Biofuels Consortium Targets Technical Hurdles, Legend Films Morphs Into Legend 3D, Fallbrook Technologies Adds Details to IPO Filing, & More San Diego BizTech News

Cleantech was the watchword of the week, with much of the news concerning algae-based biofuels and energy efficiency. Read on to get that and the rest of last week’s biztech news.

—The new executive director of the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB), José Olivares, outlined some of the technical challenges that must be solved before algal biofuels production can become an economically viable industry. Olivares came through San Diego to meet with members of the NAABB from UC San Diego, HR BioPetroleum, and Kai BioEnergy.

—Fallbrook Technologies, the San Diego startup developing an energy-efficient, continuously variable transmission, provided new information in a recent fling about the financial risks and funding requirements the company faces. Fallbrook filed for an IPO in February.

—The San Diego company that Barry Sandrew started in 2001 as Legend Films specialized in providing digital colorization technology for the motion picture industry. But the company has recently reinvented itself as Legend 3D, and now focuses on visual special effects and 3D technology for Hollywood. With studio demand for 3D “dimensionalization” exploding, Legend 3D has 260 employees at its San Diego headquarters and another 700 in Patna, India, and plans to add another 500 there in coming months.

—After securing a $100,000 grant to get life sciences entrepreneurs to talk with teen-agers about their technology innovations and startup companies, Connect CEO Duane Roth is looking for additional funding to do the same thing with high-tech entrepreneurs. The idea behind the grant from the Biogen Idec Foundation of Cambridge, MA, is to get young people excited about studying science, technology, engineering, and math.

—Some 1,200 people and more than 70 companies turned out for San Diego Gas & Electric’s 5th Annual Energy Showcase at the downtown convention center. I found a few local startups that are developing innovative technologies.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.