Each year, Maryland Incubator Company of the Year (ICOY) Awards recognize the achievements of current and past incubator companies in the state. In 2017, three bwtech@UMBCincubator companies at won their respective award categories, bringing bwtech@UMBC’s total ICOY winners to two twenty since the award program begin in 2002. The honorees, as well as several award nominees from bwtech@UMBC, were recognized at a special awards ceremony held at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

“We are thrilled that three of our bwtech@UMBC companies were recognized for their outstanding efforts by winning Incubator Company of the Year awards in their respective industry categories,” says Jennifer Reynolds, director of venture creation at bwtech@UMBC. “These awards represent the incredible effort and drive that our entrepreneurs have, and we are honored and humbled to play a part in their success.”

Fearless Solutions, a software company that primarily develops applications to presents content visually, won the award for best service/consulting company category. Delali Dzirasa ‘04, computer engineering, president and CEO of Fearless Solutions, headquartered in the Spark Coworking Space in Baltimore with additional office space in bwtech, reflected on how meaningful the award was for him, noting:

“We work hard to build software that has an impact on our community, partly because our community has helped so much in getting us to where we are today. It’s incredibly humbling to be recognized alongside so many other outstanding companies, and we’re really grateful for all of the support that we’ve received from both bwtech@UMBC and Spark—we wouldn’t be here without them!”

FZata, a company that develops therapeutic and preventive medicines using antibody technology, won the best life sciences company category. The company is currently developing a compound to fight against Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that disrupts normal, healthy colons and can be very challenging to treat, even in highly advanced medical care facilities. In the U.S., C. diff causes more than half a million infections, and nearly 30,000 deaths, each year.

Zhiyong Yang, co-founder and CEO of FZata, reflects, “Ever since the launch in bwtech@UMBC in November 2015, FZata has earned quite a few significant government grants, including a very recent $5.8M RO1 grant, which represents the recognition from our scientific peers. Now being selected as Best Life Sciences Company reflects the recognition from our business peers,” says Yang. “It is a great honor to us.”

Leverage, a software company that specializes in developing new technologies that can impact society, won the best software company category. Eric Conn ‘85, computer science, co-founder and CEO of Leverage, says that the support from bwtech@UMBC has played a large part in the success of the company, and he calls the ICOY award “validation of the hard work that our entire team has put in for nearly three years now.”

“Our Internet of Things (IoT) software platform and companion educational website ‘IoT For All’ are quickly becoming the preferred tools for IoT projects large and small,” says Conn. . ““Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are already having a large impact on people’s lives and we hope to strike the right balance between the efficiencies that technology can bring and the preservation of satisfying, high-paying jobs for future generations.”

Since 2002, more than a dozen incubator companies at bwtech@UMBC had won awards at the Maryland Incubator Company of the Year Awards.

In June, Mike Wagner ‘97, information systems management, ‘98, computer science, vice president of WaveStrike, was recently recognized by Ernst & Young at the annual Entrepreneur of the Year Maryland Awards. He was recognized as an entrepreneur in the technology services category for WaveStrike, a software engineering company that develops systems that protect national security.

As a Washington Post article highlighted, some doctors are now using immunotherapy—stimulating the body’s own immune response to tackle disease in targeted ways—to treat cancer patients who are not responding to traditional chemotherapies, and increasingly in place of chemotherapies or in combination with them. The Food and Drug Administration recently received unanimous recommendation from an advisory committee that a new class of immunotherapy, a “living drug,” be approved for use in children and young adults with leukemia. “The treatment takes cells from a patient’s body, modifies the genes, and then infuses those modified cells back into the person who has cancer,” explains NPR.

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation awarded UMBC’s Greg Szeto, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, a $75,000 research fellow grant to continue his work on immunotherapy. Specifically, Szeto is developing experimental tests and computational models that could help physicians more accurately predict how individual patients with multiple myeloma will respond to a similar type of immunotherapy. Szeto’s preliminary work with collaborator Ivan Borrello, associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, correctly predicted clinical outcome in more than 80% of multiple myeloma patients from a prior immunotherapy clinical trial using “living drugs.”

“A major hurdle for the field is determining who will benefit from which immunotherapies, and making that determination as early as possible,” explains Szeto. “Though a long way off, the rewards of pursuing such research are key insights for better understanding how existing and emerging therapies work, enhancing the connections between STEM disciplines, and in the long run increasing patient quality of life and the ability of doctors and patients to make informed care decisions.”

