The ISU Startup Factory has announced the members of it’s 19th cohort. The startup factory is an 18-week incubator for innovators residing in Iowa. The program focuses on helping founders build business acumen, improve communication skills, and leave with a commercialization plan in place. Teams include several ISU faculty and graduate students. A Demo Day event for Cohort 19 is scheduled for Tuesday, May 19.
The founders and companies of Cohort 19 are:
Jessica Kustas, Andrew Kustas, Frank Kustas and Gretchen Kustas with Precision Materials Engineering LLC (PRIME): Precision Materials Engineering LLC provides a refractory-metal alloy that retains mechanical properties at elevated temperatures, resulting in higher part reliability, longer part lifetime and cost savings for companies that use high-temperature manufacturing processes.
Saeed B. Nia and Behrouz Shafei with BioCrete: BioCrete supplies a low-cement, bio-residue concrete that achieves strength and durability specs, allowing concrete and ready-mix contractors a fully compatible option that maintains performance within existing production and placement systems.
Sree Nilakanta, Srini Reddy and Hari Sarma, Big Data in a Box Inc.: Big Data in a Box helps recover lost time and money through SPIDER, a set of digital eyes and ears that captures multimodal data, completes forms and reports, builds insights and enhances profits.
Fahima Noor, Ecolash Duo: Ecolash Duo is a reusable, dual-chamber mascara system that combines sustainability with all-natural ingredients.
Avnish Poonia, Kunal Suresh, Sahil Jain and Chaitanya Landge, FlowtingAI: FlowtingAI answers the grad student question of “Which LLM should I use?” by unifying many leading AI models into one solution that remembers imported research and routes each step to the most relevant option.
David Okoronkwo, LunarSync: LunarSync offers Autonomous Satellite architecture and computing hardware that improves system reliability without physical maintenance, designed specifically for satellite integrators who struggle with failures and disruptions during radiation events.
Pete Collins, Thomas Ales, Erin Cleary-Clark and Levi Nusz, AIQA: AIQA produces lightweight safety solutions for manufacturers of metals that protect people, vehicles and infrastructure.
Pranav Shrotriya and Sabyasachi Paul, GraphiLaserLab: GraphiLaserLab utilizes lasers to turn low-cost and waste materials into high-performance graphite, which reduces energy use and supply-chain constraints for battery and electronics manufacturers.