The Mississippi Seed Fund has awarded Seed Fund Proof of Concept awards to two companies recently. EM Boards has developed a longboard system that gives the rider the ability to jump over and avoid obstacles. The system is a hybrid electrical-and-mechanical solution centered around the use of a remote, a…
Two great friends of Innovate Mississippi, Dr. Nashlie Sephus and Dr. Julie Cwikla, were honored at the 4th Annual Ada Lovelace Awards. The Ada award was created to celebrate women from around the Southeastern U.S. for their achievements in technology fields. The award ceremony took place in New Orleans at…
From March 1-3, 2019, about 50 people took part in TechStar’s Startup Weekend Jackson, an intensive business accelerator program that Innovate Mississippi locally organized at Coalesce Coworking in downtown Jackson. The title sponsor of the event was the Mississippi Development Authority. The program began with a welcome and opening keynote…
In a world dominated by the lean startup model and the “minimum viable product” approach, Nutech Metals is something of an outlier, having spent nearly six years doing research and development in pursuit of a new technology for body armor. The goal, said Jim Borque, partner and technical lead on…
Conor Ferguson had a slight leg-up on the competition as he graduated from Mississippi State University—he’d already started a wireless Internet company with his dad when he was still in high school. That company offered high-speed access to residential areas where other types of broadband didn't reach. How it works…
Focusing on legislation designed to combat "brain drain" in Mississippi, WAPT interviewed two local startup CEOs: Bilal Qizilbash, co-founder and CEO of EasyKale Labs LLC in Jackson, and Josh Frazier, CEO of Torrus, based in Rankin County. The story by WAPT reporter Jade Bulecza asked the CEOs about a bill in…
The Mississippi Business Journal recently reported that Richard A. Sun, CFA, was named the AITP's Mississippian of the Year in 2018. The Jackson chapter or CompTIA's Association of Information Technology Award Professionals presented him with the award during a ceremony at Anjou Restaurant in Ridgeland. Sun is the former chairman…
Bac Yeast is a Hattiesburg-based company delivering specialized yeast to breweries around the country. A chemist, a microbiologist, and an engineer walk into a bar. A couple of beers later, and they have a business plan: to start their own beer lab. Ok, the idea wasn’t technically born in a…
The Columbus Dispatch had two great stories on the Golden Triangle Region (GTR) cohort of the Mississippi Coding Academies in January—one was an announcement of the graduation of nine coders, and the other was an editorial that focuses on the potential that the Coding Academies have for fighting brain drain in Mississippi.…
Of the 551 micropolitan areas around the country, Oxford, Miss., ranks #9 in overall economic strength according to Policom Corporation, an independent economic research firm out of Florida. The annual rankings measure the economic strength of areas that have a city of more than 10,000 people, and fewer than 50,000,…