Our member the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center of High Tech Rochester has announced six graduates, each of which participated in the program for at least 18 months, demonstrated a viable business model, and secured capital sufficient to continue operations for six months. The 2008 graduates are:

• BizNetix, Inc., a website design firm
• Electronics & Innovation Ltd., a manufacturer or radio-frequency amplifiers
• Hospitality 101, Inc., an applications service provider to the catering industry
• Koning Corporation, a developer of advanced medical imaging systems
• Lumetrics Inc., a specialty measurement company
• PharmaNova Inc., a specialty drug-development company

For the HTR press release, click the link in the first paragraph. Tenant firms in many of our member incubators can be tracked and searched in our on-line database.

Of the 29 companies presenting at the SmartStart Venture Forum/UNYTECH conference on May 13-14, at least 7 are tenants of our member organizations. The BIA/NYS is an industry sponsor of the event, which was produced by the CEG, the parent of our member Watervliet Innovation Center. Presenting incubator tenants included:

• At the BEST Incubator of Polytechnic University: Fair Choice Systems, Inc.
• At the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center of High Tech Rochester:: Diffinity Genomics, Inc.; Lighthouse Biosciences, LLC; and SiMPore, Inc.
• At the RPI Incubator Program: Intellidemia, Inc.
• At the Saratoga Technology + Energy Park of NYSERDA: Advanced Energy Conversion, LLC
• At the UB Technology Incubator: Integral Information Systems

One-page fact sheets on each of these companies are available at this link. SmartStart Venture Forum/UNYTECH is an upstate-oriented venture forum where venture-capital firms can see the best that the state has to offer in the way of deal flow.

The Rochester BioVenture Center, a wet-lab incubator managed by High Tech Rochester, has formally become a member of BIA/NYS. Recently rechartered as an affiliate of the University of Rochester, HTR also owns and operates the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center, which has been a BIA/NYS member since September 2006.

As the operations of these two incubators become more tightly integrated over the next 18 months, the two memberships may be consolidated. In the meantime, we thank HTR and its departing president Paul Wetenhall for their strong support of our association.

Paul Wetenhall, long-time president of High Tech Rochester (owner of the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center incubator and operator of the University of Rochester-affiliated Rochester BioVenture Center incubator) is leaving HTR to become president of the Ben Craig Center Business Incubator at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Paul's record at HTR is outstanding, and his support of our association was a critical turning point for our development. The association and its membership wish him and his family all the best in his new role!

Joseph Mancuso, widely identified as the founder of business incubation as a concept, has died at age 88. Click the previous link from the Rochester Business Journal or this one from the National Business Incubation Association to read about how Mr. Mancuso coined the term "business incubator" after converting a manufacturing plant in Batavia for use by a range of young companies.

The Business Incubator Association of New York State sends its sincere condolences to the Mancuso family, especially B. Thomas Mancuso, the current president of Mancuso Business Development Group, which is a founding member of our state association. The company is the developer of several incubator facilities statewide, including the original complex in Batavia, since expanded several times, and other facilities in Geneva, Rochester and most recently Lockport.