Press

ANN ARBOR, MICH. (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 23, 2020

Ripple Science today announced the availability of new communication features in Ripple. These features better enable clinical research teams to work remotely and support virtual trials during this time of COVID-19. It is also timely as decentralized clinical trials (DCTs), in general, are gaining a foothold in industry.

The new communication features include bulk emails, calendar integrations for Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar, and text messaging. These features provide significant time savings for study teams. The calendar integration enables teams to sync scheduled Ripple Events with an existing external calendar allowing seamless participant scheduling. Amanda Zimmerman, Sr. Clinical Research Coordinator at Tulane University explains, “Ripple plays an integral role in coordinating the completion of our patient’s study visits. With the Outlook-Ripple integration, scheduling visits is intuitive and efficient: the system allows for multiple staff members to simultaneously schedule for a coordinator. Each coordinator can link their own calendar to the main study calendar, allowing them ownership and visibility of their own work, while replicating to the Ripple calendar. This integration has improved our recruitment, retention, and management abilities.”

Text messaging within Ripple utilizes all stored participant contact information allowing study teams to send direct text messages quickly and easily from a dedicated Ripple phone number. This feature, along with the ability to sen

This is an article about portfolio company, Bloomscape.

By Samantha Daly – September 21, 2020

Bloomscape’s resident “Plant Mom,” AKA horticulturalist Joyce Mast, gives us the scoop on how to prep your plant buddies for their dormant season.

After a long  summer of sun and growth, it might be time to check in on your houseplants. We talked to direct-to-consumer plant shop Bloomscape to get their expertise on keeping your blooms in tip-top shape as they settle down for the colder months.

View source version at Dwell: https://www.dwell.com/article/how-to-prune-trim-houseplants-bloomscape-bc838a77

This is an article about portfolio company,  Bloomscape.

By LISA BOONE

STAFF WRITER SEP. 15, 202012:25 PM

A longtime bohemian standard during the 1970s, hanging houseplants have returned in a big way as demand for plants has skyrocketed in the pandemic and Instagram influencers flaunt their indoor jungles.

Plant parents love to dote on their houseplants, especially now that everyone is hunkering down at home, but are all indoor plants well suited to hanging?

Bloomscape’s resident plant expert Joyce Mast advises evaluating your home and lifestyle before choosing a houseplant to hang.

View source version at the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2020-09-15/best-indoor-hanging-plants-home-decor

Northville, MI (September 22, 2020). Invest Michigan announced today that Jim Tenzillo has been named a Vice President and corporate officer.

Tenzillo joined Invest Michigan in April 2016 as an associate and quickly made his mark completing 50 investments as well as taking an active role as the lead investment manager with 20 portfolio client companies.  Since initiating its investment fund in 2014, Invest Michigan has completed 114 investments in 52 companies.  Nearly one third of Invest Michigan’s client companies are women-led. 

“Invest Michigan has been exceedingly active in making capital available to a diverse group of high-tech companies” said Charles Moret, president, “and Jim’s significant assistance to companies has helped one half of our companies complete a significant financial event.

Tenzillo is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Gies School of Business with a Bachelor’s of Science with honors in Finance, and began his professional career at CNA Insurance in their Accounting and Finance Leadership Rotational Program holding five different roles across Corporate Finance, SEC reporting and international planning and analysis. Jim earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Managerial and Organizational Behavior and Finance. After graduating, he took on a role at an early-stage financial start-up, LinkCapital, as the VP of Marketing and Operations, before joining Invest Mic

 ANN ARBOR, Mich.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—HT Mobile Apps, (HTMA), a fintech company serving banks across the country with cost-effective services to help community banks attract and retain customers, recently joined the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) as a Corporate Member.

HT Mobile Apps, a #fintech company serving banks across the country with cost-effective services to help #communitybanks attract and retain customers, recently joined @ICBA as a Corporate Member.

