbcx increases insulin sen­si­tiv­ity and improves the glycemic index and sig­nif­i­cantly low­ers total and LDL (bad) cho­les­terol and triglyc­eride lev­els in indi­vid­u­als suf­fer­ing from ele­vated lev­els of blood fats.  Art­Jen Com­plexus is a spin­off out of Wayne State Uni­ver­sity, formed by Dr. Joseph Artiss, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of pathol­ogy and Dr. Cather­ine Jen, pro­fes­sor and chair of nutri­tion and food sci­ence, the co-inventors of MiraFit.  In order to com­mer­cial­ize the tech­nol­ogy, Art­Jen was incor­po­rated in 2002 it sold its first tablet in 2004.  Art­Jen is an active par­tic­i­pant in TechTown’s THRIVE pro­gram.  Mirafit is com­pletely devel­oped and is cur­rently avail­able in about 950 retail­ers, includ­ing the Mei­jer Stores chain in the Mid-West and Rex­all Drug Stores in Canada.

Bio­Pho­tonic Solu­tions, Inc.
Life Science

Bio­pho­tonic Solu­tions Incor­po­rated (BSI) is a high-tech startup com­pany with exclu­sive license to dis­rup­tive tech­nol­ogy devel­oped at MSU that unlocks the power of ultra­fast lasers. The tech­nol­ogy, known as MIIPS, elim­i­nates the need for man­ual laser opti­miza­tion, which is the key bot­tle­neck pre­vent­ing ultra­fast laser from large scale pen­e­tra­tion in a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant mar­kets. MIIPS increases the effi­ciency of ultra­fast appli­ca­tions by an order of mag­ni­tude by com­press­ing pulses at least ten times shorter than pre­vi­ously pos­si­ble. MIIPS offers extremely fast cus­tomer pay­back due to a reduc­tion in oper­a­tional main­te­nance and sys­tem com­plex­ity. For exam­ple, in bio­med­ical appli­ca­tions shorter pulses lead to increased safety, and effi­cacy. BSI intro­duced three prod­ucts in 2009 tar­geted for the R&D mar­ket, one received the high­est recog­ni­tion in the optics indus­try, the Laser Focus World Inno­va­tion Award, and another was a final­ist for the Prism Award. The mar­ket has been extremely recep­tive to BSI’s prod­ucts; sales in to the R&D mar­ket were $1M in 2010 and a 40% increase is expected for 2011. BSI is already prof­itable with world class tech­nol­ogy, a tal­ented team, and the oppor­tu­nity to lever­age strate­gic part­ner­ships to achieve fast and sus­tain­able growth in large markets.

Blaze Med­ical Devices, LLC
Med­ical Devices

Blaze Med­ical Devices is a med­ical device devel­op­ment com­pany focus­ing on improv­ing the effi­cacy and safety of blood trans­fu­sions.  Blood units dif­fer in prop­er­ties com­ing from donors and these dif­fer­ences, ampli­fied by unavoid­able stor­age, result in sig­nif­i­cant and unpre­dictable vari­abil­ity in trans­fu­sion out­comes.  In the absence of qual­ity met­rics based on actual cell prop­er­ties, a “first-in, first-out” approach is used up to the FDA allowed 42 days in stor­age. Blaze is devel­op­ing a novel blood ana­lyzer device based on a pro­pri­etary approach to deter­min­ing the Red Blood Cell (RBC) mem­brane fragility which would be the first such test capa­ble to be used in a clin­i­cal con­text. This in-vitro test, will allow clin­i­cians to estab­lish the real-life qual­ity of avail­able blood thus pre­dict­ing the effec­tive­ness of blood trans­fu­sions. Blaze is devel­op­ing a novel blood ana­lyzer based on a pro­pri­etary approach to deter­min­ing the RBC mem­brane fragility which would be the first such test capa­ble to be used in a clin­i­cal con­text. This in-vitro test, will allow clin­i­cians to estab­lish the real-life qual­ity of avail­able blood thus pre­dict­ing the effec­tive­ness of blood trans­fu­sions. This tech­nol­ogy can address the adverse reac­tions of RBC’s trans­fu­sions total­ing over $17Billion in addi­tional costs through­out the US health­care system.

Blue Water Bio­prod­ucts
Advanced Mate­ri­als

Blue Water Bio­prod­ucts offers cost com­pet­i­tive, high per­for­mance polyurethane resins man­u­fac­tured from an envi­ron­men­tally friendly and renew­able mate­r­ial.  BWB polyurethane resins use a renew­able mate­r­ial called lignin. Lignin is a nat­u­rally occur­ing poly­mer in plants.  Lignin is the glue that holds plant fibers together, and is a byprod­uct of the pulp and paper indus­try.  The global pulp and paper indus­try pro­duces 50,000,000 tons of lignin per year.  Cur­rently, the inher­ent chem­i­cal value of lignin is squan­dered – it is burned for heat.  The BWB pro­pri­etary and patent-pending process har­nesses the chem­i­cal value of lignin.  The result­ing lignin-based polyurethane resins are over 90% car­bon neu­tral, cost com­petive with petroleum-based polyurethane resins, and meet or exceed per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics such as ten­sile strength, flex mod­u­lus, R-value, and com­pres­sive strength when com­pared to petroleum-based polyurethane resins.  BWB will be offered in the domes­tic polyurethane resin mar­ket, which uses over 7.6 bil­lion lbs of resin per year.  Using its pilot pro­duc­tion facil­ity, BWB will pro­duce a lignin polyurethane resin for the high per­for­mance spe­cialty seg­ment of the polyurethane industry.

Cli­mate Tech­nolo­gies Co.
Alter­na­tive Energy

Cli­mate Tech­nolo­gies is a 41 year old com­pany based in Michi­gan pro­vid­ing indus­trial process sys­tems with a focus on Tem­per­a­ture, Humid­ity and Air Pol­lu­tion con­trol. Walt Zim­mer­man is the CEO and major­ity stock holder, hav­ing been with the firm for 24 years and CEO for 21 years.  Recently Cli­mate Tech­nolo­gies has teamed with Ford Motor Com­pany and Detroit Edi­son to develop and mar­ket a waste to energy tech­nol­ogy known as Fumes to Fuel. The F2F sys­tem cap­tures and con­cen­trates volatile organic com­pounds (VOC’s) found in many indus­trial processes’, which can be used to gen­er­ate elec­tri­cal energy. The value to the indus­trial end users of the F2F waste to energy sys­tem is the reduc­tion of nat­ural gas con­sump­tion and green­house gas emis­sion com­pared to cur­rent VOC abate­ment sys­tems. The util­ity and green­house gas reduc­tions can be as high as 90 % over cur­rent VOC abate­ment tech­nolo­gies.  Cur­rently Cli­mate Tech­nolo­gies is refin­ing Fumes to Fuel sys­tem com­po­nents and devel­op­ing new intel­lec­tual prop­erty for a far more capa­ble and effi­cient F2F system.

Cur­rent Motor
Advanced Trans­porta­tion

Cur­rent Motor fills the unmet need for prac­ti­cal, afford­able, zero-emission elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs). Cur­rent Motor devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures all-electric maxi-scooters for the Amer­i­cas in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan. The company’s maxi-scooters use no gas, pro­duce no emis­sions and cre­ate no main­te­nance has­sles.  Cur­rent Motor maxi-scooters offer top speeds over 65 MPH, a range of up to 50 miles and cost 1¢ a mile to oper­ate, mak­ing them the best value in their EV class.  They charge from a stan­dard 110V house­hold out­let in four to six hours. The company’s early adopter cus­tomers are EV enthu­si­asts and motor­cy­clists, com­mit­ted to green trans­porta­tion solu­tions. Cur­rent Motor maxi-scooters can be per­son­al­ized with cus­tom wraps, acces­sories and geo-social soft­ware appli­ca­tions. They are sold via ecom­merce and com­pany owned show­rooms. In prepa­ra­tion to scale, Cur­rent Motor is in process of out­sourc­ing its man­u­fac­tur­ing to a lead­ing Michi­gan firm. The com­pany ben­e­fits from an expe­ri­enced lead­er­ship team and offers attrac­tive val­u­a­tion and terms. BELLE Cap­i­tal LP is lead­ing Cur­rent Motor’s $2MM Series A Pre­ferred financ­ing with par­tic­i­pa­tion from State of MI Pre­Seed Fund & Bob Lutz. While it has IPO poten­tial, Cur­rent Motor expects to achieve a liq­uid­ity event within 5 years via merger or acquisition.

