For the second year running, a national magazine contest features a nominee who was counseled by a student incubator affiliated with one of our member incubators in Syracuse.

This year the Inc. magazine "Cool College Start-Up" contest features Ryan Dickerson, a Syracuse University junior whose "bed-transforming pillow" company Rylaxing was incubated by the Couri Hatchery that is part of the same umbrella program (the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship) as is our member the South Side Innovation Center. To vote for Ryan's company, go here.

Last year a similar poll by Entrepreneur magazine included a different SU student whose company was counseled by the Student Sandbox at our supporting member the Syracuse Technology Garden.

To see a list of student incubators affiliated directly or indirectly with our member incubators, check this table.

The Cleantech Group, the investment-oriented research and advisory group on the cleantech industries, has named the Cleantech Center (a NYSERDA-sponsored clean-energy incubator at our supporting member the Tech Garden) as number 6 on its list of top 10 cleantech cluster organizations.

The citation links the Cleantech Center to the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Energy and Environmental Systems as key elements of the Central New York region's knowledge-based economic-development strategy. Congratulations to all involved!

Nasir Ali, who five years ago started up our supporting member the the Tech Garden, will leave to team up with high-tech entrepreneur Martin Babinec on Upstate Venture Connect, an online community that will help connect upstate entrepreneurial resources with each other, and upstate "expats" worldwide to aspiring entrepreneurs upstate.

Incubation programs at the Syracuse Technology Garden will continue to be directed by Tech Garden Vice President of Entrepreneurial Services Paul Brooks, and the affiliated, NYSERDA-sponsored Cleantech Center by Executive Director Linda Dickerson Hartsock. Martin Babinec is a native of Little Falls who resettled upstate after a successful run as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

Please see the Tech Garden's complete press release for more background. News coverage in the Post-Standard here. Congratulations, Nasir!

Robert (Bob) Herz, a former staffer at the New York State Senate, has been appointed the new director of our member the South Side Innovation Center, a microenterprise incubator sponsored by the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management. 

While working for state Senator Martin Golden of Brooklyn, Bob was involved in structuring the future development of BioBAT, a project affiliated with our supporting member SUNY Downstate Advanced Biotechnology Incubator. We offer Bob a warm welcome to his new role at SSIC!

For more background, please see the university press release at the first link above or here.

Our founding supporting member the Tech Garden has celebrated its 5th anniversary as a state-of-the art business incubator in downtown Syracuse.

In its first five years, Tech Garden has brought more than 100 jobs to downtown, counseled 400 startups and 30 teams of university researchers interested in commercializing discoveries, created an angel-investment fund, and organized special incubation programs serving cleantech entrepreneurs and students at Syracuse University. And they helped found our association, too!

For a press release that reviews all the accomplishments of the first five years click the previous link or here. You can also see a photo album of the event on Facebook. Congratulations to the entire Tech Garden team!

GoVo Biofuels LLC, which maintains a desk at our supporting member the Syracuse Technology Garden and a vegetable-oil-to-fuel converter in Cortland, was recently featured in the Green CNY Blog of the Syracuse Post-Standard. The story presents a nice example of how motivated entrepreneurs can bootstrap "green" business opportunities. Congratulations to entrepreneur Seth Mulligan!

Our member the South Side Innovation Center, a microenterprise incubator managed by the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University, is one of 58 organizations nationally to receive grant support from the U. S. Small Business Administration's Program for Investment in Microentrepreneurs (PRIME).

The award will help SSIC and the university's Burton Blatt Institute train low and very-low-income residents, including those with disabilities, to start and successfully grow their own business enterprises. To read the press release from the university's Whitman School of Management, click here.

U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei joined the Cleantech Center at our supporting member the Syracuse Technology Garden in announcing the first round of nine upstate companies admitted to the NYSERDA-sponsored clean-energy incubator. The admitted companies and their technology/market focus areas are:

• Antek, of Syracuse, advanced solar cells
• GoVo Biofuels, a Tech Garden tenant, biodiesel 
• Greenview, of Utica, energy management software
• Impact Technologies, of Syracuse, vertical wind
• Innovation Fuels, The Tech Garden, biofuels
• IntelliSyn, a Syracuse University spinoff, butanol
• microGen, West Henrietta, MEMS-based energy harvesting
• Paper Battery, Troy, advanced batteries
• SolarNovar, Plattsburgh, electro-mechanical tracking for solar cells

Press coverage is here. A full description of each company is attached as a pdf.