For owners of rescued or inherited pets, a company called EpiPaws, founded by Andria Beal, a Ph.D. in biology, is developing a blood test to learn the age of their newly acquired animals.
It’s information that’s important to know, she says, in order to feed your dog or cat the right food, assess how much exercise they should get, or give animals any preventive health care they may need.
For businesses looking to use Generative Artificial Intelligence, Chuck Whiteman, founder of Lamatic.ai, is building a platform that offers everything a company would need. (GenAI allows users to input prompts that generate text, images, videos, sounds, 3D designs, and other media.)
Lamatic’s platform is among 200 hand-picked projects to be displayed at next month’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Whiteman said.
As dramatically different as the two projects sound, both are emblematic of what university-affiliated innovation centers have in mind when they look to help new companies gain traction by assisting owners to obtain vital information, advice and money to get their enterprises started. The overriding goal: Help convert ideas into revenue-generating technologies and products for consumers in the private and public sectors.
In South Florida, the business of innovation centers appears to be at a new inflection point.
As it happens, both EpiPaws and Lamatic received considerable help from the Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation, which staged its annual South Florida Innovation Day last week at Nova Southeastern University in Davie.
The center is now searching for a new executive director following the resignation of John Wensveen, who got the operation started in early 2022. Officials now say they’ll be reviewing the center’s strategic plan and accomplishments thus far to see how they can move the operation another level.
“We’re just at the beginning of our growth stage in taking advantage of these assets,” said Levan, a long-time Broward County financier and entrepreneur whose own money largely fueled the center’s startup. Today, the center offers 54,000 square feet of space on the NSU campus that houses “incubator and accelerator programs, co-working and meeting space, technology certification programs, specialized workshops, seminars, and short courses, as well as professional networking and social events,” according to the program’s website.
Wensveen is headed to France to become president of the International Space University. He started a Space Day program at the Levan Center to draw interest in the burgeoning commercial activity spun off by Florida’s Space Coast. This year’s program is set for Dec. 5.
Besides helping new companies, and hosting existing ones, the Levan Center says it is in discussions with multiple government agencies to collaborate on future projects via an AI Digital Cities Lab — in concert with Dell — to help municipalities become more efficient in addressing problems such as traffic management and better use of infrastructure.
In Palm Beach County, Florida Atlantic University has held sway in Boca Raton for the better part of a decade as a home for startup firms at its Tech Runway and for more advanced enterprises at its Global Ventures entity. Now, Vanderbilt University of Nashville, Tennessee, is negotiating with the county to erect a $520 million business school campus in downtown West Palm Beach with a computer science center and innovation hub. A contract is expected to be ready for review by Oct. 8.
But are such centers producing sustainable economic activity?
“With all of the entities that have been emerging, it tells me there is both demand for it, and if they succeed, relatively impactful things are going to be happening around it,” Kelley Shanley, interim executive director of the Levan Center, said last week.
In an interview shortly after his resignation, Wensveen told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the center is “well-positioned for the next stage of growth” under whomever takes it over. “It’s no longer a scrappy startup,” he said.
Over the last 2½ years, Wensveen said, more than 100 companies received help from the center, 450 new jobs and 17 technologies were created, and 14 patents filed.
Where does the center go from here?
It has strong support from NSU and from Broward County, the latter of which kicked in $7.5 million as a capital investment, making the center a major public-private partnership. The contribution came during the mayoral term of County Commissioner Michael Udine, who remains a strong supporter.
“We’re going to look back on this 15 to 20 years from now and we’re going to see major unicorns that started here have gone public, and added Broward County to the tech map gateway,” he said last week. “This is one of my favorite places in Broward County. I’m not just saying that.”
Udine noted that Modernizing Medicine, which produces electronic medical records and practice management software for physicians, got its start at the FAU Research Park in Boca Raton.
“Like anything, it takes time to build up reputation and awareness,” said Bob Swindell, president and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, the county’s economic development agency. “Commercialization of research has always been a driver for many of these things.”
“The pandemic didn’t help things move along, but to John’s credit, it’s been fantastic,” Swindell said of the center’s progress.
The Miami-based eMerge Americas, which was founded in 2014, believes there is significant growth ahead for innovation centers. Established as a technology-focused conference, the organization has become a year-round platform for growing technology firms, drawing both talent and money to the region in the process.
Melissa Medina, the CEO, president and a co-founder, noted an impact study conducted for the group by the Washington Economics consulting firm in Coral Gables concluded its efforts had helped create more than 10,000 high-skilled jobs statewide over the last decade.
“That is telling me there have been a lot more opportunities created over 10 years,” said Medina, who was visiting the Levan Center to oversee a pitch competition.
The study, she added, concluded eMerge “had an economic impact of over $2.6 billion.”
Medina added that initiatives such as the one envisioned by Vanderbilt for West Palm Beach should be welcomed.
“We have seen a lot of universities come into Florida and South Florida,” she said, listing Babson College, as well as Northeastern and Northwestern universities, as among those that have set up programs for entrepreneurs.
Combined with entrepreneurial programs run by the University of Miami, Florida International University and Miami-Dade College, among others, the space appears to be a crowded field.
But Medina said there is no other center that compares with the Levan Center, which is home to a military-grade cyber-security operation, the AI urban lab, and the program focusing on the support of space-related ventures.
“I am of the mindset and belief that we should be very supportive of other academic institutions wanting to launch programs,” she said. “I am all about competition, and I think it will drive innovation as well.”
To Levan, the prospective arrival of Vanderbilt to the region will create even more activity.
“The term I would use is ‘A rising tide lifts all boats,’” he said. “We’re delighted they’ve come into the market.”