Innovation Fuels, a biodiesel company with operations in Central New York, New Jersey and Wisconsin, will open a new headquarters and R&D office at our supporting member the Syracuse Technology Garden, according to coverage on the Post-Standard's Syracuse.com website. Staffing the office is the company's senior vice president, Joe Dickson, a CNY resident who also helped start one of our other member incubators in Syracuse, the South Side Innovation Center.

Our member the RPI Incubator Program has confirmed the previously announced graduation of Ecovative Design and also announced the graduation of Acacian Emergency Solutions. The incubator program also accepted OsmoPure as a new virtual tenant and shifted AllforLocal from resident to virtual status.

A new regional "seed fund" that will make convertible-note investments of up to $30,000 in early-stage technology companies will be hosted by our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator, according to a press release (pdf version attached to this item) issued by the County of Chautauqua Industrial Development Agency, which provided the startup grant for the fund.

The Chautauqua Seed Fund is a collaboration of Chautauqua County Executive Gregory J. Edwards, the Chautauqua Region Industrial Development Corporation, the Fredonia incubator, and the City of Dunkirk. The fund will be based at the incubator, which is situated in the City of Dunkirk, and the incubator will provide assistance to businesses completing applications to the fund.

UPDATE: Coverage in the Dunkirk Observer.

NY1, the local-news channel on Time Warner's NYC cable systems, produced a recent story on Mostly Myrtle's, a business founded by entrepreneur Debra Sadowsky at our member the Artisan Baking Center Kitchen Innovations incubator. The story focuses on the benefits of the facility itself and its entrepreneurial training partnership with the Small Business Development Center at CUNY's LaGuardia Community College. See the first link in this item for text and video.

Our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator has received a $300,000 challenge grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation of Buffalo.

Payable over the next three years, the challenge grant will match private contributions up to $100,000 a year raised by the university toward building the $6 million, 21,000 square-foot facility near the waterfront in the City of Dunkirk. For the university press release, click the second link above. A parallel article in the Dunkirk Observer includes a photograph of the incubator under construction.

Attached to this item is the incubator's latest newsletter.

Five Web 2.0 startups led by Syracuse University students and recent graduates constitute the entering class for the 'Sandbox' student incubator announced by our supporting member the Syracuse Technology Garden.

The student Sandbox is part of the Syracuse Student Start-up Accelerator, and is a collaboration of the Tech Garden with SU, including its School of Information Studies (iSchool) and the campus-wide Enitaitive funded by the Kauffman Foundation.

All five businesses, involving 15 young entrepreneurs in all, have taken up residence at the Tech Garden for at least the next 12 weeks in preparation for marketplace launch. The residency complements two entrepreneurship courses to begin at SU next fall on the basics of entrepreneurship and business formation. During their residence, the student companies will receive coaching from Tech Garden staff, volunteer mentors and other entrepreneurs.

Participating student companies are:

• BrandYourself (Twitter link);
• Congruser;
• Grafighte;
• MBApplicant.com; and
• Open Quad