DeN­ovo Sci­ences
Life Sci­ence

DeN­ovo Sci­ences is a Michi­gan based LLC located in the Michi­gan Life Sci­ence and Inno­va­tion Cen­ter. The company’s goal is to pro­vide an easy to use plat­form for can­cer research and diag­no­sis. Specif­i­cally, the com­pany will sell an instru­ment sys­tem and reagent kit that allows for the sep­a­ra­tion, detec­tion, and retrieval of cir­cu­lat­ing tumor cells (CTCs) from periph­eral whole blood. This sys­tem is an alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­ally painful and inva­sive biop­sies. Our com­pany pro­vides a patent-pending prod­uct that will not only allow researchers to iden­tify and cap­ture rare and dif­fi­cult to har­vest can­cer cells in a microflu­idic chip, but also enable them to con­duct  down­stream mol­e­c­u­lar analy­sis, which could one day lead to the holy grail of detect­ing can­cer before the dis­cov­ery of pri­mary tumors.

ECO-Fueling
Advanced Transportation

ECO-Fueling of Saline is a Michi­gan LLC founded by Paul Chan­dler in 2009 to develop and sell a “diesel assist” prod­uct for the heavy truck mar­ket.  The Eco-Fueling “diesel assist” sys­tem increases fuel econ­omy, improves per­for­mance and reduces emis­sions in diesel engines by inject­ing atom­ized ethanol into the com­bus­tion cham­ber. The Eco-Fueling “diesel assist” sys­tem pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant ROI to heavy truck fleet oper­a­tors of all sizes.  To date, Eco-Fueling has designed, built and road-tested a pro­to­type ver­sion of the “diesel assist” sys­tem and is now work­ing to refine engi­neer­ing and soft­ware to make the sys­tem more robust for deliv­ery to the mar­ket.  Eco-Fueling has adopted a sales strat­egy of part­ner­ing with inde­pen­dent local and regional fuel dis­trib­u­tors who serve fleets. Cur­rently Eco-Fueling has cus­tomers with orders for over 300 sys­tems pend­ing. While Eco-Fueling is first tar­get­ing the heavy truck mar­ket, the “diesel assist” sys­tem will pro­vide excel­lent ROI for any diesel engine instal­la­tion includ­ing sta­tion­ary power, rail loco­mo­tive, ocean-going ships and mil­i­tary applications.

EcoV­Elec­tric
Advanced Trans­porta­tion

EnVi­ron­men­tal Trans­porta­tion Solu­tions, LLC (EVTS) devel­ops, mar­kets, and will assem­ble EcoV­Elec­tric, an elec­tric Supe­rior Low Speed Vehi­cle (LSV) for both city based fleet man­agers and pri­vate users (pri­mar­ily retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties).  EVTS will sup­port new and emerg­ing mar­kets for prod­ucts that are safe and can save over 70% in oper­at­ing costs.   EcoV offers road­wor­thi­ness, afford­abil­ity ($11,999), safety and ver­sa­til­ity; all miss­ing in today’s LSV mar­ket.  EVTS is a niche com­pany, build­ing niche prod­ucts in lower vol­ume niche man­u­fac­tur­ing for a niche mar­ket. EVTS is ready for com­mer­cial­iza­tion with a 4th gen­er­a­tion pro­duc­tion pro­to­type and 9 years of expe­ri­ence design­ing, test­ing and mar­ket research.  EVTS is look­ing for alliances with oth­ers, to assem­ble EcoV, pro­vide cap­i­tal and ser­vices to EVTS.  EVTS lever­ages oth­ers’, peo­ple, assets and facil­i­ties to main­tain a low overhead/fixed cost struc­ture.  EVTS is offer­ing sev­eral invest­ment options to go for­ward. EVTS is dif­fer­ent from many elec­tric vehi­cle com­pa­nies.  With low invest­ment needs, small breakeven vol­umes, a real­is­tic mar­ket­ing plan, and an expe­ri­enced auto­mo­tive based man­age­ment team, EcoV can be in pro­duc­tion within 9 months of fund­ing. EVTS’s home base is in Grosse Pointe Woods, MI.

Emitech, Inc
Defense & Home­land Security

Emitech, Inc is as a small high tech­nol­ogy com­pany for the devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive con­cepts in the field of nan­otech­nol­ogy and advanced opto­elec­tronic mate­ri­als.
Our main efforts aim to trans­fer the lat­est sci­en­tific break­throughs to state-of-the-art tech­nolo­gies fol­lowed by device fab­ri­ca­tion, val­i­da­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.
Emitech is pri­mar­ily focused on the appli­ca­tion of organic nano­ma­te­ri­als and nanocom­pos­ites for the devel­op­ment of new opto­elec­tronic (opti­cal and con­duc­tive chem­i­cal  sen­sors,  hybrid  solar cells, trans­par­ent con­duc­tive coat­ing and  electro/optomechanical com­pos­ite actu­a­tors). Our R&D efforts in the field of car­bon nan­otube pho­to­con­duc­tiv­ity and hybrid pho­to­voltaics resulted in sev­eral projects spon­sored by the gov­ern­ment.  Emitech, Inc has excel­lent track records as reflected in its IP port­fo­lio, pub­li­ca­tion, patents and var­i­ous con­nec­tions among aca­d­e­mic and indus­trial com­mu­ni­ties.  Cur­rently Emitech, Inc is devel­op­ing novel highly sen­si­tive and selec­tive opti­cal detec­tors for explo­sive threats. This project was funded by Army SBIR Phase II  /TARDEC, Waren, Michi­gan.  As a result of this con­tract we have two work­ing pro­to­types Mark I, hand­held detec­tor and Mark II that can be install on robotic vehi­cle and be con­trolled remotely. The funds raised will be used to com­plete the devel­op­ment of our pro­to­types from the cur­rent TRL-7 to the next level and start manufacturing.

ENRG Power Sys­tems LLC
Advanced Trans­porta­tion

Head­quar­tered in Grand Rapids, Michi­gan – with offices in Detroit at Tech­Town and tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment facil­i­ties in Long Island, New York – ENRG Power Sys­tems LLC engi­neers and mar­kets an easy-to-retrofit igni­tion coil sys­tem that improves rear-wheel drive truck and van fuel econ­omy, while reduc­ing their green­house gas emis­sions.  In V-8 engine appli­ca­tions the EPS plasma igni­tion sys­tem reduces fuel use (and oper­at­ing costs) by 14–21%, improv­ing the fleet operator’s bot­tom line and pro­vid­ing much of the ben­e­fit of new hybrid vehi­cles to the fleet’s heav­ier work vehi­cles already in ser­vice, at a much lower cost.  The EPS is cer­ti­fied for sale in all 50 states, and is well-positioned to cap­i­tal­ize on and meet the country’s accel­er­at­ing need to reduce green­house gas emis­sions and reduce the demand for for­eign oil, all at a rea­son­able price.  For the first time, fleet own­ers can afford to improve their car­bon foot­print while sav­ing money at the same time, all in a pack­age which can be retro­fit to their cur­rent vehi­cles in about 2 ½ hours.  Val­i­dated with lab and with on-road test­ing, ini­tial pro­duc­tion tri­als in Michi­gan will begin shortly.

ePack, Inc.
Next Gen­er­a­tion Manufacturing

Micro­ma­chined sen­sors and other devices such as quartz oscil­la­tors (used as clocks in nearly all elec­tron­ics) have many high vol­ume, low unit cost (<$1) appli­ca­tions. For higher per­for­mance, high reli­a­bil­ity, and harsh envi­ron­ments, these devices require vibra­tion iso­la­tion, tem­per­a­ture con­trol and/or a vac­uum envi­ron­ment. This increases the cost ($5 to $3000), input power (>1 W) and the size of the device (1 — 1000 cm3) and acts as a bar­rier to entry for many appli­ca­tions. These appli­ca­tions rep­re­sent a total $1.15B mar­ket oppor­tu­nity and will grow with smaller, more cost effec­tive pack­ag­ing. The envi­ron­ment resis­tant pack­age (ERP), was devel­oped by ePack’s founders while at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in order to solve this prob­lem. The ERP was devel­oped off of over $5M in research fund­ing from DARPA and off of over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in micro-device pack­ag­ing research. This pack­age pro­vides vibra­tion iso­la­tion, low power ovenized tem­per­a­ture con­trol (at < 30 mW) and vac­uum encap­su­la­tion in a cost effec­tive pack­age. ePack has an exclu­sive license on this patent pend­ing tech­nol­ogy and is part­ner­ing with sev­eral device man­u­fac­tures for prod­uct devel­op­ment includ­ing: 1) an auto­mo­tive sup­plier, 2) one of the lead­ers in quartz man­u­fac­tur­ing and 3) a major defense firm.

