Black & Veatch selects 18 partners to participate in COVID-19 response accelerator

2020 and the pandemic effected everyone around the world. Many workplaces had to adapt quickly and change working styles. We teamed up with Black & Veatch and worked together to develop a site for a portable, quickly deployable Rapid Modular Health System (RaMHS). The original announcement can be found here.

Less than four months after launching the initiative to find innovative solutions to the coronavirus pandemic, Black & Veatch has chosen 18 partners for its ambitious IgniteX COVID-19 Response Accelerator intent on developing and deploying emerging technologies to the fight against the disease.

Hear directly from many of these companies during the upcoming IgniteX COVID-19 Response Accelerator Virtual Showcase on Wednesday, July 22, from 2-3:30 PM CDT. Register here

The partners – an array of startups, established businesses and universities – were selected from more than 300 applications to the initiative launched in late March as a push to build, grow and scale solutions that would soften COVID-19’s impact on communities. The response accelerator also sought to prepare the Black & Veatch’s core businesses for a post-pandemic future.

Applications came from engineering, construction, health-tech spaces and beyond, with Black & Veatch choosing the 18 partners after a rigorous three-month evaluation process.

Black and Veatch is providing $250,000 total in grants or in-kind services as a part of the program, as well as access to their network of more than 10,000 employees in over 100 offices around the globe, enabling both a faster runway to commercialization but also valuable connections between mentors, customers and investors. IgniteX also brings outside partners from diverse industries, including Advance Concepts Studios, Brightidea, KC Digital Drive, Launch KC and the University of Missouri’s College of Engineering.

“As the pandemic struck and began impacting our lives and work across the globe in untold number of ways that are creating a new normal, we recognized we needed new approaches to fight these new challenges,” said Steve Edwards, Black & Veatch’s CEO. “We turned to our Growth Accelerator team to apply their innovative mindset to crowdsourcing solutions, and they have brought aboard 18 exciting partners with technologies that we think can push back against the devastating effects of COVID-19 on our economy, our health and our daily lives.”

The partners in the inaugural IgniteX COVID-19 Response Accelerator include innovative solutions in categories ranging from disinfection and filtration to health screening, tracking and tracing, wearables, data intelligence and communications. Those partners include:

Aquisense: Desktop ultraviolet (UV) disinfection of masks

Motega: Developed a multi-day persistent sanitizer for surfaces and hands. Company has formulation specialists in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, foods and chemicals.

NanoGuard: Reactive gas (ozone) disinfection for food and other markets

Windgo: Smart UV lighting

University of Missouri: Biosensor for rapid pathogen detection

InnovaPrep: Concentration device for pathogen detection

Fluid Robotics: Automated sampling devices and wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE)

Transcend H2O: Automatic site design for the portable, quickly deployable Rapid Modular Health System (RaMHS)

Field2Base: Mobile data collection partner for COVOPERATE

Translational Pulmonary & Immunology Research Center: Health partner for return-to-X assessments

OneScreen: Infrared temperature scanner

Energy Cloud: Air filtration system

MySidewalk: City intelligence platform

OnFrontiers: Platform for enterprise knowledge networks

Cykyl Springs: Constant force/air pressure for medical and other devices

Avatour: 360-degree virtual telepresence

Ubudu: Small wearable for social distance compliance and contact tracing

EB Systems: Indoor/On-Site tracking, contact tracing, and real-time alerting systems

This year marks the second for the IgniteX accelerator; last year’s program focused on clean technologies.