Buzz

TechColumbus announced this week its commitment to invest $500,000 from its Pre-Seed Fund in Nanofiber Solutions LLC to advance innovations in cell culture technologies and regenerative medicine. Click here to read the full article.

The Innovation Engine Accelerator is a digital media business accelerator located in Ohio University's business incubator, the award-winning Innovation Center.  Made possible by public and private support, the Innovation Engine Accelerator is launching its inaugural 10-week boot camp class providing seed funding of up to $20,000 each for five teams this summer.  Applications are available now. Click here to read the full article.

On Wednesday, April 18, the crowdfunding industry’s 13 top debt and equity crowdfunding platforms and industry experts met to create a Statement of Intent for a lasting organization that will champion, advocate for, and represent the global crowdfunding industry. Two days later, this group—the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Association, or CFIRA—presented its Statement of Intent to the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).  CFIRA’s complete Statement of Intent can be found on www.Crowdsourcing.org.

The America21 Project and BioEnterprise are hosts of a groundbreaking national conference dedicated to promoting and accelerating underrepresented minority healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship.  

The First Annual Minority Biomedical Entrepreneurship Conference will be held on May 21 – 22 at the Cleveland Marriott, overlooking the construction of the Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center. View event information here.

A new accelerator program for startups in New Albany will help them continue to grow.  At the March 20 meeting of New Albany City Council funding was approved for creation of a new 7,100-square-foot "business accelerator" space. Read the full story here.

Manta, the largest online community dedicated entirely to small business, announced that it has received a $44 million minority equity investment from Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), a leading global investment firm. Read the full story here.

The Ohio State University and Ohio University are partnering to create a new commercialization and funding model. They have committed $35 million in total to the formation of a venture capital fund designed to meet early-stage funding needs of innovative technology ventures. Read the full story here.

TechColumbus’ fifth annual report to the community highlights the progress Central Ohio has made in cultivating talent, catalyzing new businesses and creating the type of entrepreneurial ecosystem that is driving the region’s success in the 21st century global economy. Read the full story here.

President Obama launched EV-Everywhere, the second in a series of Energy Department “Clean Energy Grand Challenges” aimed at addressing the most pressing energy challenges of our time.  The EV Everywhere Challenge will bring together America’s best and brightest scientists, engineers, and businesses to work collaboratively to make electric vehicles more affordable and convenient to own and drive than today’s gasoline-powered vehicles within the next 10 years. Click here to read the article.

A research team from the University of Akron is one of five national recipients of a $100,000 grant from General Electric, which last fall launched a program to identify and bring to market innovations created to diagnose and treat breast cancer. Read the article here.

Physician-scientist Clay Marsh is one of the indisputable rising stars in the constellation of personalized health care (a term he doesn’t fancy), and a genuine innovator in devising preventative health care as opposed to “sick care,” and in pursuing novel translational research and pilot projects that find new ways to engage patients in the nation’s largest academic health care system. Read the article here.

The deadline for nominations for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award has been extended to March 23rd. For more info, click here.

A recent Kauffman Foundation study reports that "user entrepreneurs" – those who have created innovative products or services for their own use then subsequently launched companies to commercialize them – have founded more than 46 percent of the U.S. innovative startups that have lasted five years or more.