Fam­i­lyMint, Inc.
Prod­ucts and Services

Fam­i­lyMint, recip­i­ent of the 2011 Excel­lence in Finan­cial Lit­er­acy Edu­ca­tion (EIFLE) Award and the 2010 Mom’s Choice Gold Award, offers an engag­ing way for kids to learn finan­cial respon­si­bil­ity. This online tool is easy for kids to use with col­or­ful graph­ics and goal-setting tools that con­nect their money with real-world mean­ing.  The appli­ca­tion grows with the child. A kid-friendly junior view is avail­able for younger users and a more mature inter­face, the same used by par­ents, lets older chil­dren exer­cise more respon­si­bil­ity.  Par­ents can man­age the child’s account, automat­ing allowances, help­ing set goals, and even offer­ing incen­tives like matched con­tri­bu­tions and inter­est. Fam­i­lyMint has com­mu­ni­ties on Face­book and Twit­ter, is acces­si­ble by mobile device web browsers, and the appli­ca­tion itself cre­ates a dynamic, par­tic­i­pa­tory expe­ri­ence.  Through the Fam­i­lyMint Part­ner Pro­gram, Fam­i­lyMint is part­ner­ing with credit unions, banks, finan­cial advi­sors, insur­ance com­pa­nies, and other orga­ni­za­tions that value finan­cial edu­ca­tion for chil­dren and their par­ents.  Fam­i­lyMint helps these orga­ni­za­tions con­nect to future influ­en­tial con­sumers and pro­vides effec­tive finan­cial edu­ca­tion where chil­dren learn by doing.

Fusion Coolant Sys­tems
Next Gen­er­a­tion Manufacturing

Fusion Coolant Sys­tems pro­vides an advanced coolant and lubri­ca­tion sys­tem for use in man­u­fac­tur­ing.  The cool­ing and lubri­ca­tion sys­tem increases pro­duc­tion rates and tool life.  Unfor­tu­nately, today’s met­al­work­ing flu­ids are a toxic mix of oil, water and var­i­ous chem­i­cal addi­tives which pro­vide poor per­for­mance at sig­nif­i­cant costs to worker health, safety and the envi­ron­ment.  Fusion Coolant’s patented CHiP Lube sys­tem is the most sig­nif­i­cant advance in met­al­work­ing flu­ids in many decades.  The sys­tem out­per­forms exist­ing met­al­work­ing fluid sys­tems and is proven to reduce costs while simul­ta­ne­ously improv­ing worker health and elim­i­nat­ing a toxic waste stream.  The FCS sys­tem con­sists of fluid man­age­ment hard­ware, deliv­ery sys­tem, spe­cial­ized tool­ing and con­sum­ables.  It can be pro­vided as a retro­fit to exist­ing sys­tems or as an OEM option on new machine tools.  The supe­rior cool­ing and lubric­ity of CHiP Lube is par­tic­u­larly applic­a­ble to high vol­ume oper­a­tions in aero­space and med­ical devices where the use of advanced alloys has had a sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive impact on tool life and cost.

GPX Soft­ware, LLC
Infor­ma­tion Technology

GPX Soft­ware (GPX) is a Michi­gan LLC founded in 2009 by Richard Gold­stein and Matthew Pickus. GPX is tar­get­ing the wide­spread finan­cial plan­ning prob­lems of the small busi­ness mar­ket (SMB). Accord­ing to the US-SBA, five out of six new busi­nesses fail in the 1^st year of oper­a­tions. Addi­tion­ally, SMB’s have a +50% loan rejec­tion rate from Pro­forma errors. Two rea­sons are; 1) Lack of SMB finan­cial acu­men, 2) SMB’s won’t pay accountants/consultants hourly costs equat­ing to $3,000 to $10,000/yr. to build spread­sheets.  GPX devel­oped Xam­bro­sius Busi­ness Intel­li­gence Tools to solve these per­va­sive SMB prob­lems. The strat­egy is; 1) Reduce mate­r­ial infor­ma­tion errors, hardware/software costs and the time to deliver a Pro­forma by 80% through a cloud-based, Tur­b­o­Tax^®–like, cus­tomiz­able, pre-programmed finan­cial planning/analytics prod­uct, 2) Offer intu­itive, step-by-step wiz­ards, data-mining, dash­boards, and pre-populated com­pa­ra­ble com­pany data, to deliver key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors against com­pa­ra­ble bench­marks, 3) Use web-based “Co-Branding” part­ner­ships and Search Engine Opti­miza­tion to posi­tion Xam­bro­sius above the fold.  GPX will become the leader in the $1 bil­lion SMB seg­ment of the +$10 bil­lion busi­ness intel­li­gence mar­ket by; 1) Building/leveraging rela­tion­ships with accoun­tants, con­sul­tants, banks, and credit unions that ser­vice the SMB mar­ket; 2)Training accountants/consultants as part of their con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion requirements.

Green­Sand
Advanced Materials

Green­Sand (S-Corp; Lake Lin­den, Michi­gan) plans to recover crushed copper-containing sand (a by-product of cop­per min­ing in the Lake Supe­rior region) as raw mate­r­ial for the man­u­fac­ture of a vari­ety of prod­ucts.  The cop­per remain­ing in the sand acts as an algae­cide and is ideal as an addi­tive in con­struc­tion mate­ri­als to pre­vent algae and mold growth. This mate­r­ial, mar­keted under the name G-Sand, can be used as sur­face gran­ules on asphalt roof­ing shin­gles and as filler mate­r­ial in the shin­gles. There is cur­rently a very large sup­ply of the sand avail­able. Approx­i­mately 80% of the stamp sand can be processed and used for roof­ing shin­gles, with the remain­der used for var­i­ous other appli­ca­tions and prod­ucts includ­ing filler for com­pos­ite wood, anti-algaecide paint pig­ment,  prod­ucts used in out­door con­struc­tion, min­eral fer­til­izer com­po­nent, bot­tom mate­r­ial for stag­nant ponds, and road aggre­gate.  A num­ber of major pro­duc­ers of roof­ing shin­gles have already expressed inter­est in explor­ing the use of G-Sand in their prod­ucts.  The com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the G-Sand mate­r­ial could cre­ate 80+ new jobs in the Upper Penin­sula area in the near term, and over 1000 new jobs longer term when an asphalt shin­gle man­u­fac­tur­ing plant is completed.

Grid Logic
Alter­na­tive Energy

Grid Logic devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures power dis­tri­b­u­tion, gen­er­a­tion and stor­age solu­tions for elec­tric util­ity and mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions. The com­pany pro­duces advanced mate­ri­als, super­con­duct­ing com­po­nents, and devices to address the need for next-generation elec­tric util­ity equip­ment required for the renew­able energy and smart grid solu­tions.  Grid Logic estab­lished mar­ket advan­tage by lever­ag­ing break­throughs in super­con­duct­ing com­pos­ite mate­ri­als tech­nol­ogy, cryo­gen­ics, device designs, and man­u­fac­tur­ing meth­ods.  In late 2010, the began refit­ting a shut­tered auto­mo­tive stamp­ing plant in Lapeer Michi­gan – an area hit par­tic­u­larly hard by the eco­nomic down­turn – and is now near­ing com­ple­tion of a state-of-the-art super­con­duct­ing nanocom­pos­ite man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity. A prod­uct for medium-voltage elec­tric util­ity appli­ca­tions will be intro­duced in early 2012.  The com­pany is build­ing on this tech­nol­ogy to also intro­duce a novel low-cost, high-field super­con­duct­ing mag­net for wind tur­bine applications.

