News Archive

With $15 million in hand, TCP Venture Capital partners Christopher College and Stuart Sutley look to foster Baltimore’s budding technology scene by investing in 10 to 12 new Baltimore-based startups within the next 12 to 18 months, College tells DC Inno. Those companies, who may be caught between a seed and series A funding round, could each receive anywhere between a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars to help accelerate their growth.

The Columbia, Md.-based institutional investors have raised a new fund, called the Propel II fund, to capitalize off the success of their previous fund, the Propel I fund, which helped support a number of high growth potential Baltimore tech companies—including edtech powerhouse CiteLighter, rising cybersecurity star RedOwl Analytics and eco-friendly product developer Bambeco.

Chris College

On a visit to a clinic in rural India, Carolyn Yarina saw a need for a device that can separate blood into plasma and white and red cells — without electricity to power a centrifuge.

In a West African hospital, her business partner Gillian Henker watched as doctors used what was essentially a cup to collect and reuse blood from internal bleeding after running out of expensive bags of donor blood.

The University of Maryland today announced that the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland (USM) has approved the naming of UMD’s Mathematics building in honor of William E. “Brit” Kirwan. His highly distinguished 51-year career in public higher education includes 13 years as USM Chancellor and 35 years at the University of Maryland, where he rose from assistant professor of mathematics to department chair and eventually to UMD president. 

The Mathematics building located on Campus Drive will be named William E. Kirwan Hall.

The National Institutes of Health and the Kavli Foundation separately announced today (Oct. 1, 2015) commitments totaling $185 million in new funds supporting the BRAIN Initiative* — research aimed at deepening our understanding of the brain and brain-related disorders, such as traumatic brain injuries (TBI), Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

The NIH announced today its second wave of grants to support the goals of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, bringing the total NIH investment to nearly $85 million in fiscal year 2015.

As a New York City based entrepreneur, I’ve been excited to watch as the Big Apple has become the epicenter for innovation on the East Coast. While I mentioned that another industry might be having the biggest 2015, funding for healthcare startups have grown significantly over the past two years. According to a report by Rock Health, over $2 billion has already been invested into health care tech companies this year with a lot of this activity happening locally. In New York, there’s an extremely diverse mix of innovators including accelerators, startups and hospitals.

Here’s a glimpse of some great organizations that are paving the way for the future of health care.

Among a host of new laws that took effect in Maryland on Thursday is a measure that transfers control of the Maryland Venture Fund to the purview of TEDCO.

The changes result in a consolidation of two of the state’s largest early-stage economic development arms under TEDCO, a quasi-public agency that makes investments in startups.

Baltimore education technology company Citelighter and data analysis firm Yet Analytics were crowned the winners of the Beta City pitch competition.

The pitch day was the kickoff event for Beta City, the Oct. 1 entrepreneurship showcase organized by Betamore and Plank Industries, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank’s private investment arm. Beta City also served as the public debut for Plank Industries’ City Garage, the 133,000-square foot former city bus garage converted to an innovation hub for Under Armour and technology startups.

University of Maryland Research Park today takes home top honors as the Association of University Research Parks’ 2015 Outstanding Research Park, at the AURP Annual Awards of Excellence, hosted by Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. This award program recognizes the achievements of outstanding university research parks and those who direct them, and encourages the development of best practices.

The UM Research Park is a public-private partnership between Corporate Office Properties Trust and the University of Maryland (UMD). UMD works with all Research Park companies to provide synergistic and collaborative opportunities. The Research Park offers locations from incubator space for start up companies to build-to-suit options for larger technology clients.

The Kavli Foundation and its university partners announced this morning the founding of three new neuroscience institutes, including one at Johns Hopkins. The new Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute at The Johns Hopkins University, expected to launch in early 2016, will bring an interdisciplinary group of researchers together to investigate the workings of the brain.

The Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, to be funded by a joint $20 million commitment by Kavli and Johns Hopkins, is designed to integrate neuroscience, engineering, and data science—three fields in which the university has long excelled—to understand the relationship between the brain and behavior.

Whether you care about the emphasis on entrepreneurship or the money, AOL co-founder Steve Case’s Sept. 28 visit was big for Baltimore.