CoMotion Innovation Gap Fund Awardees

Bond investors want certified climate-friendly municipal bonds, but cities are unable to meet this demand despite having climate projects due to the lack of affordable, scalable tools to meet certification requirements. Climate Solutions International has developed a robust set of tools enabling cities to optimize projects for climate impact, cost-effectiveness and quick certification. As a next step we are implementing our tools in a highly scalable SAAS platform to meet the needs of bond investors and cities.

Team Fourth Era trains and deploys AI-based sequencing models that enable customers to sequence DNA letters beyond the natural 4-letter alphabet (A, T, G, C). This solution leverages existing sequencing platforms for data collection and does not require manufacturing new instruments or devices. Our target customers are companies in the nucleic acid space that are using modified and synthetic DNA letters as critical components of their next generation therapeutics.

The automated commercial drone market is being held back by current sensor suites are difficult to integrate, are too heavy reducing payloads and have poor reliability. FusionFlight solves these problems with our software-based sensor fusion techniques combined with custom integrated solid-state sensors to deliver unparalleled performance at low cost, low power and low weight to allow the drone delivery market to finally take off.

Current hearing aids, even those that claim AI integration, fail in noisy environments where there are more than one source of noise. HearAble’s Intelligent hearing aids uses two real-time artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to improve speech perception in noisy environments by dynamically and selectively amplifying the conversations of interest.

Liver cancer is the second most lethal cancer worldwide due to lack of tools for early detection and lack of effective treatments for advanced stages of liver cancer. We are developing new theranostic agents for highly sensitive radioimaging and radioimmunotherapy of liver cancer to detect liver cancer at early stages and treat liver cancer effectively at advanced stages.

Supply chain management systems struggle to ensure the traceability and authenticity of products and materials resulting in costly counterfeiting and regulatory challenges. Our Simple Bio-Tag Solution is a nanoscale synthetic protein-based biomolecular tag for authentication and tracing, providing an invisible, tamper-proof, and scalable solution that can store digital data and provide traceability quickly, reliably, and cheaply to meet today’s supply chain needs.

Trained dogs use their nose to identify COVID-19, bacterial infections, certain cancers, diabetic ketoacidosis, and even epileptic seizures. At Odo, we are developing a sensor platform that will enable a new, powerful type of artificial nose, or eNose, to noninvasively and instantly detect diseases based on the smell of human breath. Our first target are respiratory symptoms so patients can know if they have a viral or bacterial, COVID-19, influenza, or RSV infection to get the best treatment and peace of mind.

At OncoFluidics we have developed BioLiftR, a liquid-handling robot with computer vision software that can see, select, and transfer pieces of tissue like organoids into testable well plate formats, because 3D microtissues are too small and numerous to effectively move by hand. Available systems are too complicated and expensive to efficiently solve this simple problem. This tool will enable researchers in academia and industry to work with organoids at higher throughput for more efficient research to solve the pressing healthcare challenges of our time.

Negative Pressure Wound Treatment is effective for treating open tissue wounds, but current devices have significant short comings for hand wounds including challenges in maintaining a seal, movement restriction and lack of visibility of the wound resulting in difficulty of use and loss of hand function. We have developed a transparent, flexible, textured silicone glove that resolves all of these issues enabling a healing process that restores the maximum hand range of motion at the end of the treatment process.

We are developing innovative smart earring devices for health monitoring, specifically tailored to women’s well-being, including ovulation, cycle, and fitness tracking. These super small, lightweight, and low-power devices can seamlessly integrate into various earring fashion designs, ensuring long-lasting wear with exceptionally accurate temperature measurements that current common wearables such as smart watches or rings cannot achieve.

Thyroidectomy procedures have a 5-7% complication rate from accidental tissue damage due to the challenges of distinguishing delicate glands from other tissues. Based on two generations of experimental systems in our lab, we are developing a low cost easy to use pen-like device combining contact-based, low-cost sensors with deep neural network learning to provide 99% accurate tissue discrimination to ensure every cut in surgery is the right cut.

Ovarian cancer is diagnosed late the vast majority of the time resulting in poor patient outcomes. Unfortunately, due to the poor performance of existing screening tests, there are currently no recommended tests for early detection of ovarian cancer when it is still highly treatable. We are developing a liquid biopsy ovarian cancer test based on single-cell duplex technology that will allow ovarian cancer to be detected early when treatment is most successful.