EDA-ASSISTED TECH AND LIFE SCIENCES COMPANIES HONORED BY NJTC AS ‘BEST IN SHOW’ WINNERS

The New Jersey Technology Council (NJTC) crowned the “Best in Show” at its 2008 New Jersey Venture Conference, held on March 28 at The Palace at Somerset Park in Somerset. Winners were announced after a daylong conference that brought together emerging companies in the life sciences, IT, energy/environment and communications sectors and investors. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) assisted many of the awardees, including NeuroTrax Corporation, Agilence, Inc. and Switch2Health Corp.

Honored by NJTC as the “Company Most Likely to Succeed,” NeuroTrax is a medical technology company that designs, develops and markets diagnostic tools for the neurological healthcare market. In December 2007, EDA closed a $250,000 Edison Innovation Fund investment to support the commercialization of the Newark-based company’s diagnostic products and for working capital.

Agilence, Inc., the leading provider of Event-based Video Analytics (eVA), was named by NJTC as the “Best Communications/Electronics Company.” In September 2007, EDA closed a $1 million Edison Innovation Fund investment to help the company’s continued product development and resource expansion, including new offices at the EDA’s Waterfront Technology Center at Camden and the creation of approximately 27 new jobs. In addition to the Edison Innovation Fund investment, Agilence received nearly $40,000 through the Economic Recovery Board for Camden’s (ERB’s) 5-4-3-2-1 Business Lease Incentive Grant program, which provides rental rebates to commercial tenants in the City of Camden. In June 2007, Agilence announced that it closed an investment round with NextStage Capital as the lead investor. NextStage Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on Mid-Atlantic technology companies, is supported by a $400,000 investment from the EDA.

Named “Most Innovative Product/Service” by NJTC, Switch2Health is located in the Commercialization Center for Innovative Technologies (CCIT), which is part of the EDA’s Technology Centre of New Jersey in North Brunswick and located within the Greater New Brunswick Edison Innovation Zone. In 2007, the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology (CST) awarded Switch2Health a $50,000 Incubator Seed Fund Grant through the Edison Innovation Fund. This grant program is designed to accelerate the business development process by helping emerging companies achieve a critical milestone in their commercialization path.

The Edison Innovation Fund, a key element of Governor Jon S. Corzine’s Economic Growth Strategy, was created to support technology and life sciences companies throughout their discovery, development and commercialization stages. The EDA, in consultation with the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education and CST, is responsible for managing the Edison Innovation Fund. Since the launch of the Fund in October 2006, New Jersey has delivered nearly $245 million in financing assistance, business incentives and tax credits to early-stage and established technology and life sciences businesses. In addition, over $425 million in total project costs has been leveraged by Edison Innovation Fund investments.

The 2008 NJTC Venture Conference drew a crowd of more than 500 entrepreneurs and investors, and nearly 60 exhibiting companies from various sectors. In addition to the award winners, exhibiting companies that received assistance through the Edison Innovation Fund include, Dynamic Mobile Data Systems, Inc., a Franklin Township-based technology company, Germgard Lighting LLC, a biomedical technology company located at CST’s innovation incubator in Dover, and Orthobond Corporation, a medical device company located in Monmouth Junction.

One of the conferences returning exhibiting companies, Treadstone Technologies, received venture funding as a direct result, they said, of their participation in the 2007 NJTC Venture Conference. The company, a leading innovator of pivotal technologies for the hydrogen economy, was awarded a $500,000 grant through the Edison Innovation R&D Fund and the CST in February 2008. The Edison Innovation award will support further development of TreadStone’s LiteCell technology that delivers lighter, high performance, lower cost fuel cell stacks. In addition CST awarded TreadStone a $75,000 Technology Fellowship grant to support TreadStone’s LiteCell technology and the company’s HydroOSP, a one-step hydrogen processing system.

“We were so pleased to note that this year’s conference attracted almost 60 exhibiting companies from the region, with over 75% from our very own state of New Jersey,” said Maxine Ballen, president and CEO of the NJTC. “We believe that the increase in New Jersey companies only serves to reinforce our feeling that the pipeline of new entrepreneurial companies in New Jersey is quite vibrant and becoming more robust every day.”