ICBA has been serving community banks for 90 years and is the only national trade association exclusively representing the interests of community banks. Through advocacy, education and innovation, ICBA serves its mission to create an environment where community banks flourish.

Genomenon announced today that Elizabeth Varga has joined the company’s leadership team as Director of Customer Success. In this newly created role, Varga will lead the company’s client development strategy, using insights to provide input for product marketing and direction for both clinical and Pharma customers.

“Having spent most of my career on the front lines as a genetic counselor advising families and clinicians on the impact of genomic variants for their health, family planning and therapeutic management, I fully appreciate the need for comprehensive and efficient tools to facilitate direct translation into the clinic,” said Varga. “By leveraging the power of genomic language processing and artificial intelligence, Genomenon makes the vast scientific literature accessible in seconds. I cannot be more excited to assist our clients in maximizing the value of Mastermind to benefit their clinical patients, expedite research findings, and support Pharma’s robust research and development teams so that the power of precision medicine may be realized.”

Varga was most recently a genomic testing consultant at PerkinElmer Genomics, a global laboratory with expertise in newborn screening, noninvasive prenatal testing and clinical genomic testing services. Prior to her position at PerkinElmer, Varga established herself as a nationally known clinician, researcher and academician in the field of hemato

This is an article about portfolio company, TD Online Accounting.

Collaboration with Autobooks aims to improve small business cash flow

CHERRY HILL, N.J., Aug. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank®, today announced that it is launching TD Online Accounting to provide a convenient, integrated payment and accounting experience for its small and closely held business customers to conduct banking and bookkeeping activities through TD’s Small Business Online Banking platform.

View source version on finance.yahoo.com: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/td-bank-launches-td-online-130000728.html

SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Movellus today announced that Fred Weber has joined its Board of Advisors. Mr. Weber will help with Movellus’ mission to deliver architectural innovations, initially in the areas of clock generation and distribution, to the high performance SoC, processor, and AI markets.

Fred Weber is well-known for his contributions at AMD, where he served as Chief Technical Officer and Corporate Vice President. During his tenure at AMD, Mr. Weber led the development and delivery of the industry’s first x86-compatible 64-bit processors, the Opteron and the Athlon 64. Mr. Weber has also served as a board director at Lattice Semiconductor, MIPS, NetSpeed (now Intel), and SeaMicro; he is currently an advisor to Samsung and Cerebras Systems. Mr. Weber is also on the Steering Committee of Hot Chips – a symposium on high performance chips. 

“The current demand in customized data-centric chips combined with the slowdown of Moore’s law has pushed the industry into an architectural renaissance,” said Mr. Weber.  “Today’s performance needs require innovation in the entire architecture stack, from transistors to circuits to systems and software. Movellus is playing a critical role in pushing the performance and efficiency of high-performance chips, and I am especially attracted to what they are doing with their Clock Distribution Network solutions.”

“We’re honored to have Fred Weber, a semiconductor industry luminary, join us as an advisor,” sa

This is an article about portfolio company, Genomenon.

An accomplished businessman, a strategic thinker and an excellent leader, Mike Klein has been responsible for raising over $50 million in private equity and venture capital financing over the years. He has drawn on a unique blend of vision, tactical thinking, communication and, execution skills in the last 25 years of his career. Mike’s technical and financial backgrounds have helped him bolster businesses and meet their objectives while driving revenue growth. Excerpts from an interview with Mike Klein, CEO, Genomenon:

View source version on tech-ceos.com: https://www.tech-ceos.com/genomenon/

Genomenon announced today that CEO Mike Klein has been named to TechCEOs list of “Top 25 Biotechnology CEOs of 2020”. Klein was recognized for leading Genomenon, one of the most innovative health IT companies in genomics. Genomenon’s AI-powered genomic search engine is used by nearly 10,000 clinicians across 118 countries to diagnose rare disease patients from their DNA.

