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A new group of tech and life sciences startups introduced themselves last week during the Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program’s twice-annual Meet the Cohort event.
An audience at RAMP’s Thursday soiree at the Shenandoah Club heard quick pitches from five companies getting tutorials and other support from the organization, under the umbrella of nonprofit Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance.
The businesses, found at RAMP’s website, ramprb.com:
- Helix Hydrogen Inc., from Harrisonburg, wants to solve efficiency, affordability and scalability problems in hydrogen production.
- Richmond-based Randao.net’s random number generator idea is to make a decentralized randomness protocol centered on speed, cost-efficiency and security for blockchain and smart contract apps.
- Blacksburg-based S1P Therapeutics aims to treat chronic kidney disease and other serious conditions with a small-molecule therapy that targets immune signaling pathways.
- Vectorial Corp. in Roanoke is working on a new gene therapy that it hopes will restore function to heart failure patients.
- AdaptivXR, which is developing extended reality software to measure and improve operational readiness for universities and public safety organizations. No further information about the company was available.
The cohort’s Demo Day is June 4 at The Highlander Hotel in Radford.
According to the RAMP website, it has accelerated 61 companies since 2017, with 76% of its companies still active, supporting 950 jobs. Its companies combined have raised $33 million.
The 12-week cohort program’s perks include one-on-one mentoring from experts, free office space at the Gill Memorial Building in downtown Roanoke, free memberships that include two years in the Roanoke Blacksburg Technology Council and three years at the Shenandoah Club, along with discounted office space after the program.
RAMP 2023 cohort member sees strong growth
Code One Training Solutions, which provides courses in CPR and other lifesaving techniques to medical personnel, emergency responders and nonprofessionals, has opened its 100th location, according to RAMP.
Richard and Allison Shok, who co-founded the company in 2007, cut the ribbon in February for their newest training center, in Apex, North Carolina. Code One, now with 100 locations including Roanoke, Blacksburg, Lynchburg and Danville, combines online class work with one-on-one training for about 20,000 people in the central and eastern United States.
“Reaching 100 locations isn’t about growth for growth’s sake,” Richard Shok said in a RAMP news release. “It’s about removing barriers. The medical community deserves training that’s both high-quality and practical to attend. We’ve worked hard to create a system that maintains consistency and accountability while giving people the convenience they’ve never really had in this space.”
The Shoks, who started the company while they studied nursing at the University of Connecticut, have since moved to Roanoke and are 2023 RAMP cohort graduates.
Virginia Tech library system receives AI-related grant
Virginia Tech’s University Libraries have received a grant to study artificial intelligence uses, but it will center people, not AI, according to a university news release.
The grant comes from the Digital Public Library of America, which awarded the Virginia Tech libraries $10,000 for a project that will explore how AI “can be used responsibly to support cultural heritage stewardship while engaging students in experiential learning,” according to the news release.
It is part of a set of grants totaling $145,000 to 10 systems nationwide, according to the DPLA, which announced the grants late last year. The Virginia Tech award will support an investigation into how such tools as GPT and OpenRefine can help clean up and standardize metadata in diverse digital collections, the university said last week.
Students will be hands-on, learning about these AI tools and how to use them, said the libraries’ digital collections and emerging formats librarian, Wen Nie Ng.
“Many AI projects focus on highly experimental or fully automated pipelines, but this work intentionally centers human expertise,” Ng said in the news release. “Instead of replacing catalogers or metadata professionals, it looks at how AI can help reduce repetitive tasks and elevate the intellectual labor that humans do best — making contextual, ethical, and community-informed decisions about collections.”
