Annual Conference Honors Tech Grant Winners

Annual Conference Honors Tech Grant Winners

MADISON, Wis. – This Thursday, the 17th annual SBIR/STTR Conference will be held in conjunction with the 2003 Technology Awards Banquet at the Crowne Plaza in Madison, 4402 E. Washington. The afternoon conference will include discussions of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant programs, and how to access the $1.5 billion federal dollars available to small businesses for technological innovation.
The evening awards banquet (scheduled for 5-9PM) will honor 35 Wisconsin companies that received federal awards between July 2001 and September 2002. The recognized companies have received a combined total of 83 awards, which represents $23,357,447 in funding for research and development. The SBIR program has funded the majority of awards. STTR, a related program that requires small business recipients to work in collaboration with a research institution, provided three awards for a total of $813,898 in funding.
The leading award winners include five Dane County companies that received more than one million dollars in awards during this time period: Mirus Corporation, $4,069,361; Orbital Technologies, $3,264,000; Platypus Technologies, $1,899,207; Healthcare Technology Systems, $1,317,746; and SLIL Biomedical Corporation, $1,034,278. In addition, PanVera and PowderJect Vaccines, Inc. each received over $900,000.
The SBIR/STTR Conference will provide information on applying for and managing federal grant money, and associated intellectual property. Dr. Jenny Servo, an expert on technology commercialization, will offer an afternoon session, as well as the evening’s keynote address on “The Transformational Entrepreneur: Challenges of Change.”
The banquet is open to anyone who would like a chance to meet with the state’s most successful innovators. For more information, call (608) 828-3115 or visit the events calendar at www.winfoundation.com
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Caryn Murphy is a freelance writer based in Madison, Wisconsin and can be reached at caryn@wistechnology.com.