H3D, LLC
Defense & Home­land Security

H3D is an early-stage provider of a new breed of high-precision, easily-portable radi­a­tion detec­tion and imag­ing sen­sors which pro­vide the unique abil­ity to visu­al­ize, in real time, the pre­cise 3-dimensional loca­tion and iso­topic com­po­si­tion of radioac­tive mate­ri­als. These sen­sors are based on rev­o­lu­tion­ary gamma sens­ing tech­nol­ogy devel­oped by the company’s founders at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Depart­ment of Nuclear Engi­neer­ing and Radi­o­log­i­cal Sci­ences. This tech­nol­ogy, which is the prod­uct of over $16 mil­lion and 13 years of government-funded research, rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward in the abil­ity to iden­tify nuclear mate­ri­als in com­plex, real-world envi­ron­ments. Unlike other solu­tions, this tech­nol­ogy can be pack­aged in a hand­held device and oper­ate at room tem­per­a­ture. As a result, H3D’s sen­sors give gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies such as the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity (DHS), the Depart­ment of Defense (DOD), and the Depart­ment of Energy (DOE), as well as local, regional, and national-level law enforce­ment agen­cies unique and sig­nif­i­cant new capa­bil­i­ties which help them bet­ter pre­vent, detect and respond to nuclear threats. With tech­ni­cal proof of con­cept and a work­ing pro­to­type in hand, the company’s efforts are cur­rently focused on devel­op­ing com­mer­cial pro­to­types and early cus­tomer devel­op­ment activities.

i3D Tech­nolo­gies Inc.
Infor­ma­tion Technology

i3D Tech­nolo­gies Inc. is an early-stage soft­ware com­pany based in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan that pro­vides clean water man­age­ment tools. i3D’s tar­geted clean water mar­ket includes waste­water col­lec­tion, water dis­tri­b­u­tion, treat­ment, storm water qual­ity, and other water resource man­age­ment sys­tems. Munic­i­pal­i­ties spend $50 bil­lion per year to oper­ate and main­tain water and sewer sys­tems and deal with aging sys­tems that fre­quently expe­ri­ence water main breaks and sewer over­flows that are costly to repair and result in dam­age to the envi­ron­ment. i3D applies aero­space indus­try tech­nol­ogy to clean water sys­tems to lever­age data util­i­ties are already col­lect­ing to iden­tify oper­a­tional prob­lems, leaks, breaks and opti­mize cap­i­tal upgrades.  With i3D’s pro­pri­etary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solu­tion, H2OMetrics™, munic­i­pal­i­ties turn their assets under man­age­ment into “smart” sys­tems by pro­vid­ing trend­ing, met­rics and alerts from flow and pres­sure mea­sure­ments — allow­ing sys­tem own­ers to make bet­ter deci­sions to save money, reduce major sys­tem fail­ures and opti­mize sys­tem upgrades. i3D’s solu­tions have been used to date by over 30 munic­i­pal­i­ties around the Coun­try, and i3D has been selected by Oak­land County, Michi­gan to per­form a pilot of H2OMetrics for use on 400 facilities.

InfiChem Poly­mers, LLC
Advance Mate­ri­als

InfiChem Poly­mers, LLC (“the Com­pany”) was formed in 2009 to com­mer­cial­ize its pro­pri­etary chem­i­cal process for recy­cling of polyurethane scrap des­tined for land­fills into Infi­Green^TM line of polyol prod­ucts that are used in pro­duc­tion on new polyurethanes. World­wide the Com­pany is first to the mar­ket with this inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­ogy.  In today’s mar­ket, busi­nesses are seek­ing to reduce their car­bon foot­print, improve their “green image,” and cut cost.  In response, Infi­Green^TM poly­ols are com­pet­i­tively priced, envi­ron­men­tally friendly mate­ri­als that are excep­tion­ally well received in the mar­ket­place.  From its demon­stra­tion facil­ity, the Com­pany has already imple­mented closed-loop recy­cling of polyurethane scrap with Magna Inter­na­tional, and the result­ing Infi­Green^TM poly­ols are used in pro­duc­tion of seat cush­ions for Jeep Grand Chero­kee and Dodge Durango.  For its efforts the Com­pany has received Chrysler’s 2010 Envi­ron­men­tal Achieve­ment Award and 2010 Envi­ron­men­tal Inno­va­tion Award from the Soci­ety of Plas­tics Engi­neers.  The com­pany plans to sig­nif­i­cantly expand its pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ties to meet the grow­ing demand for its tech­nol­ogy.  NAFTA gross sales are pro­jected to expand rapidly from 1 mil­lion pounds (lbs) in 2011 to 50 mil­lion lbs in 2016.  Expan­sion to Europe, Asia, and South Amer­ica is expected to push sales to 200 mil­lion lbs by 2016.

2010 GLEQ Win­ner
InPore Tech­nolo­gies, Inc.
Advanced Mate­r­ial

The mis­sion of InPore Tech­nolo­gies, Inc., is to become the world’s lead­ing provider of meso­porous sil­i­cate mate­ri­als, trade-named Sila­pore™, for appli­ca­tions as diverse as poly­mer addi­tives, per­sonal care prod­ucts, and deliv­ery agents for the con­trolled release of var­i­ous sub­stances, to name but a few.  The first mar­ket for our prod­ucts is as a flame retar­dant (FR) addi­tive for poly­mers. We are focus­ing on this $4.3B per annum oppor­tu­nity as there is a global effort to replace the cur­rent, market-leading FR addi­tives with non-halogenated com­pounds. Sila­pore par­ti­cles address this mar­ket need due to their attrib­utes which include FR effi­ciency, mechan­i­cal prop­erty rein­force­ment, envi­ron­men­tal com­pat­i­bil­ity, and being a drop-in replace­ment for exist­ing FR addi­tives.  To date, InPore Tech­nolo­gies has entered into NDAs and/or pro­vided engi­neer­ing sam­ples to two dozen domes­tic and for­eign com­pa­nies with annual rev­enue in the range of US$100M-US$25B+. In addi­tion, the Com­pany has signed a LOI with a For­tune 100 com­pany, the pur­pose of which is a “col­lab­o­ra­tion to pro­duce, sell, and mar­ket Sila­pore™ par­ti­cles globally”.

LLa­ma­soft
Prod­ucts and Services

LLa­ma­soft is a global leader in Sup­ply Chain Design and Pre­dic­tive Ana­lyt­ics tech­nol­ogy and solu­tion ser­vices.  Global com­pa­nies now real­ize that in a global econ­omy with volatile mar­ket con­di­tions and rapidly chang­ing cus­tomer demand, the win­ner will have the best sup­ply chain design.  LLamasoft’s soft­ware appli­ca­tion, Sup­ply Chain Guru®, is used by engi­neers and ana­lysts in many of the world’s lead­ing com­pa­nies to design com­pet­i­tive sup­ply chains by eval­u­at­ing trade-offs between cost, ser­vice, sus­tain­abil­ity, and risk.  The tool incor­po­rates numer­ous analy­sis tech­niques includ­ing net­work opti­miza­tion, inven­tory opti­miza­tion, trans­porta­tion route design, cost-to-serve opti­miza­tion, and enter­prise sim­u­la­tion into a sin­gle plat­form for opti­miz­ing end-to-end global sup­ply chains.  The LLa­ma­soft man­age­ment team brings together exper­tise in soft­ware engi­neer­ing, prod­uct man­age­ment, pro­fes­sional ser­vices, and busi­ness devel­op­ment. The team has demon­strated the capa­bil­ity of scal­ing the orga­ni­za­tion for deliv­ery of high qual­ity soft­ware solu­tions within Global 1000 com­pa­nies.  Since 2004, LLamasoft’s cus­tomer base and rev­enues have grown each year at an aver­age rate of over 65%.   Soft­ware license and annual main­te­nance con­tracts make up over 60% of these annual revenues.

The Mack­inac Tech­nol­ogy Com­pany
Advanced Materials

The Mack­inac Tech­nol­ogy Com­pany was founded in 2007 by John Slagter. The sole pur­pose of the com­pany is to develop and com­mer­cial­ize energy sav­ing ther­mal insu­la­tion prod­ucts.  Mackinac’s core asset is its coop­er­a­tive work­ing rela­tion­ships with an inter­na­tional group of cor­po­rate, uni­ver­sity and non-profit research orga­ni­za­tions. The Mack­inac Tech­nol­ogy Com­pany is devel­op­ing trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies that will pro­vide sub­stan­tial energy sav­ings with prod­ucts that can be pur­chased and installed at afford­able costs. Mr. Slagter has more than 30 years expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing con­struc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness oper­a­tions and he has had con­sid­er­able expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing a vari­ety of tech­nol­ogy research and devel­op­ment projects which were ulti­mately brought to suc­cess­ful commercialization.

