Connect Marks 30th Year of Most Innovative New Product Awards

In its yearly celebration of entrepreneurship and invention, San Diego’s Connect gave its Most Innovative New Product Award to 10 local companies at a dinner gala Thursday evening.

Speaking in an interview before the late-night ceremony, Connect CEO Greg McKee said the awards highlighted the diversity of innovation in San Diego—from an oxygen mask that signals if a patient develops trouble breathing (TereoPneuna) to artificial intelligence technology developed for self-driving vehicles (Brain Corp.).

While A.I. has been advancing at a breathtaking pace, McKee said a recent, massive explosion of data is threatening to overwhelm existing technologies—and that’s likely to drive a new wave of innovation. “The data stream has gotten so high that we have to figure how to manage and triage this river of information,” he said.

During the fete, Connect also inducted longtime Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) CEO Jay Flatley into its Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, along with four local innovation leaders: Richard C. Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California, received the Connect Founder’s Award; Joe Markee, a longtime tech investor and entrepreneur, was given the Duane Roth Award for his distinguished contribution in technology; Richard Lerner, the research chemist who served as president of The Scripps Research Institute for 20 years, received the Duane Roth Award in life sciences innovation; and Larry Bock, the late life sciences investor, was posthumously awarded the Duane Roth Award in life sciences innovation.

It was the 30th annual ceremony for Connect’s Most Innovative New Product Awards, a competition that began in the spring with companies submitting close to 100 new products for consideration. By September, Connect culled the list to 33 finalists who pitched their products last month to an assemblage of outside judges, who selected the winners in 10 categories.

Listed below are the winners in each category:

Cleantech, Sustainability, and Energy: Amionx

With backing from Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]), Amionx has developed SafeCore technology that is intended to act like a circuit breaker to prevent a lithium-ion battery from exploding or catching fire. Amionx says SafeCore adds minimal cost to lithium battery production costs.

Defense, Aerospace, and Transportation: Fuse Integration  

Fuse Integration has developed a miniaturized mobile server, with embedded encryption and advanced cybersecurity, that meets military requirements for ruggedized electronic networking systems. Fuse says its CORE server can be used aboard military aircraft and vehicles to provide secure data communications over IP networks, as well as command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations.

Information Communication Technologies: Nextivity

Nextivity specializes in technology that addresses “the universal challenge of poor cellular coverage in the office, at home, or on the road.” The company says its Cel-Fi GO device improves

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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.