News & Notes | Registration opens for “Startup Day Knoxville”
Two different events on Tuesday designed to highlight the Memphis entrepreneurial community.
From Knoxville:
Registration has opened for Innov865 Week’s premier event, “Startup Day Knoxville,” the annual pitch competition and celebration of Knoxville’s thriving entrepreneurial community. It is scheduled for the afternoon of October 1 at The Mill & Mine, 227 West Depot Avenue. Doors open at 1 p.m. To register, click here.
From Cookeville:
Tennessee Tech University has appointed Muhammad Ismail as the new Director for its Cybersecurity Education, Research and Outreach Center (CEROC), effective August 1. An Associate Professor of Computer Science at Tech, he was appointed to the position following a national search.
Ismail holds a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada and joined Tech in 2019. Before that, he served as a research scientist and visiting lecturer for electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M University in Qatar. His research includes more than $10 million in grants on applications of AI and quantum information science in cybersecurity with special focus on critical infrastructure.
CEROC was launched in 2015 by Ambareen Siraj, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Tech, to serve a critical void in cybersecurity workforce development. It was designated a Center of Academic Excellence – Cyber Defense Education by the National Security Agency that same year, quickly followed by an award from the National Science Foundation’s CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program in 2016, which aims to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity workforce by providing scholarships to students in cybersecurity-related fields. Tech’s program was the first to receive a CyberCorps SFS program in Tennessee and has since grown to become the largest program in the state and eighth largest in the country.
Ismail has led the CyberCorps SFS program since June 2022.
From Memphis:
- Finalists in the Ford Urbanite Memphis Mobility Challenge will be announced during an event in Memphis on Tuesday afternoon, August 13. Winners of Urbanite Paid Pilots will be announced at Demo Day along with a celebration of advances innovation and entrepreneurship in the Memphis region. Sponsored by Ford Motor Company and powered by Start Co. among other organizations, Demo Day runs from 3 to 5 p.m. CDT at the Halloran Centre, 225 South Main Street. To register, click here.
- Just an hour before the Mobility Challenge Demo Day, Epicenter, Alchemist Accelerator, and the Memphis supply chain industry will hold a virtual information session on their new Logistics Industry Opportunity Challenge. It is designed for start-ups that have already built something to solve one of the listed challenges or are excited to build a scalable company to address them. The information session is set for 2 to 3 p.m. CDT, and those interested can register here. The four challenge areas are: (1) Traceability and Visibility Across the Supply Chain; (2) Automating Customer Interaction; (3) Realtime, Actionable Insights Into Changing Business Conditions; and (4) Logistics Data Analysis and Prediction. More information about the Challenge and a link to the application can be found here.
From Ashland City, TN:
A. O. Smith Corporation has received a $25 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a project to modernize and expand its manufacturing capacity to enable high-volume production of residential heat pump water heaters (HPWHs). Part of $85 million in awards announced last week, A.O. Smith and three other heat pump manufacturers will accelerate the production of electric heat pumps, heat pump hot water heaters, and heat pump components at five factories in New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Rhode Island.
The goals of the A.O. Smith project are as follows:
- Establish an innovative high-volume manufacturing process for residential HPWHs, which will substantially increase the domestic production of this key decarbonization technology.
- Bring optimization attributes to the HPWH manufacturing process that will enhance both the availability and affordability of American-made HPWHs, while accelerating market transformation goals for broad consumer adoption of the technology, which will lead to energy and utility bill savings for consumers; a reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions nation-wide; as well as strengthening the domestic manufacturing supply chain of heat pump technology and its component parts.
- Consistent with its guiding principles of being a good corporate citizen and good place to work, the project will make workforce and infrastructure investments in a Justice 40 community leading to new innovative clean technology manufacturing jobs in Cheatham County, thus ensuring that underserved communities realize both direct and indirect benefits of the transition to a low-carbon energy economy.
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