TECHdotMN: News about Minnesota Startups

By: Kevin C. Walker

After two semesters and with up to $10,000 in prizes at stake, four teams of student developers pitched judges for the 2012 University of Minnesota Mobile App Challenge last Friday.

Co-sponsored by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), the Mobile App Challenge aims to reproduce the entrepreneurial experience for current undergrad students at the University of Minnesota through ideating, building and launching a new mobile phone app.

It began this past fall, when over 100 teams submitted a mobile app idea that they believed to be creative, innovative, and salable. Those  initial concepts were eventually weeded out and narrowed down through a timeline of delivery dates, combined with financial and logistical support from the University to help them transform their ideas into a functional reality.

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The Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange (MICE) has recently formed to establish an Internet peering point in downtown Minneapolis.

The small bundle of routers, servers, and switches are located in the 511 building to create what is called an Internet exchange point (IXP). Using an IXP, Internet service providers exchange traffic between their networks, effectively creating shortcuts between their services. These shortcuts reduce the portion of a service provider’s traffic that must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing costs of delivery, improving efficiency of routing, and increasing fault-tolerance.

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Via News Release

“The University of Minnesota has finalized a license agreement with Flagship Biosciences for software that provides quantitative analyses of protein expression levels in human tissue samples. The software, IHC Map, improves a pathologist’s ability to characterize diseased tissues and assists researchers with clinical trials for pharmaceuticals and medical devices.”

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By Peter Beacom

I stopped by The Robotic Sensor Networks Lab (RSN Lab) at the University of Minnesota (CS) last week to learn more about their research into the intersection of wireless sensing technologies and robotics.  Fascinating!

With a focus on algorithmic and systems aspects of Robotic Sensor Networks (RSN), The Lab is led by Dr. Volkan Isler who enjoys the cycle of deploying robots into the field, returning to “the office” to solve challenges that arise, and repeat. Broadly speaking, an RSN is a network of devices equipped with sensing, communication and actuation capabilities. With a focus on science rather than profits, the RSN Lab is able to pursue projects with extended timelines (try that with your bootstrapped startup).

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By Frank Bi, Minnesota Daily

“Exiting the commuter bus that brings him to the University of Minnesota campus every morning, Gavin Ovsak makes sure to duck his head slightly before hopping onto the pavement at Coffman Union.

…During his winter break last year, Ovsak spent 150 hours developing CHAD — the Circuit Head Accessibility Device, which serves as a computer mouse for people who are quadriplegic or suffer from trembling hands. By wearing the hat and tilting their head, a person is able to control the mouse. Users bite a device rather than clicking with their fingers.”

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By Steve Alexander, Star Tribune

“A million University of Minnesota books will be digitally copied by Google under a plan to put the world’s libraries online. But most of the book copies are being locked in an archive, the digital equivalent of gathering dust.

No one will be able to read these digital books — at least for now — because of a five-year-old copyright lawsuit against Google. Five million books at the University of Michigan are threatened with the same fate.”

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Ken Nelson is Supervisor of the Digital Divide Initiative (DDI) with the University of Minnesota.  The digital divide is the gap between people with effective access to digital  and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all.  The definition encompasses imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen.  The phrase “digital inclusion” is often used when describing programs and policies aimed at solving for Minnesota’s digital divide problem.

In essence, Mr. Nelson describes his mission as “…to get the best technology I can to under served populations.  That takes the form of hardware, software, and other support mechanisms to help bridge that divide.”

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By Dileep Rao, via Star Tribune

“You are an entrepreneur faced with a troubling question: How do I get venture capital? Before you answer that question, consider another one that should be more important: Should you finance yourself, what I call bootstrapping?”

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Two critical pieces of the startup puzzle are healthcare and internet data connection/broadband. For the most part, both issues are currently in the hands of our government (and quasi private industry). I won’t talk healthcare except to say that no matter how entrepreneurial one is (or aspires to be) and no matter how creative one’s ideas, the necessity to provide adequate (family) healthcare coverage can easily keep even the most promising entrepreneur chained to the 9-5 “corporate” environment – thus stifling the ability to venture out, assume risk and ultimately innovate.

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