Southeast Shoutouts 2 | Three news items from Florida
Items come from Miami, St. Petersburg, and Tampa.
From St. Petersburg, FL:
Tonya Elmore, CEO of the Tampa Bay Innovation Center (TBIC), announced her impending resignation last week in a social media post. The St. Petersburg-based nonprofit technology start-up incubator launched in 2003 and opened a long-awaited state-of-the-art facility in January 2024.
“After 23 incredible years as the Founder and CEO of the Tampa Bay Innovation Center/STAR TEC, I am announcing my decision to step down and embark on a new chapter in my life,” Elmore wrote in the LinkedIn post. “This journey has been filled with remarkable achievements and countless memories that I will cherish forever. I could never have imagined that starting the region’s first defense tech incubator in February 2003 would ultimately lead us to a 45,000 SF (square foot) state-of-the-art innovation center in St. Petersburg.”
From Miami, FL:
Miami-Dade Innovation Authority (MDIA) has launched its fifth “Public Innovation Challenge,” a pioneering initiative that is part of Miami-Dade County’s overall waste diversion efforts. In collaboration with the Miami-Dade County Department of Solid Waste Management (DSWM), this challenge invites local and global early-to-growth stage companies to submit innovative solutions that will enhance and strengthen strategies to divert and reduce waste and educate and engage residents.
Piloting the innovative technologies proposed in the Public Innovation Challenge will inform and complement the development of the County’s Zero Waste Master Plan, a comprehensive plan that will set a path forward to divert, reduce or reuse overall waste in our community.
The challenge will run until April 21 after which MDIA, in partnership with DSWM, will select at least three early-to-growth stage technology start-ups, providing each with $100,000 in funding to test and validate their solutions with DSWM. Interested companies are encouraged to submit their proposals through the official challenge website here.
The challenge seeks solutions that harness the power of technology to improve waste diversion efforts like recycling and organic waste reuse. These solutions should also educate and incentivize the public to participate in these efforts. They should be ready to be implemented in a pilot setting and should be scalable to ultimately meet the growing needs of DSWM.
From Tampa, FL:
CancerX, a public-private partnership designed to accelerate innovation in the fight against cancer, has launched its 2025 CancerX Accelerator cohort, featuring what is described as “an incredible group of digital health and artificial intelligence start-ups dedicated to addressing critical challenges in oncology.” This year’s cohort will focus on improving cancer care by improving access to treatment, accelerating clinical trials, and providing personalized, connected care for patients beyond the clinic.
The CancerX Accelerator is a flagship program for CancerX, designed to match unmet needs within champion organizations with suitable innovations from start-ups in the field. The participants can be championed by one or more organizations and are offered a range of support, from mentorship and product feedback to conducting pilots and signing commercial agreements. This four-month program also provides start-ups with a weekly educational curriculum covering four tracks: (1) working with health systems; (2) working with industry; (3) working with the public sector; and (4) a speaker series on scaling their business within oncology.
In addition to Moffitt Cancer Center, which serves as the host, Advocate Health, Oncology Ventures, MassChallenge, and the Assistant Secretary of Technology Policy, this year the program added the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), Johnson & Johnson, Elevance, Innsena, CEI Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Mercury, and KidsX, a nationally recognized network of pediatric hospitals dedicated to accelerating innovation.
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