Metro Ag Ser­vices
Alter­na­tive Energy

Metro Ag Ser­vices Inc. is a bio­fuel feed­stock com­pany which deliv­ers high qual­ity, non-food, afford­able inputs for biodiesel. The biodiesel indus­try is man­dated to deliver 1 bil­lion gal­lons of biodiesel fuel in 2012. The U.S. con­sumes 60 bil­lion gal­lons of petro­leum diesel annu­ally. The miss­ing link in the biodiesel indus­try is the avail­abil­ity of afford­able feed­stock oils which have cold weather per­for­mance com­pa­ra­ble to petro­leum diesel. Metro Ag will fill this gap by own­ing and oper­ate an oilseed “crush­ing oper­a­tion” as well as pro­vid­ing low main­te­nance mus­tard seed crops for farm­ers wish­ing to farm “mar­ginal” lands and those look­ing for an over Win­ter crop which can fit between food crop rota­tions.  Metro Ag Ser­vices con­sists of pri­vate sec­tor PhD. sci­en­tists, bio­fuel and petro­leum mar­ket spe­cial­ists and expe­ri­enced oper­a­tions man­agers who have been work­ing in con­junc­tion with MSU and mul­ti­ple farm­ers to grow cold weather per­form­ing oilseed crops and prove out man­u­fac­tur­ing operations. Our tech­nol­ogy and our team will place Metro Ag Ser­vices in a unique posi­tion which will allow us to gen­er­ate oper­at­ing mar­gins in excess of 30% through­out our value chain and allow for con­tin­ued sig­nif­i­cant growth to meet the exist­ing man­dates and fur­ther pen­e­trate the petro­leum diesel market.

nanoRETE
Defense and Home­land Security

nanoRETE, Inc. is a Michigan-based com­pany that pro­vides real-time detec­tion of pathogens using cus­tomized nanopar­ti­cle biosen­sors.  The Com­pany has devel­oped a plat­form that has the abil­ity to test for numer­ous pathogens (anthrax, E. Coli, sal­mo­nella, tuber­cu­lo­sis, etc.) using a simple-to-use hand­held device which gen­er­ates screen­ing results in about one hour.  Cur­rently, bio­haz­ards can­not be “field tested” because ‘germs’ must be cul­tured and devel­oped in a lab, after the fact.  nanoRETE’s solu­tion, called    X-MARKTM can test for mul­ti­ple pathogens in the field, in real-time, rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant leap for­ward in tech­nol­ogy.  The prod­uct has been devel­oped in response to spe­cific mil­i­tary require­ments for food safety/security: fast, accu­rate, sen­si­tive, sim­ple, mobile, and inex­pen­sive.  The first user of the tech­nol­ogy is the United States mil­i­tary which has a crit­i­cal need to pro­tect their food sources.  nanoRETE’s solu­tion is a plat­form tech­nol­ogy which means that it can test for mul­ti­ple pathogens at one time – at roughly 1/10 the cost of the cur­rent meth­ods used.  The com­pany has a broad patent estate, devel­oped at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity cov­er­ing both prod­uct and process. The man­age­ment group has deep indus­try expe­ri­ence as well as exten­sive pro­gram man­age­ment and prod­uct devel­op­ment. The TAM is pro­jected to be $2.5B; rev­enue pro­jec­tions demon­strate $53MM in gross rev­enues by 2015, with an EBITDA of roughly $14MM.

NextCAT
Alter­na­tive Energy

Enabling the next gen­er­a­tion of biodiesel; we reduce the cost of pro­duc­ing biodiesel by over $1.00 per gal­lon.  NextCAT is com­mer­cial­iz­ing a port­fo­lio of patented het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts for biodiesel pro­duc­tion that will enable cost effi­cient pro­cess­ing of sig­nif­i­cantly lower priced feed­stock like resid­ual corn oil and waste veg­etable oil. This cat­a­lyst tech­nol­ogy is licensed from the National Bio­fu­els Energy Lab (NBEL) at Wayne State Uni­ver­sity.  Charles Sal­ley, an expe­ri­enced ser­ial entre­pre­neur, has joined the team as Pres­i­dent, CEO to estab­lish the col­lab­o­ra­tions to enable our strate­gic part­ner strat­egy.  Reg­u­la­tions (RFS2) and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns are increas­ing the demand for biodiesel fuels but cur­rent pro­duc­tion processes are not cost com­pet­i­tive because the com­monly used feed­stocks are too expen­sive. The value propo­si­tion we offer to cus­tomers is the abil­ity to re-start an exist­ing biodiesel facil­ity that has been idled due to both high cost feed­stock and inef­fi­cient pro­duc­tion processes.  We are cur­rently com­plet­ing pilot scale test­ing with a biodiesel process equip­ment part­ner and expect to install a larger demon­stra­tion scale at their facil­ity early in 2012.  Our busi­ness model is based on a recur­ring rev­enue model where users are charged a usage fee of $0.125 per gal­lon of biodiesel produced.

NEXTGEN Metabolomics Inc.
Life Sci­ence

NextGen Metabolomics, Inc. (NEXTGEN) was founded by highly qual­i­fied & expe­ri­enced indi­vid­u­als with over 50 years of suc­cess­ful startup and exec­u­tive expe­ri­ence in the Life Sci­ence and Metabolomics indus­tries. Cho­les­terol, glu­cose and a few bio­chem­i­cals are cur­rently mea­sured to give an indi­ca­tion of the health of an indi­vid­ual. How­ever, humans pro­duce some 1800 of these metabo­lites.  Why then is it that more of these are not mea­sured to get an entire accu­rate health sta­tus?  Because mea­sur­ing metabo­lites is dif­fi­cult to do!  To accu­rately mea­sure bio­chem­i­cal (metabo­lite) changes in an organ­ism, there is agree­ment that the sci­ence of metabolomics is the best solu­tion.  NEXTGEN has devel­oped pro­pri­etary dis­rup­tive tech­nol­ogy and prod­ucts which allow faster and more con­cise mea­sure­ments of the effects of dis­ease (diag­nos­tics), tox­ins (tox­i­col­ogy), drugs (phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, bio­process), and food (agri­cul­ture, nutri­tion) on any liv­ing organ­ism and will become the foun­da­tion upon which these multi-billion dol­lar mar­kets will be built.  NEXTGEN is con­duct­ing 2 pilot stud­ies and is in licens­ing dis­cus­sions with 2 addi­tional indus­try groups. Prod­ucts are expected to be on the mar­ket by Q3 2012 and gross rev­enues are expected to exceed $50M by 2015. NEXTGEN is seek­ing financ­ing of $1.5M for prod­uct devel­op­ment, and out-licensing efforts.

North Coast Indus­trial Imag­ing
Next Gen­er­a­tion Manufacturing

North Coast Indus­trial Imag­ing (NCII) is a Michigan-based start-up com­pany that has focused on pro­vid­ing imag­ing ser­vices to busi­nesses and indus­trial con­cerns in the Great Lakes Region. With  offices in Port Huron, NCII began by sell­ing ther­mal imag­ing cam­eras from man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Fluke, and has expanded to also pro­vide ser­vices such as ther­mal stud­ies, ther­mal imag­ing soft­ware and train­ing, and image pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions for metal recy­clers. NCII was formed in Octo­ber 2007 and cur­rently has 3 full-time employ­ees and 2 part-time employ­ees. The NCII man­age­ment team con­sists of expe­ri­enced sales, engi­neer­ing, and oper­a­tions per­son­nel who have worked together pre­vi­ously. NCII is an active par­tic­i­pant in the Port Huron Inno­va­tion Cen­ter,  and is also a mem­ber of Automa­tion Alley.
While work­ing with our diverse cus­tomer based – which includes the Big Three auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­ers, a major recy­cler in Louis Pad­nos Iron & Metal Com­pany, and sev­eral other Michi­gan com­pa­nies – NCII devel­oped an aware­ness of the impor­tance of both employee safety and energy man­age­ment. We have spent much of the past year devel­op­ing a prod­uct that will both pro­tect main­te­nance employ­ees from dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions as well as assist orga­ni­za­tions in opti­miz­ing the use of elec­tri­cal energy.

Nutri­info
Prod­ucts and Services

Nutriinfo.com is owned by Minu Inter­ac­tive, Inc., based in Novi, Michi­gan. To help indi­vid­u­als lose weight and man­age their health in a sci­en­tif­i­cally valid, yet sim­ple and con­ve­nient way, the My Nutri­info pro­gram was launched in 2007 after 2 years of devel­op­ment.  My Nutri­info is an inno­v­a­tive online tool designed to help indi­vid­u­als lose weight and take con­trol of their health through self-monitoring, indi­vid­u­al­ized advice, sup­port, and dynamic inter­ac­tion. Its unique inter­face tools give health coaches a stream­lined way to mon­i­tor their clients’ progress, mea­sure results, and pro­vide extra sup­port. This helps clients sus­tain their effort and achieve long-lasting results, and increases the num­ber of clients a coach can serve.  Our team includes experts in nutri­tion, tech­nol­ogy, and pio­neers in health pro­mo­tion.  Mia Jang, Ph.D., founder and CEO, is the archi­tect of the tech­nol­ogy and chief nutri­tion expert. Our advi­sory board mem­bers, Dr. Michael O’Donnell, Ted Dacko, and Michael Samuel­son, have 100 years of com­bined expe­ri­ence in clin­i­cal, work­place, and com­mer­cial well­ness set­tings. We are ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing inno­v­a­tive tools to improve the effi­ciency and prof­itabil­ity of our client com­pa­nies and the health of their individuals.

