NorTech Innovation Award Winners
Cool Cleveland video interviews & podcasts

John Finley, MemPro Ceramics
Boris Zaslavsky, Analiza DX
Yonezo Kanno, EyePlusPlus Inc.
Benson Lee, Technology Management Inc.
Wyatt Newman, TeamCase
Ben Shappley, SpineMatrix, Inc.
Nanomimetics, Inc.

Dr. Stanley Gryskiewicz
Center For Creative Leadership
Keynote Speaker, 2007 NorTech Summit and Innovation Awards

Stanley Gryskiewicz has been at the Center for Creative Leadership since it's inception in 1970, advising everyone from Hewlett-Packard to American Express to the World Bank. As a consultant, his current client roster includes Lockheed Martin, Bank of America and Chevron. Along the way, he's found time to publish books like Positive Turbulence, now in it's eighth printing, on proactive change management, and an award-winning video, Creativity in Organizations: A Jazz Musician's Perspective, with trumpeter Bobby Bradford. With a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology, he helps large groups and organizations deal with change, generate innovation, and inspire creativity. Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready spoke with Dr. Gryskiewicz at LaCentre in Westlake after his keynote address for the 2007 NorTech Summit & Innovation Awards. http://www.CCL.org http://www.Nortech.org

Stanley Gryskiewicz on:

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Listen to the full excerpt of Stanley Gryskiewicz's keynote speech:

Boris Zaslavsky
Analiza DX

Boris Zaslavsky is smiling for a number of good reasons. After studying in the Soviet Union for an MS in Chemistry at Lomonosov's Moscow State University and a Ph.D. and D.Sc. at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, he came to the US in 1991 and serves as VP of Research & Development for Analiza and and co-founded AnalyiaDX in 2005, becoming their CSO: Chief Scientific Officer. They work in the fast moving field of cancer diagnostics, and their new technology, which recently won the 2007 NorTech Innovation Award, works with different proteins that react like oil and water, separating into two phases, allowing for a simplified detection method for cancer. Since their technology is based on common blood & urine samples, the tests are highly cost effective and scalable. AnalizaDX has already identified promising biomarker candidates for ovarian and breast cancer, and they have formed important partnerships with the National Cancer Institute, University Hospitals, and the Cleveland Clinic. Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready spoke with Boris about the company's history and prospects at the NorTech Awards event. http://www.Analiza.com http://www.NorTech.org

Benson Lee
Technology Management Inc.

Benson Lee is a man on a mission. His bright ideas for fuel cells have been exciting everyone he talks with in Northeast Ohio, and now he has a NorTech Innovation Award to call his own. One of the most established technology companies in the region, his TMI was founded in 1990 for the sole purpose of commercializing Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) to be used for mobile, rural and remote markets. An early product is an auxiliary power unit for trucks that runs on biofuels, allowing the trucks to conform with state laws and turn their trucks off overnight. TMI is developing fuel cells that will operate on soy bean oil, natural gas, propane, biofuels, methane, digester biogas and traditional fuels such as gasoline, kerosene and diesel. In fact, TMI has attracted over $25 million in investment and is among the few companies that has demonstrated a kilowatt class fuel cell system that operates on ordinary fuel. Benson talks with Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready discussing the challenges of introducing a "disruptive technology," why they've had to invest in "missionary marketing," and what the first of a cow's four stomachs does. http://www.TMIFuelCellSystems.com http://www.NorTech.com

Wyatt Newman
TeamCase

Wyatt Newman, Ph.D.is a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University, and studied mechatronics, robotics, and computational intelligence, making him the perfect scientist to build the perfect beast. He is the team leader from TeamCase, partnering with area corporations like Goodyear, Roadway, NASA and National Instruments, along and with a multi-disciplinary crew from Case, including folks in computer science, aerospace, physics, biology, and neuroscience to build DEXTER, a bio-inspired full-scale robotic self-driving vehicle. Not a remote control car like you buy at Radio Shack, this baby competed in the DARPA Urban Challenge (http://UrbanChallenge.Case.edu), where unmanned vehicles that are totally unplugged get a mission: the car must drive itself to five different locations, all by itself. In the end, TeamCase ranked in the Top 20 against teams like Honeywell and Ford. They'll be on the Discovery Channel in February, but Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready stopped Newman long enough to talk for a bit after his team won a NorTech Innovation Award. They discuss the current challenge: much of the hardware, sensors and vehicle construction for robot cars are mature and fairly standardized; the hard part is endowing a computer brain with some common sense and decision making ability. How can biologists help? Newman and Mulready talk about what TeamCase is learning from everything from birds and reptiles to cockroaches, moths and sea slugs. http://www.NorTech.org

Yonezo Kanno
EyePlusPlus Inc.

Yonezo Kanno was obviously thrilled to win the recent 2007 NorTech Innovation Award for his Forehead Sensory Recognition System, a wearable computer that includes a miniature video camera lodged in a sight-impaired person's sunglasses, that sends electrical impulses back to sensors on the person's forehead, indicating the shape and size of objects. He likes to call it "Braille-O-Vision." The big benefit is that the FSRS does not require surgery, a major consideration in serving a wider range of the sight-impaired public. Why Northeast Ohio? A professor at the University of Tokyo suggested he visit the Biomedical Engineering department at the Cleveland Clinic, and in 2005, they invited him to present his new prototype at their Medical Innovation Summit, and now his offices are based in Beachwood. In this interview with Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready, Kanno talks about how his invention could be used by itself or in conjunction with a white cane or guide dog, and how his innovation might be able to help the 35M visually impaired people around the world. http://www.EyePlusUS.com http://www.NorTech.org

John Finley
MemPro Ceramics

John Finley started his company MemPro Ceramics in Summit County, Colorado, and, because of the research being done at the University of Akron, now has offices in Summit County, Ohio. They've combined polymer processing with ceramic production to create an innovative nanotech filtration technology that captures particles and removes gaseous pollutants from the environment. Their ceramic filters work in everything from trucks and buses to lawnmowers to ocean liners. Their filters are even used in pharmaceuticals, food and beverages. Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready interviewed John Finely right after his company accepted a 2007 NorTech Innovation Award, and they talked about the history of his company, the challenges of finding capital, and the spirit of support in our region. It's nice to hear Finley say, "The attitude of folks in Northeast Ohio is very encouraging..." http://www.MemProCeramics.com

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