October 04, 2004
Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center
Florida's Technological Research and Development Authority
Heidi Brandow
321-267-5601
hbrandow@trda.org

TRDA Programs Showcased at Florida Tech

Titusville, FL-October 4, 2004- The Department of Engineering Systems at Florida Tech conducted two forums that showcased Technological Research and Development Authority (TRDA) programs on business incubation and technology transfer.

Approximately thirty-five students and faculty attended the “Engineering Entrepreneur in the Spotlight” double-header seminar to glean best practice ideas from Mr. Bhargav Gajjar, CEO of Space Robotics Corp (SRC). SRC is an affiliate client of the Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center in Titusville. Mr. Gajjar started SRC when he was a graduate student at UCF. “His experiential talk on high tech entrepreneurship was very inspiring and gave me a lot of ideas on how to venture into my own start-up” stated Jim Muehlen, a graduate student in the Engineering Systems Department.

Mr. Kiran Chagganlal of Florida Technology Partners discussed different ways of funding high tech start-ups and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Despite Florida Tech closing at 5 pm due to the impending hurricane weather, the attendees kept networking and discussing their entrepreneurial projects until 6:30 pm on Friday. “This is evidence of the proverbial ‘entrepreneurial fire in the belly’ at Florida Tech and we will have many more forums like this for the benefit of our students, faculty and the community in the future”, commented Dr. Carmo D’Cruz of the Engineering Systems Department who organized these forums in collaboration with the Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center.

Prior to the entrepreneurial seminars, Christy Lewis and Chris Gilfriche of TRDA’s Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program (SATOP) visited Florida Tech to address the undergraduate Senior Design class and the graduate Technical Marketing class to discuss SATOP’s technical problem solving benefits for small high tech entrepreneurs and supplemental funding opportunities for college faculty and graduate students in engineering and science. SATOP is a $6M NASA funded program to enable technology transfer and help high tech businesses.

For more information about the Technological Research and Development Authority, the Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center or the Space Alliance Technology Outreach program, please visit the website at www.trda.org or call 321-267-5601.