Ocu­Sciences, Inc.
Med­ical Device

Ocu­Sciences, Inc. is a product-stage med­ical diag­nos­tic device com­pany com­mer­cial­iz­ing a rapid, non-invasive test for early detec­tion of reti­nal dis­ease.  Ocu­Sciences has devel­oped a pro­pri­etary, ocu­lar imag­ing tech­nique, Reti­nal Meta­bolic Analy­sisTM (RMA), as a non-invasive, rapid bio­marker for mea­sur­ing the dam­age to reti­nal tis­sue due to dia­betes, mac­u­lar degen­er­a­tion and glau­coma.  The RMA tech­nol­ogy pro­vides a means to detect dis­ease processes sev­eral years ear­lier than cur­rent clin­i­cal meth­ods and before irre­versible struc­tural alter­ations due to cell death become vis­i­ble in the retina.  Ocu­Sciences has demon­strated that RMA is more pre­dic­tive of dia­betes than the gold stan­dard HbA1C and pro­vides a func­tional meta­bolic map of the retina for patients with severe AMD to mea­sure the pro­gres­sion of dam­age.  This meta­bolic health bio­maker, used in cel­lu­lar assays and clin­i­cal tri­als, helps phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies develop more rapidly and pre­cisely oph­thalmic drugs.  Physi­cians can use the device to screen patients.   Optometrist and oph­thal­mol­o­gists can use the device to diag­nose and mon­i­tor dis­ease pro­gres­sion and guide ther­apy.  With 57M dia­bet­ics in the US today and a rapidly grow­ing epi­demic, the screen­ing for dia­betic retinopa­thy and early treat­ment can help pre­vent blind­ness in 24,000  patients annu­ally and reduce the $174B costs asso­ci­ated with diabetes.

ONL Ther­a­peu­tics
Life Sci­ence

ONL Ther­a­peu­tics is a pre-clinical stage oph­thalmic devel­op­ment com­pany focused on ther­a­peu­tics to pre­vent vision loss due to reti­nal dis­or­ders.  It will develop ther­a­peu­tics that pro­tect neural cells (pho­tore­cep­tors) that trans­mit light sig­nals from the eye to the brain thus pre­serv­ing vision. This approach is novel and com­ple­ments exist­ing ther­a­peu­tic and sur­gi­cal treat­ments for age-related mac­u­lar degen­er­a­tion, dia­betic retinopa­thy, and reti­nal detach­ment, the tar­get indi­ca­tions for ONL’s lead prod­uct ONL101, a 12-amino acid pep­tide to be injected directly into the eye.  ONL’s tech­nol­ogy plat­form is invented by Dr. David Zacks, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor for Oph­thal­mol­ogy and Visual Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s Kel­logg Eye Cen­ter. ONL has secured an exclu­sive option to patents and appli­ca­tions pro­tect­ing rel­e­vant meth­ods and com­pounds.  ONL plans to develop its prod­uct can­di­dates to human proof of con­cept by 2014 where­upon it will part­ner them with a major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany for fur­ther clin­i­cal stud­ies and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.  ONL has ver­i­fied the inter­est of such large com­pany part­ners in its tech­ni­cal approach.  ONL plans to fund most of its pre­clin­i­cal devel­op­ment activ­i­ties through gov­ern­ment grants, through National Eye Insti­tute and Depart­ment of Defense and to com­ple­ment these fund­ing sources with angel financing.

Park­ing­Carma, Inc.
Advanced Trans­porta­tion

ParkingCarma’s Online Park­ing Net­work (OPN) is a man­aged soft­ware as a ser­vice (SaaS) that enables park­ing man­age­ment com­pa­nies, real estate own­ers, and park­ers to con­nect and improve the park­ing expe­ri­ence. The Online Park­ing Net­work serves as an information-and-transaction inter­me­di­ary, estab­lish­ing usage and price terms that lead to favor­able and repet­i­tive park­ing events at the facil­i­ties reg­is­tered on the net­work.  Park­ing in urban areas is a frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence for dri­vers and exacts a high cost for cities cop­ing with vehi­cle emis­sions and con­gested traf­fic.  Dri­vers, Con­nected Vehi­cle Man­u­fac­tur­ers, Park­ing Man­age­ment Com­pa­nies, Munic­i­pal­i­ties, and Busi­nesses strug­gle with the lack of good infor­ma­tion with­out an effi­cient way to con­nect the dri­ver with park­ing sup­ply.  The con­ver­gence of ubiq­ui­tous net­work capa­bil­i­ties, cloud com­put­ing, mobile tech­nolo­gies, and in-vehicle nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems brings a unprece­dented oppor­tu­nity to change the way the park­ing facil­i­ties and dri­vers con­nect.  In the process, ParkingCarma’s OPN allows a shift in the rela­tion­ship between park­ing man­age­ment and parker: from an anony­mous parker to an iden­ti­fi­able cus­tomer and from a mere park­ing lot to a pre­ferred park­ing provider. Through these con­nec­tions Park­ing­Carma is able to apply to any park­ing sit­u­a­tion and improve the park­ing experience.

Phrixus Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Inc.
Life Sci­ence

Phrixus Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Inc., a clinical-stage spe­cialty phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany, is devel­op­ing Carme­seal™ to treat car­diac dys­func­tion and dilated car­diomy­opa­thy (DCM) in patients with Duchenne mus­cu­lar dys­tro­phy (DMD) and acute decom­pen­sated HF (ADHF). Phrixus has shown that Carme­seal, gener­i­cally known as Poloxamer-188 (P-188), is active in 4 dif­fer­ent in vivo mod­els pre­dic­tive of human effi­cacy, includ­ing the mdx mouse and the GRMD dog mod­els (both for DMD) and rat and dog mod­els of ischemic HF. Phrixus is lever­ag­ing exten­sive pre­vi­ous invest­ments made by oth­ers in this com­pound. Pre­vi­ous work includes safety in >2,500 sub­jects at 10-100x the doses planned for the Phrixus Phase 2a tri­als, for which FDA has already allowed an IND.  Phrixus seeks a $7–11 mil­lion Series A to per­form these clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion stud­ies in DMD and sta­ble heart fail­ure. These stud­ies should pro­duce results, a sig­nif­i­cant value inflec­tion, and cor­po­rate part­ner­ing within 18–24 months from funding.

Prac­ti­cal EHR Solu­tions, LLC
Infor­ma­tion Technology

Prac­ti­cal EHR Solu­tions, LLC (Pehr) is a ser­vice provider and devel­oper of soft­ware that enables physi­cians to increase their pro­duc­tiv­ity and prof­itabil­ity.  Pehr’s soft­ware prod­ucts are designed to edu­cate and guide the 2,000,000 poten­tial physi­cian prac­tice users through the imple­men­ta­tion of 47 crit­i­cal projects that are fueled by con­stantly chang­ing health­care reg­u­la­tions and the increas­ing tech­ni­cal require­ments for com­pli­ance.  Three of the projects address the urgent need for Elec­tronic Health Record (EHR) imple­men­ta­tions.  Through 2014, the gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing finan­cial incen­tives to physi­cians who fully imple­ment EHR sys­tems.  In 2015, the gov­ern­ment will begin reduc­ing pay­ments to physi­cians who are not fully using an EHR, but with 700+ cer­ti­fied EHR prod­ucts to choose from and a 50% imple­men­ta­tion fail­ure rate, physi­cians need help.  Pehr’s prac­ti­cal and proven imple­men­ta­tion method­ol­ogy allows physi­cians to achieve a pos­i­tive return on their EHR invest­ments.  A large knowl­edge gap exists between physi­cian prac­tices and tech­nol­ogy ven­dors.  Prac­tice employ­ees do not under­stand com­plex tech­nol­ogy or project man­age­ment and rarely have ade­quate staffing resources avail­able for projects.  Prod­uct ven­dors and IT con­sul­tants do not under­stand how prac­tices and physi­cians work.  This gap is filled by using Pehr’s knowledge-based soft­ware prod­ucts or by con­tract­ing with Pehr’s health­care experts.