Genomenon provides unique and powerful solutions that transform hidden genetic data and evidence into actionable intelligence for clinical laboratories and pharmaceutical companies. The use of Mastermind has led to numerous breakthroughs, where the information required to diagnose and treat patients with a rare disease would not otherwise have been found.

In Klein’s profile, “Revolutionizing Precision Medicine”, he credited the brilliant team of founders that created the technology to organize the genomic discoveries found across all the scientific research and made this life-changing technology accessible to doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and researchers.

Before Genomenon, finding the research related to the genetic cause of a rare disease was incredibly time-consuming and difficult. Genomenon’s AI-tools have organized the world’s genetic research into a single place. With a simple search, doctors find all the research connected to a patient’s DNA at their fingertips – making it possible to diagnose and treat previously undiagnosable r

This is an article about portfolio company,  Akadeum Life Sciences.

CLEMSON, S.C. – A collaborative team of undergraduate students recently took first place in the Clemson COVID Challenge, a summer virtual research and design opportunity that involved 86 teams and more than 500 participants.

The event provided an opportunity for undergraduates to work on problems related to the current COVID-19 situation as well as future possible pandemics.

View source version on newsstand.clemson.edu: https://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/winning-undergraduate-team-in-remote-research-competition-developing-rapid-covid-19-test/

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Sparta, Mich.-based ChoiceOne Bank has helped customers save more than $500,000 with Plinqit, the only savings app of its kind that pays users for learning about personal finances.

Plinqit, developed by HT Mobile Apps, improves users’ financial literacy through its patent-pending Build Skills™. Users can take a quiz and be rewarded towards their savings goal. The app enables customers to securely link their Plinqit account to their checking account, set a savings goal and automatically set aside a small amount of money at a rate and schedule that they choose. This out-of-sight-out-of-mind savings helps users continue to save without temptation to withdraw before reaching their goal and the bank is seeing real results.

Since launching Plinqit, ChoiceOne Bank has grown total Plinqit users month-over-month, resulting in an average savings goal of $1,154 per account. After the bank offered a new feature allowing users to save towards multiple goals, it has seen users create emergency funds as well as vacation funds. In fact, many of ChoiceOne’s customers have already reached their initial goal, with the majority (nearly 80 percent) creating new goals to continue saving.

“Recent events have shown people the importance of savings for emergencies, and solidifies the value of Plinqit to our customers,” said Adom Greenland, Chief Operations Officer of ChoiceOne Bank. “We have had a significant amount of positive feedback. People are making a point to thank us for offering Plinqit and helpi

This is an article about portfolio company, Bloomscape.

If you’ve got plans to turn your garden or green space into a bountiful work of art this summer, the recent coronavirus pandemic may have complicated things ever so slightly. Making nonessential in-person trips to plant stores and other garden retailers has become far less attractive, and as much as we miss the smell of Home Depot, it’s simply not worth it. 

View source version on cnet.com: https://www.cnet.com/news/plant-delivery-services-and-garden-subscriptions-compared/

This is an article about portfolio company, AdAdapted.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.– AdAdapted, a mobile advertising platform that specializes in Add-to-List media for CPG, recently completed its Series A round of financing. New investors, Capital Midwest Fund (lead investor) and Michigan Angel Fund, supported the most current funding round which closed in Q2 of this year.

View source version on nosh.com: https://www.nosh.com/supplier-news/2020/adadapted-leading-add-to-list-mobile-advertising-platform-secures-series-a-funding/

A smaller number of venture capital deals were reported across Michigan in the second quarter, though the amount invested increased from a year earlier.

Venture capital groups invested $102.8 million in 18 deals in Michigan from April to June, according to a recent report from the National Venture Capital Association and Pitchbook. That compares with $94.5 million invested in 27 deals in the second quarter of 2018.

View source version on mibiz.com: https://mibiz.com/sections/finance/report-shows-fewer-vc-deals-higher-investment-statewide-in-q2