07/15/1999
Glenn Hightower funds one of the two annual awards for Cal Tech's, 'Caltech Business Plan Competition. The news release below is reproduced from the University site. A diligent search of the site found no mentions of Dan O'Dowd. Notice Glenn is credited as founder of Green Hills Software. Just goes to show you how rapidly CalTech deans can develop amnesia if enough money is offered.
PASADENA—The
start-up company Synthetic Sound Lab, which is developing a new
generation of music synthesis and composition tools, has been awarded
$10,000 from the Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering in the
annual California Institute of Technology Business Plan Competition.
Synthetic
Sound Lab is the brainchild of Mike Davies, a Caltech graduate student
in electrical engineering, recent Caltech graduates Mike Astle and Steve
McCoy, and current Caltech students Jeremy Kemper and Michael
Fitzgerald. "We will be offering a combination of computer software and
hardware products, marketed at amateur and professional musicians, that
will allow our customers to express their musical ideas with greater
ease and finer expression," says Davies, who formulated the business
plan as an undergraduate working on an electrical engineering project.
Dean
Schonfeld, the Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering's manager of
technology transfer, explains, "We're creating a new industry. Unlike
other more traditional engineering centers, we can't rely exclusively on
established companies to transfer our technology to industry. By
supporting competitions such as this, we hope to encourage students to
make the transition from the academic world to the business world."
Working to translate the understanding of biological systems into a new
class of electronic and mechanical devices, the center's goal is to
create an enabling technology useful to industry.
The Center for
Neuromorphic Systems Engineering's contribution to this year's business
plan competition allowed for two $10,000 prizes to be awarded. The other
$10,000, sponsored by Glenn Hightower, a Caltech alumnus and the
founder of Green
Hill Software Inc., a leading supplier of software development tools
for embedded applications, went to real MOVES, a start-up company
specializing in computer animation.
In its second year, the
Caltech Business Plan Competition, conducted by the Caltech Industrial
Relations Center, is designed to encourage, appraise, and promote
business ideas from within the Caltech community. The two $10,000 prizes
represent an investment designed to serve as start-up capital for the
new venture. In addition, other organizations supporting the competition
may offer the new venture start-up professional and business services.
The winning business plans must both impress the panel of reviewers and
provide the best investment opportunity.
Founded in 1891, Caltech
has an enrollment of some 2,000 students, and an academic staff of about
280 professorial faculty and 130 research faculty. The Institute has
more than 19,000 alumni. Caltech employs a staff of more than 1,700 on
campus and 5,300 at JPL.
Over the years, 27 Nobel Prizes and four
Crawford Prizes have been awarded to faculty members and alumni.
Forty-four Caltech faculty members and alumni have received the National
Medal of Science; and eight alumni (two of whom are also trustees), two
additional trustees, and one faculty member have won the National Medal
of Technology. Since 1958, 13 faculty members have received the annual
California Scientist of the Year award. On the Caltech faculty there are
77 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and on the
faculty and Board of Trustees, 69 members of the National Academy of
Sciences and 49 members of the National Academy of Engineering.
Written by Sue McHugh
Contact:
Caltech Media Relations
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