Retia Med­ical
Med­ical Device

Retia Med­ical makes mon­i­tors for high-risk patients. Retia’s first prod­uct mon­i­tors car­diac out­put, a crit­i­cal health met­ric that describes the flow rate of blood pumped by the heart.  By track­ing changes in car­diac out­put, clin­i­cians can make ear­lier diag­noses and man­age patients bet­ter.  This approach leads to improved out­comes and lower costs for patients with con­di­tions such as hem­or­rhage, heart fail­ure, and sep­sis.  Among less-invasive devices, Retia’s mon­i­tor main­tains its accu­racy when the patient goes unsta­ble, which is when other devices fail. This key ben­e­fit makes it ideal for use in emer­gency rooms, ICUs, oper­at­ing rooms, and the home.  Retia will tar­get its first prod­uct for the $800 mil­lion hos­pi­tal mar­ket.  Retia has pro­tected its tech­nol­ogy, devel­oped at Michi­gan State and MIT, with seven patents.  It has also val­i­dated the tech­nol­ogy through exten­sive tests in ani­mals and humans.  Retia has already raised seed cap­i­tal to finance prod­uct devel­op­ment and fur­ther clin­i­cal stud­ies.  With the sup­port of a strong advi­sory board com­prised of indus­try and clin­i­cal experts, the team expects to receive FDA approval and launch the prod­uct within three years.  Retia will also seek to exit via acqui­si­tion, as it will be an attrac­tive tar­get for lead­ing patient mon­i­tor­ing companies.

Ret­roSense Ther­a­peu­tics
Life Sci­ence

Ret­roSense Ther­a­peu­tics is a biotech­nol­ogy com­pany that is devel­op­ing a gene ther­apy to restore vision in patients suf­fer­ing from blind­ness due to retini­tis pig­men­tosa (RP) and advanced dry age-related mac­u­lar degen­er­a­tion (advanced dry-AMD). There are cur­rently no FDA approved ther­a­pies to improve or restore vision in patients with these reti­nal degen­er­a­tive con­di­tions.  Led by a team of sea­soned vet­er­ans, Ret­roSense Ther­a­peu­tics was founded in 2009 to develop a novel gene ther­apy approach to vision restora­tion. Ret­roSense is located in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan, a short drive from Wayne State Uni­ver­sity, where the approach was pio­neered. Ret­roSense has secured exclu­sive, world­wide rights to rel­e­vant intel­lec­tual prop­erty from Wayne State Uni­ver­sity and Salus Uni­ver­sity.  RetroSense’s man­age­ment team has com­mer­cial and sci­en­tific expe­ri­ence across all phases of drug devel­op­ment, as well as startup suc­cess. The Com­pany oper­ates vir­tu­ally in order to secure top indus­try tal­ent for its diverse, spe­cial­ized needs in an effi­cient and effec­tive man­ner.  Ret­roSense is an agile com­pany with a cul­ture of flex­i­bil­ity, deter­mi­na­tion, and inno­v­a­tive thinking.

Sen­Sigma
Next Gen­er­a­tion Manufacturing

Sen­Sigma LLC, launched from the UM Cen­ter for Laser Aided Man­u­fac­tur­ing, has devel­oped a plat­form tech­nol­ogy for opti­cal and spec­tropho­to­met­ric iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. With many poten­tial com­mer­cial uses, the first mar­ket ready prod­uct is a soft­ware dri­ven Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence feed­back sys­tem for weld mon­i­tor­ing. It uses opti­cal emis­sion spec­troscopy to enable improved weld qual­ity and increased in-line, no-defect prod­uct through­put, in the multi-billion dol­lar indus­trial laser and plasma arc weld­ing processes.  This Smart Opti­cal Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem (SOMS), installed on a new or already in-service weld­ing robot, observes in real-time the plasma gen­er­ated dur­ing the weld­ing oper­a­tion. By per­form­ing a multi-spectrum analy­sis, it iden­ti­fies and cat­e­go­rizes dif­fer­ent types of defects, and then essen­tially “teaches” the host weld­ing equip­ment to improve its process and thus cor­rect and avoid the pre­vi­ously observed defects and cre­ate bet­ter welds. SOMS also pro­vides for reduced man­u­fac­tur­ing cycle time, scrap rates, man­ual inter­ven­tion and inspec­tion.  Sen­Sigma has one issued patent, two filed appli­ca­tions, and sev­eral other new prod­uct IP oppor­tu­ni­ties in the pipeline.  The SOMS tech­nol­ogy, installed in a sec­ond gen­er­a­tion pro­to­type, is cur­rently being eval­u­ated by poten­tial large cus­tomers with whom we have a strong and long­stand­ing rela­tion­ships. Sales will be over $50 Mil­lion yearly by 2016.

Shoul­der Inno­va­tions LLC
Med­ical Device

Total shoul­der replace­ment surgery is an evolv­ing and grow­ing pro­ce­dure.  More than 50% of these pro­ce­dures are per­formed by sur­geons who do 5 or less per year. Shoul­der Inno­va­tions, LLC is devel­op­ing a next gen­er­a­tion min­i­mally inva­sive and sim­pli­fied total shoul­der replace­ment sys­tem.  The tech­nol­ogy uti­lizes inven­tions designed by sur­geons to make the surgery more repro­d­u­ca­ble for the aver­age sur­geon while also increas­ing the safety and effec­tive­ness of the device. The sys­tem relies on a “gle­noid” replace­ment device which is inset into the native bone rather than onlayed onto the native bone.  The inset­ting pro­ce­dure removes far less bone and has proven to be much more sta­ble.  Until now the pri­mary rea­son for revi­sion surgery with total shoul­der patients is loos­en­ing of the gle­noid com­po­nent.  Shoul­der Inno­va­tions’ design sig­nif­i­cantly reduces the chances of loos­en­ing as has been demon­strated with finite ele­ment analy­sis, bench top test­ing and actual clin­i­cal implants. Shoul­der Inno­va­tions has also devel­oped a novel humeral head and stem replace­ment tech­nol­ogy.  By short­en­ing the shaft on the implanted stem this design pro­vides rota­tional resis­tance, tor­sional con­trol while pre­vent­ing “sub­si­dence” and pro­vides a “self-centering” fea­ture. This stem will also sig­nif­i­cantly reduce the sur­gi­cal com­plex­ity of total shoul­der replace­ment. With a ris­ing patient pop­u­la­tion and a need for a sim­pli­fied pro­ce­dure and total shoul­der replace­ment sys­tem, Shoul­der Inno­va­tions’ tech­nol­ogy is well poised to pro­vide a much needed solu­tion to a large and grow­ing market.

Spider9
Alter­na­tive Energy

Through the deploy­ment of advanced elec­tri­cal archi­tec­ture and real time com­put­ing con­trol algo­rithms Spider9 is capa­ble of address­ing the cost, reli­a­bil­ity and life issues sur­round­ing grid scale bat­ter­ies and solar fields. Max­i­miz­ing our customer’s energy out­put at the min­i­mum cost.  The Spider9 Bat­tery Man­age­ment Sys­tem is capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing up to 15% more energy and 20% longer life from bat­ter­ies than  todays sys­tems. Dra­mat­i­cally improv­ing the cost effec­tive­ness of stor­age on the grid and cre­at­ing a tech­nol­ogy plat­form that is chem­istry agnos­tic and enables the use of sec­ondary life elec­tric vehi­cle packs in grid energy stor­age.  Using the same core tech­nol­ogy Spider9 devel­oped an Energy Man­age­ment Sys­tem that pro­vides a rev­o­lu­tion­ary break­through in the intel­li­gent con­trol of solar fields. Increas­ing the energy har­vested form a field by up to 50% and dra­mat­i­cally improv­ing the cost effec­tive­ness of solar sys­tems.  Lead­ing the com­pany to suc­cess is a team of proven exec­u­tives and entre­pre­neurs. Glynne Townsend, CEO, who led the sales growth for A123Systems. David Park, COO, ser­ial bat­tery entre­pre­neur, David Smith, CTO, for­mer VP of tech­nol­ogy at Exide, Wave­creast, and ex chair­man of the United States Advanced Bat­tery Con­sor­tium and Bill Beck­man, CFO, for­mer CFO of John­son Controls.

2011 GLEQ Win­ner
Syzygy Biotech
Life Science

Syzygy is a new com­pany with a unique lead­er­ship team that brings a diverse and impres­sive array of expe­ri­ence and edu­ca­tion to the table. Our prod­ucts are fun­da­men­tal com­po­nents of life sci­ence activ­i­ties involv­ing DNA and our ongo­ing suc­cess in new prod­uct devel­op­ment is a direct result of our strong invest­ment in research. Syzygy’s pro­pri­etary meth­ods, dis­cov­er­ies and intel­lec­tual prop­erty sup­port prod­ucts and ser­vices that improve research results and save money. Our first com­mer­cial prod­uct (Taq Poly­merase) is used by labs, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­ers to amplify DNA for use in research, test­ing and exper­i­men­ta­tion. We are build­ing a suc­cess­ful com­pany founded on an effi­cient orga­ni­za­tion and cost struc­ture, depend­able qual­ity con­trol and an inno­v­a­tive cul­ture. Our vision is to lower the cost of bio­log­i­cal reagents to fos­ter life sci­ence research and edu­ca­tion and dis­cover, develop and pro­duce bio­chem­i­cal solu­tions use­ful for the advance­ment of sci­ence and the cre­ation of high qual­ity life sci­ence jobs in Michigan.

