Innovation Pipeline

RIT was the first private university admitted to START-UP NY, a business development program for new businesses that create jobs in the state. In return, companies will pay no state or local taxes for 10 years. State officials say the tax benefits will help accelerate entrepreneurialism and job creation across the state on a large scale.

Four RIT-affiliated companies have been accepted into the program:

• Datto Inc., an information backup and disaster recovery firm founded by a bioinformatics graduate from RIT, was accepted in September.

• ClearCove Systems, a renewable energy company dealing with wastewater treatment, was accepted in March. The company is a recent graduate of RIT’s Venture Creations business incubator.

• Darkwind Media, also a recent graduate of Venture Creations, develops gaming software and provides consulting services to other game development studios. Darkwind employs 15 people and is expanding to meet international demand for its game porting and development services.

• Optel Inc. is a new venture that provides a variety of services to companies in the medical device field. Optel ensures compliance with the requirements of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s current Good Manufacturing Practices and other medical device manufacturing requirements throughout concept, design and manufacturing phases.

Latest on START-UP NY: http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=51540

The second cohort of graduates of RIT’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship at Saunders College of Business are six local entrepreneurs who have spent the last six months in the Capacity Building Program. Read more at https://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=51452.

Izet Zdralovic, a graduate of RIT Croatia, won a prestigious Netexplo Award after he co-founded an app that solves mathematical equations. The app received more than 11 million downloads in three months. Read more at https://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=51223.

Six-and-a-half acres of a farm field on the Rochester Institute of Technology campus has been transformed this winter into a massive solar array, which is scheduled to be operational this month.

The 2-megawatt solar energy farm, consisting of 6,138 photovoltaic panels, is among the largest of any college in New York state. The system’s output, which will generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of more than 200 homes a year, will be tied directly into RIT’s central substation for distribution across circuits throughout the 1,300-acre university campus.

To read more, go to https://www.rit.edu//news/story.php?id=51318.

To see a video, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNWaK08Zd78.

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