Startups fighting COVID: Black & Veatch taps 18 for Coronavirus response accelerator

Four months after an unprecedented pandemic struck the Midwest, partners from more than a dozen startups, established businesses and universities are set to pitch their solutions for developing and deploying emerging technologies to fight Coronavirus.

Andy Page and David Alburty, InnovaPrep

KC-area startups EB Systems, InnovaPrep, Motega and MySidewalk are among 18 members of Black & Veatch’s IgniteX COVID-19 Response Accelerator, which is set for a virtual showcase 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 22. Click here to register for the free demo day.

Spot-winning partners — ranging from disinfection and filtration to health screening, tracking and tracing, wearables, data intelligence and communications — were selected from more than 300 applications as part of a three-month evaluation process.

The initiative launched in late March as a push to build, grow and scale solutions that would soften COVID-19’s impact on communities, according to Overland Park-based Black & Veatch. The response accelerator also sought to prepare Black & Veatch’s core businesses for a post-Coronavirus future, the company said.

“As the pandemic struck and began impacting our lives and work across the globe in untold number of ways that are creating a new normal, we recognized we needed new approaches to fight these new challenges,” said Steve Edwards, CEO of Black & Veatch. “We turned to our Growth Accelerator team to apply their innovative mindset to crowdsourcing solutions, and they have brought aboard 18 exciting partners with technologies that we think can push back against the devastating effects of COVID-19 on our economy, our health and our daily lives.”

Partners for the IgniteX accelerator include:

• EB Systems (Kansas City, Missouri) — Indoor/On-Site tracking, contact tracing, and real-time alerting systems
• InnovaPrep (Drexel, Missouri) — Concentration device for pathogen detection
• Motega (Lawrence) — Developed a multi-day persistent sanitizer for surfaces and hands.  Company has formulation specialists in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, foods and chemicals
• MySidewalk (Kansas City, Missouri) — City intelligence platform
• Windgo (Columbia, Missouri) — Smart UV lighting
• University of Missouri — Biosensor for rapid pathogen detection
• NanoGuard (St. Louis) — Reactive gas (ozone) disinfection for food and other markets
• Cykyl Systems (St. Louis) — Pneumatic device for constant air pressure in medical and other devices
• Aquisense (Erlanger, Kentucky) — Desktop ultraviolet (UV) disinfection of masks
• Field2Base (Morrisville, North Carolina) — Mobile data collection partner for COVOPORATE
• OnFrontiers (New York) — Platform for enterprise knowledge networks
• Avatour (San Francisco) — 360-degree virtual telepresence
• OneScreen (San Diego) — Infrared temperature scanner
• Translational Pulmonary and Immunology Research Center (Long Beach, California) — Health partner for return-to-X assessments
• Ubudu (Paris) — Small wearable for social distance compliance and contact tracing
• Fluid Robotics (Pune, India) — Automated sampling devices and wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE)
• Transcend H2O — Automatic site design for the portable, quickly deployable Rapid Modular Health System (RaMHS)
• Energy Cloud — Air filtration system

Black & Veatch is providing $250,000 total in grants or in-kind services as a part of the program, as well as access to their network of more than 10,000 employees in more than 100 offices worldwide, enabling both a faster runway to commercialization but also valuable connections between mentors, customers and investors, the company said.

It is the second cohort for the IgniteX accelerator, which last year focused on clean technologies.

IgniteX also brings outside partners from diverse industries, including Advance Concepts Studios, Brightidea, KC Digital Drive, Launch KC and the University of Missouri’s College of Engineering.