The two companies, both based in Aliso Viejo, worked together to create UST Omni, which provides insight into product transportation across rail, ocean and air travel as well as artificial intelligence-powered disruption risk alerts at the product level.
“ThinkIQ’s ability to track material flow through the entire process as opposed to just looking at individual equipment status is pivotal to transforming Smart Manufacturing today,” said Doug Lawson, chief executive of ThinkIQ.
“Our partnership with UST brings the best of ThinkIQ technology with UST’s understanding of digital transformation in order to deliver unprecedented traceability and insight into ways to improve yield, quality, safety and compliance while reducing waste and achieving Industry 4.0 status.”
Industry 4.0, the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing, is expected to lead to a 10% overall improvement in operating efficiency, according to ThinkIQ.
ThinkIQ, founded in 2015, raised an $11.6 million Series A round of financing last November.
The company has about 25 employees and plans to double or triple in size by 2022.
Liquid Biosciences is the developer of a software platform that uses advanced machine learning to discover biomarkers, which indicate the severity or presence of some disease state.
Meanwhile, GATC is the creator of an artificial intelligence platform that analyzes whole genomes, proteins and other biological materials to understand how a person’s genetics impacts health outcomes.
GATC can put Liquid Biosciences’ findings into a biological context to identify compounds for future therapeutics and treatments, according to the two companies.
GATC and Liquid Biosciences are currently evaluating neurological diseases with unmet needs including addiction. Plans to tackle Alzheimer’s disease, autism and Parkinson’s disease are also in the pipeline.
GATC and Liquid Biosciences will offer their findings to pharmaceutical companies for an upfront development fee and expect to generate residual revenue via licensing and distribution agreements, the companies said.
Liquid Biosciences, started in 2017, has completed more than 170 projects across 44 diseases since inception. It’s also spun off several companies with commercial products such as Mammogen Inc. (see story, below).
NEW HIRES
Mammogen Inc., the Aliso Viejo-based developer of a liquid biopsy program for breast cancer, named Elizabeth Cormier-May its chief executive this month.
Cormier-May has over 15 years of experience in companion and molecular diagnostics. Her resume includes sales and business development positions at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Myriad Genetics, Qiagen and Predictive Biosciences.
“When women think of their physical, mental and emotional health, I want Mammogen to be the first, second, and third thing that comes to mind,” Cormier-May said in a statement.
“Mammogen is working to detect earlier, diagnose easier, treat better, and to support all women throughout the life-long battle that comes with survivorship.”
Mammogen is one of three joint venture companies formed between innovation studio IV BioHoldings and Aliso Viejo-based biomarker detection software provider Liquid Biosciences.
Mnet Health Services of Aliso Viejo recently appointed Lauren Illescas as chief operating officer.
Illescas has been with Mnet for more than a decade, and most recently served as vice president of operations, where she oversaw optimizing the patient financial experience for Mnet clients.
Mnet Health is a patient billing software platform for surgical hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, which serves over 700 surgical facilities in the U.S. and has over $1 billion in receivables under management.
The company, founded in 2005, received a strategic growth investment from Memphis-based SSM Partners at the end of January. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The recent investment will accelerate product development and market expansion, according to Mnet.
LAUNCH
California Crescent Fund, a new student-led and founded venture fund focused on Southern California, recently launched with its first investment in Gen-Z dating app Lolly.
Lolly, based in San Francisco, raised a $1.1 million seed round with the aim to rival platforms like Tinder and TikTok with its video-sharing and matching app.
“The founders [of Lolly] saw strategic value in California Crescent Fund,” said co-founder and Managing Partner Keyan Kazemian, who noted the fund and its members have already provided Lolly with marketing expertise, engineering hires and help building out a Discord to increase Lolly’s community of followers.
Meanwhile, California Crescent Fund members, made up of college students at University of California, Irvine and several other Southern California universities, have the opportunity to learn about venture capital and “sit on the other side of the table” as investors, rather than as startup founders, before building something from scratch, said co-founder and Managing Partner Daniel Michelson.
California Crescent Fund said it has partnered with Costa Mesa-based venture studio Operate and its co-founder and President Carey Ransom to build a network of venture capital and resources for student-led startups.
California Crescent Fund, which is actively recruiting student members, aims to raise about $1 million and make about 20 investments in the next two years, it said.
InnoCaption, a Buena Park-based provider of real-time captioning of phone calls for the deaf, was recently certified by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.
The company, which launched in beta mode in 2019, says it is the only certified provider that offers a choice for users to switch between automated speech recognition and human-assisted captioning provided via trained stenographers.
InnoCaption is available for English- and Spanish-speaking users, with plans to add additional languages to its platform in 2021.
In addition, “InnoCaption will be dedicating significant R&D efforts towards ensuring our ASR offering is providing high levels of service to our users” in 2021, said Joseph Lee, co-CEO of InnoCaption.
“We expect to see the proliferation of [automated speech recognition] technology in many aspects of tech-enabled services and in consumers’ daily lives and ensure that this technology is tailored to benefit the deaf and hard of hearing community.”
Additional offerings of InnoCaption include a spam call filter and a DeskView feature, which allows users to view captions from their phone mirrored on desktop devices, making conference calls easier and eliminating the need to toggle between computer and cell phone screens, the company said.
