Tag: Innovation Festival

Innovation Fest pitch winner touts unexpected treat: growing his animal health startup in Kansas

By Tommy Felts / August 13, 2025

Emmanuel Bijaoui’s first time in Kansas — for Tuesday’s Innovation Festival and onboarding for the incoming Plug and Play Topeka cohort — has left the Treat Therapeutics founder with a lasting impression of the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, he shared. “We always talk about the Animal Health Corridor,” he said after winning the festival’s BioKansas Startup…

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Innovation Festival returns Aug. 16 with focus on human connections in a surging biotech hub

By Tommy Felts / July 25, 2024

While the third iteration of BioKansas’ Innovation Festival might initially seem scaled back, said Dr. Kevin Mills, the summer biosciences conference is amping up its emphasis on what makes Kansas City a great biotech hub. “The idea is really to get people with really diverse viewpoints and diverse jobs and careers together to hear from…

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Beer isn’t paint by numbers, it’s science: Why the art of brewing gets its own showcase at Innovation Festival 

By Tommy Felts / July 28, 2023

When Innovation Festival returns to Kansas City next week, the deep tech conference is set to highlight one popular group of makers who typically go unsung as scientists: brewers. Innovation Festival — Thursday, Aug. 3 through Saturday, Aug. 5 at Crown Center — is expected to showcase breweries during the conference’s final day, said Sonia…

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Deep tech is the indie rock of innovation: How a summer festival’s return puts it back on stage

By Tommy Felts / June 20, 2023

After a successful debut in 2022, Kansas City’s Innovation Festival is returning in August with more beats, beer, and biologics, shared Sonia Hall, teasing the addition of burgeoning businesses and a berry. To industry insiders, the event — planned for Aug. 3-5 at Crown Center — is a deep tech conference (with the addition of…

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They told him to build it in California; this agtech founder came back to Kansas instead

By Tommy Felts / August 6, 2022

When it came time to plant Trevor McKeeman’s agtech startup, he refused to farm the groundbreaking company’s future out to the coasts — specifically California where potential funders said he could find “money and talent.” “I was actually in Boston at the time,” explained McKeeman, founder and CEO of HitchPin, a digital marketplace for farmers…

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