BIF Honored by Providence Business News at 2009 Innovation Awards

Melissa Withers
September 24, 2009

BIF was pleased to be among those honored at the 2009 Rhode Island Innovation Awards, co-hosted by the Providence Business News and Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.  BIF was a finalist in the "Innovation Champion" catagory.  The catagory was created to honor organizations that, through programs and services, encourage, inspire and enable innovation in the community.

PBN editor Mark Murphy made the award, recognizing BIF for our project work and for our annual Collaborative Innovation Summit.  Murphy praised BIF for its unwaivering focus on enabling collaborative innovation and innovation partnerships that require collaboration across traditional industry and sector boundaries.

The awards were made at a ceremony held at Bryant University on September 23.  I was pleased to be there to represent BIF and accept the award.

PBN named winners and finalists in six industry categories for products or services that were judged to represent game-changing innovation for either the company or the markets that it operates in. In addition, there are winners in three categories that celebrate individual innovators, as well as one that honors champions of innovation, either individuals or institutions.

Other honorees included:

• SGE, an engineering firm that has created a renewable energy division that builds wind energy turbines (including the new one in Portsmouth) to respond to the changing energy environment.

• Plasticycle Technologies, a plastics recycling business.

• IlluminOss Medical, the maker of a revolutionary product that uses a light-activated monomer to hold broken bones together for quicker healing. 

•  EpiVax, research and immunological product company.

• Greenbytes, the maker of inline deduplicating data storage appliances that use energy efficient innovations to bring down the cost and carbon footprint of data centers.

• A2B Tracking Solutions, which recently won a Defense Department contract to track every piece of materiel it owns.

•  Isis Biopolymer, the developer of a programmable drug delivery system in a compact patch that is designed to deliver the precise dose of medicine at the precise time it should be delivered.

• distill studios, the designer of the recycled shipping container office building.

• Law Video Forum, which has created a video library of law questions and answers that can be searched by the general public, based on the premise that a video library will be easier for lay people to understand than written answers to questions alone.

•Johnson & Wales University, for its Veggin’ Out program, which provides culinary and nutrition education at farmers’ markets and produce distribution sites, and helps to increase produce consumption among low-income residents. 

• Potter League, which recently completed a new 19,500-square-foot animal shelter.

For the categories for individuals, the winners were:

• Innovator of the Year: Jeffrey Morgan, a professor of medical science and engineering at Brown University, whose research laboratory has garnered grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Veterans Affairs Administration and the Rhode Island Science & Technology Advisory Council.

• Rising Star Innovator: Charlie Kroll, founder of Andera, the provider of online account creation software to the banking industry.

• Student Innovator: Rajiv Kumar, founder of Shape Up Rhode Island, the company-based wellness program.

• Innovation Champion: Amgen, the maker of biopharmaceuticals has put in place a series of programs to foster innovation, including classes to teach its employees how to spot innovation opportunities within the workplace. Earlier this year, Amgen was named one of the Best Places To Work in Rhode Island by PBN and the Best Companies Group.

Thanks again PBN!