When Ernesto Borrego first met Dennis Smith at an American Chemical Society recruiting event, neither could have predicted that their conversation would eventually lead to the founding of a promising Mississippi startup. Borrego had just completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry and was exploring opportunities in industry. Smith, a polymer…
David Colby has spent his career building novel chemicals for pharmaceutical and biotech applications. A trained chemist and pharmacist, Colby was developing new solvents for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries when, in 2022, his lab made an unexpected discovery: a new class of solvents with enormous implications for both fields…
When Chelsea Rogers sat down with her husband to map out their monthly budget, she didn’t expect to find the spark for a FinTech startup. But as she manually listed credit card balances, due dates, APRs, and payment strategies—spreadsheet open, mental math in overdrive—she had a simple but powerful question: Why isn’t there…
When Julien Bourgeois was a teenager practicing basketball in his driveway, he knew he was putting up a ton of shots—but had no qualitative idea how many shots went in or how his form changed over time. As a high school student interested in computer programming, he decided to see…
When data engineer and entrepreneur Ricky Romanek began consulting for hospitals in 2022, he was shocked to find that many were still managing millions of dollars in insurance claims with little more than spreadsheets and sticky notes. That experience inspired him to launch ClaimTra, an automated claims analytics platform designed…
When longtime friends Alex Bucklew and John McAdory met for lunch in 2023, the conversation turned to a problem McAdory, a pharmacist, encountered daily—patients struggling to navigate the complex world of prescription drug discount cards. Dozens of cards exist, many promising savings, yet there was no easy way to know…
When Marine Corps veteran and software engineer Andrew Mocol first encountered blockchain technology more than a decade ago, it wasn't as a speculator—it was as a builder searching for better systems. Through years of hands-on development with early blockchain applications, he saw a clear divide: blockchain had the power to…
The idea for Vertical Take-Off was born from a timely opportunity. While participating in a research-to-practice learning group, dyslexia therapist and nonprofit leader Leta Palmiter learned from Kelli Butler of the Barksdale Reading Institute about a U.S. Department of Education grant opportunity supporting the development of technology-driven reading tools. When…
An Interview with Mary Wallace Hannon, Operations and Strategic Communications Manager for the Regions Foundation By Lindsey Benefield, Ecosystem Builder and SSBCI Fund Manager, Innovate Mississippi | Founder & CEO, CoBridge Ventures As the countdown begins for Innovate Mississippi's Accelerate 2025 Conference on November 11-12, Mary Wallace Hannon serves as…
When University of Southern Mississippi Professor Fan Zhang found herself fielding endless student emails for her 100-person online class, she wished for a better way. Working with her undergraduate research assistant Sugam Panthi, a computer science major, the two built an early chatbot prototype that could answer students' questions automatically. The idea proved…