Ther­a­py­Charts
Infor­ma­tion Technology

Ther­a­py­Charts sup­ports the 1.3M men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als who are dis­sat­is­fied with paper charts, 20% insur­ance rejec­tions, and chang­ing health-care reg­u­la­tions. Our team of attor­neys, com­puter secu­rity experts, and psy­chol­o­gists cre­ated an elec­tronic health record (EHR) sys­tem with smart prac­tice man­age­ment. Unlike com­peti­tors, we inte­grate remote acces­si­bil­ity, secu­rity, legal com­pli­ance, and tai­lor it to the work­flow of clin­i­cians – at a price com­pa­ra­ble to the cost of man­u­ally main­tain­ing patient records.TherapyCharts makes use of the SaaS model to pro­vide high value for our cus­tomers with low oper­at­ing costs. Besides a ded­i­cated expe­ri­enced team, we have proven sup­port in the mar­ket with over 35 accounts. Addi­tional com­peti­tors, enter­ing the space in the last year, val­i­dated the mar­ket need.  For­tu­nately; our 2 year head start, a low cash burn rate, and ded­i­cated equity dri­ven team cre­ates a path for suc­cess. In the short term, Ther­a­py­Charts is gath­er­ing new cus­tomers, lis­ten­ing to input, and devel­op­ing needed enhance­ments. In the long term, we are work­ing on devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships with train­ing uni­ver­si­ties; iden­ti­fy­ing mar­ket­ing chan­nel part­ners; and enhanc­ing rela­tion­ships with key peo­ple in legal, eth­i­cal, and insur­ance billing fields to estab­lish Ther­a­py­Charts as the de facto standard.

ULTrA
Med­ical Devices

Drs. Susan Brown PhD and Jeanne Lan­gan PhD, using over $500k in grants and spon­sored research funds within the School of Kine­si­ol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, have cre­ated the ULTrA Reha­bil­i­ta­tion and Assess­ment Sys­tem. It is a hard­ware and software-based plat­form tech­nol­ogy of sig­nif­i­cant value to ULTrA’s patient group, namely those mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als suf­fer­ing from stroke, cere­bral palsy, Parkinson’s dis­ease, and other neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders affect­ing upper limb dys­func­tion. Its use is eli­gi­ble for reim­burse­ment by insur­ance providers and Medicare.  ULTrA meets many iden­ti­fied large mar­ket needs. It is both an assess­ment tool that pro­vides a quan­ti­ta­tive deter­mi­na­tion of patient con­di­tion, and a mon­i­tor­ing tool that mea­sures the progress and effec­tive­ness of treat­ment. ULTrA con­tains reg­u­lar and cus­tomiz­able reha­bil­i­ta­tion treat­ment mod­ules that, when applied, pro­duce sig­nif­i­cantly improved arm/hand func­tion. As a telemed­i­cine solu­tion, using its web­cam con­nec­tion, it allows clin­i­cians to inter­act with patients at remote sites, includ­ing the patient or caregiver’s home, and can even be used inde­pen­dently by indi­vid­u­als at home when their insur­ance has run out.  Sup­ported by an expe­ri­enced man­age­ment team and advi­sory board, ULTrA is uniquely posi­tioned to pro­vide patient ben­e­fits unavail­able on com­pet­i­tive sys­tems.  ULTrA is cur­rently seek­ing to raise $500K to achieve ini­tial mar­ket entry.

Vinci Tech­nol­ogy Corp
Advanced Materials

Vinci Tech­nol­ogy was incor­po­rated in Feb­ru­ary 2009.  Three engi­neers with over 70 years of com­bined R&D and prod­uct devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence with Ford Motor Com­pany started the com­pany.  Cur­rently the Vinci team is com­posed of the fol­low­ing key per­son­nel: CEO and Pres­i­dent – Dr. Tsung-Yu Pan is a 24-year vet­eran of mate­ri­als and man­u­fac­tur­ing research in auto­mo­tive indus­try.   He has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in work­ing on fric­tion stir weld­ing process and advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing.  He received his PhD in Macro­mol­e­c­u­lar Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan.  Chief Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer — Mr. Allen D. Roche was instru­men­tal in set­ting up a small R&D com­pany in the UK spe­cial­iz­ing in advanced mate­r­ial devel­op­ment based on spray form­ing tech­nol­ogy.  The com­pany built up a large port­fo­lio of patents on a spray tool­ing tech­nol­ogy that was sub­se­quently sold to Ford.  He trans­ferred to Ford, USA as a group leader to assist in the imple­men­ta­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the spray tool­ing tech­nol­ogy.  He has authored/co-authored over 20 patents.   He received his M.Sc Degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­sity of Wales.  Vinci’s busi­ness focus is on devel­op­ing tech­nolo­gies related to nano­ma­te­ri­als.  The core com­pe­ten­cies of Vinci are:  tech­nol­ogy trans­fer and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of mate­r­ial inven­tions; prac­tice of mate­ri­als pro­cess­ing and cre­ative inven­tions in the advanced mate­ri­als field.  Our goal in the short term is to scale up & com­mer­cial­ize the Fric­tion Stir Pro­cess­ing tech­nol­ogy to pro­duce low cost struc­tural nano­ma­te­ri­als with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial value.

Visotek
Defense & Home­land Security

Visotek is a sup­plier of its own line of patented high per­for­mance indus­trial diode lasers with out­put pow­ers rang­ing from tens to thou­sands of watts. Our periph­eral com­po­nents and laser pro­cess­ing heads trans­form laser energy from a vari­ety of laser sources to enable cladding, coat­ing, clean­ing, weld­ing, abla­tion, and sol­der­ing. These Smart Laser Tools ™ are used across the world in advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions, research labs, the oper­at­ing suite, and mil­i­tary instal­la­tions.  Visotek has devel­oped a unique prod­uct line of portable laser-based solu­tions that address both mil­i­tary and industry’s need to remove coat­ings and cor­ro­sion in a safe, cost effec­tive and envi­ron­men­tal­lyfriendly man­ner. These laser clean­ing tools have sig­nif­i­cant appli­ca­tions in the $87B defense main­te­nance, repair and over­haul (MRO) mar­ket. The laser clean­ing mar­ket also rep­re­sents a major oppor­tu­nity in other indus­trial ver­ti­cal mar­kets that have the same issues to address.  With its 10 year his­tory and an expe­ri­enced team, Visotek has suc­cess­fully boot­strapped its way through the devel­op­ment of its laser prod­uct offer­ings and its 10,000 sq. ft. high tech infra­struc­ture located in Livo­nia, MI. It has always been cash flow pos­i­tive with no debt financ­ing or prior out­side equity investment.

White Pines Sys­tems
Infor­ma­tion Technology

White Pine Sys­tems, LLC (White Pine) is an emerg­ing provider of Internet-based Per­sonal Health Appli­ca­tions (PHA), which include Patient Por­tals, inter­op­er­a­ble Per­sonal Health Records (PHR) and Health & Well­ness solu­tions that are at the cen­ter of the Patient-Centered Con­nected Health (PCCH) move­ment.  These solu­tions have been shown to pre­vent avoid­able hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary tests, reduce emer­gency room vis­its and man­age med­ica­tions thereby reduc­ing total health­care costs and improv­ing the qual­ity of life.  Through a unique com­bi­na­tion of patent-pending and pro­pri­etary tech­nolo­gies and key rela­tion­ships, White Pine is poised to secure a lead­er­ship posi­tion in the mar­ket for Per­sonal Health Appli­ca­tions.  The sales model includes a com­bi­na­tion of ini­tial ser­vices fees plus annual sub­scrip­tions.  A typ­i­cal trans­ac­tion sells for between $50,000 and $400,000, depend­ing on the num­ber of peo­ple.  White Pine is a Microsoft part­ner, build­ing solu­tions for their Health­Vault per­sonal health plat­form.  White Pine has estab­lished tremen­dous reseller rela­tion­ships with Amer­i­can Spe­cialty Health (for high-end employ­ers), USA Pay­roll (small to mid-sized employ­ers), Rural Health IT (for Health Infor­ma­tion Exchanges) and oth­ers focused on health­care providers.  White Pine is posi­tioned to take advan­tage of both health care reform and employer demand for patient engage­ment to improve health while low­er­ing cost.