The blogs you may have missed: Part I

The summer is winding down, but we won’t use this space to harp on that. Instead, let’s take a look at what you may have missed on your summer vacation.

In part one of a two-part series, here are the blogs of the summer.

AlphaLab Health accelerates the time it takes for novel ideas to reach patients

Megan Shaw, life sciences portfolio executive for Innovation Works and AlphaLab Health, writes about disrupting the healthcare and life sciences industry with the new AlphaLab Health accelerator, a partnership between Innovation Works, a prominent seed accelerator in Pittsburgh, and Allegheny Health Network.

How to grow one of the best positioned life sciences markets

Wexford Science & Technology has partnered with the University of Pittsburgh on a multi-tenant commercial life sciences development, The Assembly, which is a 355,000-square-foot space with 100,000 square feet of purpose-built lab space. Michael Dembert, vice president at Wexford, discusses this and the many other life sciences commercial real estate developments.

The importance of Black-led venture capital funds and how Black Tech Nation Ventures is holding the pen to write a new story

The lack of diversity in the venture capital industry exists at all levels: the fund manager level, the investor level and the founder level. //BTN Ventures views each of these gaps as a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge: Create access to capital for Black and diverse founding teams. The opportunity: Provide compelling returns to its investors. //BTNV is stepping in with a goal of raising $25 million, and the founding partners – Kelauni Jasmyn, David Motley and Sean Sebastian – write about their efforts.

One of the world’s most impactful AI startups – Marinus Analytics – was founded in Pittsburgh

Marinus Analytics beat out 800 global competitors and took third place in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Competition. The journey to that accomplishment started years ago at Carnegie Mellon University. Read the story from one of the company’s founders, Emily Kennedy, on how it evolved from an idea to one of the most impactful companies that’s using machine learning to help identify victims of sex trafficking on the internet.

Stay tune for part II of the blogs of summer in the coming weeks.