In previous research, Szeto found that combining multiple immunotherapy agents can improve responses in mice treated for melanoma, and computational models could help predict and dissect these responses. A paper he coauthored with collaborators including Michael Zhang Ph.D. ’23, chemical engineering, who worked with Szeto as a research tech at MIT, appeared in Nature Medicine last year and indicated that combinations of immunotherapy agents can enable immune cells to more effectively infiltrate and reduce the size of the tumor. This size reduction was predicted by fusing experimental tests with computational models. Currently, Szeto is working to define when and how to test different samples to get the best predictive models.

Because treatments are tailored to individual patients based on a broad range of factors, understanding and assessing their function can be incredibly complex, and it can be challenging to replicate successful treatments across patients. Szeto hopes to help researchers develop more predictable treatment regimens that can use knowledge about individual patients, but with a firmer sense of when particular schedules of medication and dosage levels should be used, and what impact they are likely to have.

“There really hasn’t been any approval for this ‘living drug’ approach before, so what recently happened is a major milestone,” he says, adding that “it paves the way for approval of other drugs within this class, similar to those we are studying with Dr. Borrello.”

As a Washington Post article highlighted, some doctors are now using immunotherapy—stimulating the body’s own immune response to tackle disease in targeted ways—to treat cancer patients who are not responding to traditional chemotherapies, and increasingly in place of chemotherapies or in combination with them. The Food and Drug Administration recently received unanimous recommendation from an advisory committee that a new class of immunotherapy, a “living drug,” be approved for use in children and young adults with leukemia. “The treatment takes cells from a patient’s body, modifies the genes, and then infuses those modified cells back into the person who has cancer,” explains NPR.

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation awarded UMBC’s Greg Szeto, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, a $75,000 research fellow grant to continue his work on immunotherapy. Specifically, Szeto is developing experimental tests and computational models that could help physicians more accurately predict how individual patients with multiple myeloma will respond to a similar type of immunotherapy. Szeto’s preliminary work with collaborator Ivan Borrello, associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, correctly predicted clinical outcome in more than 80% of multiple myeloma patients from a prior immunotherapy clinical trial using “living drugs.”

“A major hurdle for the field is determining who will benefit from which immunotherapies, and making that determination as early as possible,” explains Szeto. “Though a long way off, the rewards of pursuing such research are key insights for better understanding how existing and emerging therapies work, enhancing the connections between STEM disciplines, and in the long run increasing patient quality of life and the ability of doctors and patients to make informed care decisions.”

In previous research, Szeto found that combining multiple immunotherapy agents can improve responses in mice treated for melanoma, and computational models could help predict and dissect these responses. A paper he coauthored with collaborators including Michael Zhang Ph.D. ’23, chemical engineering, who worked with Szeto as a research tech at MIT, appeared in Nature Medicine last year and indicated that combinations of immunotherapy agents can enable immune cells to more effectively infiltrate and reduce the size of the tumor. This size reduction was predicted by fusing experimental tests with computational models. Currently, Szeto is working to define when and how to test different samples to get the best predictive models.

Because treatments are tailored to individual patients based on a broad range of factors, understanding and assessing their function can be incredibly complex, and it can be challenging to replicate successful treatments across patients. Szeto hopes to help researchers develop more predictable treatment regimens that can use knowledge about individual patients, but with a firmer sense of when particular schedules of medication and dosage levels should be used, and what impact they are likely to have.

“There really hasn’t been any approval for this ‘living drug’ approach before, so what recently happened is a major milestone,” he says, adding that “it paves the way for approval of other drugs within this class, similar to those we are studying with Dr. Borrello.”

Image: Greg Szeto. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

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Mark 10:45 (NLT) - “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Why is service a means to grace?

It’s a means to grace because serving is our opportunity to give and live like Jesus! Jesus came not to be served but to serve and to give his life for us! We have received life through Jesus Christ. I was considering so many ways I have received so much from my brothers and sisters in the church and how I experienced God’s love and grace through them. It’s wonderful to be loved and served isn’t it? But you know what is even more wonderful? It’s learning to give and serve. We give because we have received - so much! In giving ourselves in service to others, we get to know the very heart of God because our Lord Jesus was a servant! When we give our lives to serve others, we get to live like Jesus and participate in His kingdom work!

Let’s pray that we will be His kingdom workers!

-DP