Legislation signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg committing New York City to an 18-month study of the feasibility of generating electricity from gravity-driven flow in water mains has focused attention on Rentricity, a tenant/client of the NYSERDA-sponsored NYC ACRE clean-energy incubator that is collocated with NYU-Poly's Varick Street incubator. Rentricity has been a pioneer of this form of energy re-capture. In the last two weeks, coverage of the firm has appeared in both The New York Times and IEEE's Spectrum. 

Applied DNA Sciences, the latest venture by Long Island serial entrepreneur Jim Hayward to reside at our supporting member the LIHTI incubator, was featured at the website of Spectrum, the magazine of the IEEE professional society.

According to Spectrum, ADNAS is working with the DOD Defense Logistics Agency to apply its coding technologies based on plant DNA to "fingerprint" electronic components, protecting against counterfeits entering the defense-technology supply chain. The ADNAS technology has been shown to sruvive the heat and stresses of semiconductor processes, and is currently being studied for integration throughout the supply chain, Spectrum reported.

Hayward was the founder of the Collaborative Group, an advanced-technology company serving the personal-care products and pharmaceutical industries, which has been an anchor tenant at LIHTI since 1990. Collaborative operated independently for 14 years before being acquired by Engelhard (now BASF) in 2004. ADNAS is his next venture, which he also chose to locate at the LIHTI incubator. It is now a publicly traded company (OTCBB:APDN). Hayward addressed the 2008 annual meeting of our association, which was held at LIHTI.

Our member the Orange County Business Accelerator has announced admission of two new clients:

• Elite Outfitting Solutions, a developer of high-end iPhone cases, which will be a resident client; and
• Backyard DJ, developer of a consumer entertainment product, which will be an associate or non-resident client.

For more information, see the Accelerator's blog.

Two tenants of our supporting member RIT Venture Creations (including one venture founded by undergraduate students) took the top two places at this year's $50,000 Rochester Regional Business Plan Contest. The incubator-affilated winners were:

• Strong Arm Technologies, a student venture launched at the Student Business Development Lab at Venture Creations, won the first prize of $25,000 in cash and services. Strong Arm is developing an ergonomic vest that allows workers in warehousing and materials-handling to lift and transport loads more safely. It is under trial at a range of industrial sites. 
• Sales Congo, which is developing a cloud-based system to track training and development of sales professionals, won the second prize among five finalists.

Strong Arm Technologies also went on to win $50,000 in cash and $20,000 in services by placing first in the New York State Business Plan Competition for college students produced by the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at SUNY's UAlbany, on behalf of several partners. 

For more information on the winners of the Rochester Regional Business Plan Contest, which is also a multi-partner collaborative, see the attached news release from our supporting member High Tech Rochester and coverage in the Rochester Business Journal. For more information on the winners of the NYS Business Plan Competition, see the news release from CNSE. Congratulations to all!