‘Disruptive’ technology on display at community showcase

Roadrunner Venture Studios is opening its doors to four crowd-favorite startups that displayed potentially “disruptive” technology at a June 22 community showcase event in Albuquerque.

The event — which attracted more than 200 scientists, innovators, investors and entrepreneurs from around New Mexico — showcased about three dozen new technologies from across the state in poster displays. And, in a science fair-like format, the inventors and startup representatives discussed their technology and business-development strategies with attendees, who then voted on those that demonstrated the most real-world impact potential.

After tallying the votes, Roadrunner executives announced four showcase “winners” on June 29, plus “honorable mentions” for eight other technologies on display.

The four winners will now be eligible for 10 hours of free development support through Roadrunner Venture Studios, plus membership access to Roadrunner’s studio workshop and facilities to continue building their technologies into marketable products and services when the studio officially opens this fall in Downtown Albuquerque.

Roadrunner is designing its facility to be a “vortex of creativity” that offers a “home for people who want to build things,” said Roadrunner co-founder and President Adam Hammer.

“It will be a community-friendly space with workstations, room for events, and an area to make prototypes using Roadrunner provided tools,” Hammer told the Journal. “It only made sense to us that the showcase winners would get access badges to an office like that. They will be among the first to walk through our doors and use our facilities.”

The four winners include:

• Hoonify Technologies Inc., which took the No. 1 crowd-favorite spot for an advanced software platform originally developed at Sandia National Laboratories that can convert regular computers into supercomputers, according to the company, which launched in 2021. As the event’s top winner, Roadrunner will donate $500 to any science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, program of Hoonify’s choosing.
• PainScan Enterprises Inc., which is marketing technology that pinpoints chronic pain on patients and creates a comprehensive three-dimensional map of the individual’s pain points to improve diagnostics and treatment.
• Yeast Encapsulated Essential Oils, which University of New Mexico researchers launched last December to market a new method for fighting mosquito-borne diseases by killing insect larvae before they hatch with essential oils from oranges, spearmint and fennel that’s embedded in yeast cells and frozen into a dry powder.
• H2 Recovery, which is spinning off a new membrane technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory for use in natural gas-based hydrogen production to increase the amount of hydrogen captured while simultaneously trapping nearly all carbon dioxide released in the process.

Two of the winners — PainScan and Yeast Encapsulated Essential Oils, or YEEO Eco-Safe — discussed their technologies and the Roadrunner event’s potential boost for their companies with the Journal.

Eco-friendly mosquito control

Winning at the community showcase can shine a spotlight on YEEO among investors, entrepreneurs and potential future customers, said UNM Health Sciences Center Associate Professor Ivy Hurwitz.

“It’s a big honor to be selected,” Hurwitz told the Journal. “It gives us recognition that we really need.”

Hurwitz helped develop the YEEO technology as a more effective and eco-friendly way to reduce mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever, malaria and West Nile. Such diseases affect some 700 million people annually and kill more than 1 million people each year.

But overuse of insecticides have led to mosquito resistance. And, today’s available larvicides are expensive, unstable and toxic to the environment, people and other beneficial species, according to YEEO.

“The best way to prevent disease is to control the mosquito population, and the best way to do that is to go after the larvae, which is concentrated in places where it hatches — in pools and puddles, or in bottles and containers with water,” Hurwitz said.

Essential oils are an ideal way to kill larvae. Plants produce them for protection against predatory insects, making them natural insecticides. But the oils can’t be used alone as a larvicide.

“Over time, it stinks, and the oil is dense, so it stays on top of water,” Hurwitz said. “It ends up killing the larvae and other things too. You need a way to effectively deliver the essential oil directly to larvae.”

To do that, YEEO mixes the oils together with yeast to embed it in yeast cells. It then freezes it into a dry powder to apply in places where larvae is concentrated.

“Larvae love to eat yeast, so it’s a great delivery vehicle for the essential oils,” Hurwitz said. “The larvae feed on it and it kills them.”

Digital 3D pain avatars

For PainScan, winning at the community showcase can increase the startup’s market traction while potentially attracting investors and other professionals to the company, said CEO John Mierzwa.

“It’s validation of our technology and an opportunity through Roadrunner Venture Studios to share our business model and vision for the company,” Mierzwa told the Journal. “We’re looking forward to introductions to entrepreneurs and investors that Roadrunner could provide. … They’re focused on disruptive technologies, and we believe we’re poised to disrupt the chronic pain space.”

Albuquerque-based family medical practitioner Dr. Andru Zeller launched the company in 2018 with technology he developed for doctors and clinical technicians to rapidly created 3D maps of an individual’s pain points on an iPad or computer screen using a simple touch exam that measures pain intensity on any part of a person’s body.

That includes a special clinician glove embedded with ultra-thin sensors to measure the degree of pressure as an examiner touches or palpates a patient’s pain points. Cameras simultaneously track the palpated location, while proprietary software acquires data from the cameras and sensors in real time and displays it on a 3D avatar of the patient on the computer screen.

Patients also squeeze a handheld device as the physician touches pain points to measure pain intensity.

“Our pain scan displays pain in 3D to better diagnose and treat it,” Dr. Zeller told the Journal. “It creates a digital twin of the patient with the pain patterns clearly visible.”

The 3D scans, or reports, can then help physicians create personalized treatment plans for patients, rather than simply prescribing painkillers or other generic therapies.

Tons of technology

The four winners provide a sampling of the cutting-edge technology available for commercial development in New Mexico, said Roadrunner President Hammer.

In fact, although only 36 presenters were chosen, Roadrunner received more than 85 submissions from scientists and innovators across the state to present at the community showcase, including everything from new discoveries in synthetic biology and artificial intelligence to quantum computing.

“”New Mexico’s talent was on full display,” Hammer told the Journal. “Everywhere you turned, another great poster fired the imagination. The building blocks for potential groundbreaking technology were all around us.”

Roadrunner hopes to turn some of that innovation into new, local companies with backing from America’s Frontier Fund, a new national venture investment firm that’s focusing on startup development in New Mexico.

The Frontier Fund invested $10 million in Roadrunner Venture Studios to set up its local operations. Although independent from the Frontier Fund, Roadrunner will provide boots on the ground to scout out promising new technologies to take to market through new venture-backed startups.