rvatech/ takes a Deep Dive into the CCF Companies
Writen by Nick Serfass, rvatech/CEO
The Commonwealth of Virginia recently announced that 34 small technology-focused businesses in Virginia will receive a total of $3.4 million in Commonwealth Commercialization Fund (CCF) grants to commercialize research in an array of sectors. Five of those companies hold strong ties to greater Richmond. In case you’re wondering who they are and what they do, we have the answers!
At its core, Babylon Micro-Farms is committed to building sustainable micro-farms. At the touch of a button, Babylon delivers a simple, yet engaging indoor growing experience connecting people to their food. Their primary focus is building smart, scalable indoor vertical farms that are tailored to meet the needs of healthcare and senior living facilities. Babylon’s micro-farms allow users to grow produce closer to the kitchen and grants control over supply, quality, and freshness. They also remotely manage farms for its customers, optimizing the settings to ensure quality results every time. They were awarded a grant to help them advance micro-farm technology – allowing them to continue developing automated quality control to improve the producibility and reliability of the Babylon Micro-Farms IoT platform.
GPX is working on initiatives that aim to reinvigorate participatory democracy with GPX. They’ve been awarded funding stemming from their innovative application of data science and analytics.
We’re excited to highlight Humanitru, as it’s a product that we’ve used ourselves at the Richmond Technology Council. Humanitru develops software aimed at helping non-profits organize, cultivate, and develop better strategies around fundraising. They have built a single platform that handles constituent, donor, member, volunteer, program, and event needs – all in one. They call it “6-in-1” and are ultimately aggregating an organization’s data so that everything is located in one location, allowing users to uncover deep supporter engagement insights that better inform a fundraising strategy. They specialize in the fundraising space, so if you’re a 501(c)(3), they deserve your attention. Don’t sleep on them though if you’re a 501(c)(6)! Their platform is equally beneficial for managing members and sponsors. They were awarded funding stemming from their work advancing machine learning, data science, and marketing automation to improve donor retention and acquisition.
Arguably the best tag line of the bunch – “When Molecules Kiss, We Tell”. Meru is working to revolutionize label-free molecular binding quantification. If you don’t know what that means, essentially they are working to improve our understanding of how molecules bind to one another which is a critical component of biochemical research, drug discovery, and diagnostics development. Existing methods for understanding molecule binding present their own challenges – either struggling to measure these interactions sensitively enough, or performing well only with significant development, cost, and data analysis. Meru brings a proprietary technology to market, TruBind, that attempts to alleviate the existing challenges in this space. They have been awarded funding specifically for the continued advancement of TruBind and its use in drug discovery.
Visual Workforce aims to generate actionable insights about your workforce through a skills management and skills workforce visualization platform that changes the way organizations make decisions about their people. The Visual Workforce platform illustrates a live company skills framework that grows as the business grows, analyzes data about the skills and competencies of employees, allows managers to make human capital decisions grounded in data, and also helps leaders identify skills gaps so that companies can proactively upskill their workforce. The folks at Visual Workforce have developed industry specific skills libraries, a powerful survey engine, and insight-driven visualizations that make it easier to get a clear picture of the skills, proficiency levels, and knowledge gaps within an organization. Anybody managing HR needs to know what their people are capable of, and that’s why Visual Workforce exists. Their funding is intended to support their continued development of workforce visualization software through data science and analytics.
CCF seeks technologies with a high potential for economic development and job creation and that position the Commonwealth as a national leader in science- and technology-based research, development, and commercialization. For more information about the CCF program, visit cit.org/ccf.