Category: Business/Technology

During Apple’s most recent annual tech-fest, the company unveiled new iPhone features in front of a packed arena in San Francisco. Some of its lawyers, meanwhile, are preparing for a different stage: A courtroom in Madison, Wisconsin.

Noted: GrocerKey is the brainchild of Jeremy Neren, who started an on-demand grocery service, Munchie Delivery, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005.

In the early 2000s, JoAnne Robbins was considering turning her research on swallowing disorders into a company.

The “Startup Rangers” are a playful, millennial-focused new marketing venture launched by UW-Madison junior QuHarrison Terry.

Q&A with Aaron Olver, managing director of the UW-Madison’s University Research Park.

FluGen’s Redee Flu vaccine is based on research by UW-Madison scientists Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann, licensed exclusively to the Madison company by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).

Noted: In a classroom at the Wisconsin School of Business on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, there were lessons to be learned.

“Absolutely, I think our students can learn a lot from a day like today,” said Kristian Allee, assistant professor of accounting.

Leaders of Madison’s entrepreneurial community say they are surprised and saddened to hear the G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition has been called off for 2016. A highlight of the UW-Madison’s School of Business for the past 18 years, a notice on the contest’s website says “due to budgetary constraints,” the Burrill competition is being “suspended.”

Noted: Bright Cellars said it has increased membership to more than 3,000. It also has hired two University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates and a former Epic Systems project manager, bringing its employee count to 11, from three employees three months ago.

When the University of Wisconsin asked businesses what they were looking for in employees, nearly all of them said, ‘data scientists.’ The university responded with an online data science master degree program to help bring more qualified data professionals to the job market..

The daylong conference is Sept. 25 at UW-Madison’s Fluno Center, with a registration deadline of Sept. 16.

Noted: Cellectar was founded in Madison in 2003 by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jamey Weichert. Following a 2011 merger with a public company, Novelos Therapeutics, the corporate headquarters was moved to Massachusetts. The company moved back to Madison in 2014.

In a paper presented at Robotics Science and Systems in Rome in July, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison describe how they taught a Kinova Mico robot arm to help people do the dishes. The key, apparently, is slowing down and letting human team members take charge. “We want robots to follow our lead, or at least plan their actions with an awareness of ours,” says Bilge Mutlu, associate professor of computer science, psychology, and industrial engineering and an author of the paper.

Amy Wallner studied soil science, horticulture and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After just a few months working at West Madison Agricultural Research Station, she knew she wanted to be a vegetable grower.

Noted: Fetch Rewards has an app that makes grocery shopping easier. It was founded in 2013 by Wes Schroll, who was a University of Wisconsin-Madison student at the time

SmartUQ provides a faster way to do complex computer simulations with its analytics software, which helps companies reduce the complexity, time and cost of design cycles. It was formed in 2014 by Peter Qian, a statistics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It’s go-time tonight for eight college students participating in ImpactU, an accelerator program for college entrepreneurs. Following their ten-week program, they’ll have five minutes to pitch their business models to the start-up community during ImpactU Demo Day at UNC Charlotte Center City.

Here’s a quick look at the class of 2015’s participants, schools and projects:

Wiphala, from Jared Burris of University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Peter Rossi of Davidson College: This venture develops and manufactures llama fleece-based insulation, then sells it to apparel and bedding brands, retailers and manufacturers. This sustainable product can also increase Peruvian- or Bolivian- llama ranchers’ livelihoods.

Export Abroad, a software company that helps other firms with market research and sales leads in foreign countries, will be part of the first-ever White House Demo Day on Tuesday. Willy Hakizimana, 35, who co-founded Export Abroad in May 2014, said a San Francisco company that he works with nominated him for the event. Hakizimana came from Rwanda for an advanced degree in information systems at UW-Madison. “It’s just going to give us exposure and bring customers our way.”

NeuWave, 3529 Anderson St., was founded in 2008 based on technology developed by UW-Madison professors Fred Lee and Daniel van der Weide and licensed from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Speaking at a Wisconsin Innovation Network luncheon, UW-Madison CIO Bruce Maas and the state’s Department of Administration CIO David Cagigal said the need for increased connectivity will only skyrocket in coming years due to pressure from the “Internet of Things.”

In case you haven’t noticed, a startup scene is surging all across Madison. Ideas are taking shape at coffee shops and on campuses, in coworking spaces and accelerators. Emerging new companies and academic spinoffs are launching products and services. They’re attracting consumers and clients and finding and growing resources to give their dreams a go. If local entrepreneurs and civic and business leaders capitalize on the city’s size, location and unique culture—and make inclusivity a priority—Madison has all the makings of becoming a startup city.

Noted: Rostowfske will receive training from the Food Institute of the University of Wisconsin-Madison extension, organizers said. He has been doing consulting work for nearly two years with Oscar Mayer, Palermos Pizza and other well-known brands. Before that, Rostowfske was director of innovation and new business development at Palermos, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Homeland Security grant provides $23.4 million over five years for the SWAMP program, which is a collaborative effort, based here in the Midwest: Morgridge is the lead institution and is responsible for building and operating the SWAMP; UW-Madison selects the software security tools and brings them into the SWAMP; Indiana University makes sure the SWAMP itself is secure; and, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign manages and stores the identities of those who use the SWAMP.

High-profile projects like the Madison Public Market could get some of the grant money, MadREP president Paul Jadin said, along with projects aimed at improving rail facilities for moving manufactured products, at developing traceable food supply chains as a competitive edge, and at expanding commercialization of new technologies at UW-Madison.

Biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, water technology and university research are all promising segments of the Wisconsin economy — and all need a special ingredient to stay in business:

Water that is so ultra-purified and sterile that it will never exist in nature and humans are not even advised to drink it. In 2003, it moved into a larger headquarters in Madison as it began to build water treatment reactors for the fast-growing companies related to biosciences, genomes, stem cells and drug manufacturing. It installed the ultrapure water infrastructure inside the city’s Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery, the massive University of Wisconsin-Madison research facility.

Noted: Neren figured out many of those things while running Munchie Delivery, an on-demand grocery delivery service that operates out of Capitol Centre Market in Madison, Vosseller said. Neren started Munchie Delivery in 2006, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a history degree.

Noted: Shine, whose technology was developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is in the process of building a $100 million production facility in Janesville. The company raised $2.4 million in September in a funding round it called a stepping stone to raising more funds to get the plant up and running.

Noted: The WiSys Technology Foundation, which handles invention disclosures for all University of Wisconsin campuses outside Madison and Milwaukee, is reporting a record number of invention “disclosures” by faculty and students. There were 56 disclosures this fiscal year, the highest total in 10 years. Disclosures are ideas that can lead to new products, services and startups.

UW-Madison computer sciences professor Jignesh Patel is spending a lot more time on the West Coast lately, after selling his latest business to a California company.

It’s easy for recruitment and retention to get lost in the shuffle among sexier topics like flipped learning, MOOCs, and the ongoing debates over funding and the cost of education. But for most institutions, the two Rs of admissions are still top of mind.

When it comes to social media, UW-Madison can Twitter all about it.

Wisconsin’s flagship university is the top Twitter account in the United States for higher education, according to data from social media research firm Engagement Labs.

Other universities may have more followers than UW-Madison’s 99,000, but when content is factored in, it’s tops.