Invest NY: Future of Air & Space, presented by NYSTAR and Upstate Capital is an event to highlight the air and space industry and innovation in Upstate New York. This event brings together members from established companies, investors and dealmakers together with entrepreneurs and startups.
Startup pitches for new technology, services and companies
Conversations with business owners and CEOs building air and space businesses
Discussions with industry experts and active investors
Who Will Be There?
Future of Air & Space will be attended by startup entrepreneurs and innovators, experienced executives, and active investors in artificial intelligence, machine learning, drones and uncrewed systems.
CEO Roundtable (invite only) Details will be shared separately with invited guests
11:00 AM
Registration
12:00 PM
Lunch & Networking
Demos & Tours
Innovare Advancement Center Tour
Experience the open innovation campus that enables the Innovare community as you explore over 150,000 sqft of Innovare Advancement Center. Visit the NYS UAS Ops Center, the newly opened indoor NYS UAS test center called SkyDome, Col. Timothy J. Lawrence Quantum Lab featuring trapped ions, phototonics, and superconducting., to also include our Events Center, meeting spaces, and collaborative work space.
2:00 PM
Welcome + Startup Showcase
3:00 PM
Funding Air & Space Startups with Three CEOs
Noel Goddard
CEO, Qunnect
Noel is the CEO of Qunnect, a company innovating first-in-class hardware to transform the existing telecom infrastructure into Quantum-secure communication networks. Prior to this role, she was a seed investor with the Accelerate NY Seed Fund, where she built a portfolio of companies across deep technology and life science sectors in Downstate NY. Noel is a serial entrepreneur, having founded/led two biotech startup companies. Before joining the startup community, Noel was an assistant professor of physics at Hunter College, a campus of the City University of New York.
Josh has expertise as a Chief Operating Officer in the renewable energy inspection sector and more than 15 years of expertise managing complex, multi-party technology projects, coordinating government agencies, higher education systems and private parties. As a former CIO and with a software development background, Josh is proficient in the areas of research computing, IT architecture, and development. He also has substantial drone knowledge having received grant funding from notable organizations including the North Dakota Department of Commerce, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and National Science Foundation.
Dr. Crouse is an educator, researcher, and technology entrepreneur in the fields of optics, photonics, optoelectronics, nanotechnology, imaging and sensing technologies, and metamaterials.
Dr. Crouse leads teams that perform both fundamental and applied research, and technology transition from the academic laboratory to industry. Dr. Crouse is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clarkson University. Dr. Crouse teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in electromagnetism, semiconductor and photonic devices, and metamaterials. Dr. Crouse’s research laboratory includes many undergraduate and graduate student researchers performing a wide range of research, from fundamental physics to applied research and development of materials and systems.
Dr. Crouse cofounded the NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Metamaterials that is composed of four universities and 12 industry partners.
Dr. Crouse is also the founder and currently senior technology consultant for Phoebus Optoelectronics, LLC. Phoebus performs advanced, custom optical, photonic, and electronics development in areas of metamaterials, optical components, advanced infrared focal plane array imagers, chemical and biological toxin sensors, solar cells and other applications. Phoebus performs this research in collaboration with large companies and government agencies.
Dr. Crouse cofounded The Circuit Board Corporation and serves as content creator, educator, and board member. The Circuit Board is a team of educators, practicing engineers, and scientists that want to give back to the STEM community and provide free high-quality learning material for students (i.e., everyone) and instructional materials for teachers. Our aim is to provide an opportunity for all people, regardless of circumstance, to learn math, science, engineering and technology, and to provide instructors with the best teaching materials possible.
Ken Stewart serves as President and CEO of NUAIR, responsible for setting the overall vision and strategy for the uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) organization. Stewart is an experienced industry expert in wireless telecommunications and cloud-based software, with a specialization in building Enterprise SaaS, Federated digital marketplaces and platforms. Prior to joining NUAIR, Stewart served as the CEO of AiRXOS, a GE aviation company, where he led innovation, development, and commercialization of Unmanned Traffic Management services. After beginning his career in engineering and management positions at IBM and GTE, Stewart served as an executive with several venture capital and private equity-backed companies commercializing and scaling pre-revenue start-ups and transforming organizations for growth. Stewart also serves as the President of the Commercial Drone Alliance, a non-profit organization that works with federal policymakers and industry stakeholders to help create relevant rules to scale commercial UAS operations.
Clayton Besch, Director of the NYS Innovation Venture Capital Fund, has been investing in tech companies for the past 8 years. He works with New York Ventures bolstering the capital needs of New York State’s innovation economy by providing seed and early-stage venture funding to high-growth startups as they move from concept to commercialization, early growth and expansion. He has in-depth expertise in energy storage focusing on battery technologies, and has served as a judge for GENIUS NY’s multi-million dollar accelerator competition.
Thomas Hendrix is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Decisive Point, an early stage venture advisory and investment firm. Thomas served in the U.S. Army for nearly 10-years as an Infantry and Special Forces Officer. Previously, Thomas was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Zx Ventures and has served as an advisor to multiple early stage ventures, created start-up operations and financial strategy, built engineering teams, and facilitated technology transfers with the US Government and top research laboratories. He began his career in the private sector as an Analyst at Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager. Thomas earned an MBA from Columbia Business School and holds a BS in American Legal Systems from the United States Military at West Point.
Managing Director and Head of Aerospace & Defense Investment Banking, Canaccord Genuity
John leads the aerospace & defense investment banking practice at Canaccord Genuity, which focuses on technology opportunities, especially in space and autonomy / unmanned systems. He and his team help clients raise growth equity, sell and acquire companies and execute public offerings (initial and secondary).
WindShape designs, manufactures and operates digital wind facilities – an alternative to wind tunnels – for aerodynamic and flight research and education, as well as drone certification.
Secwins helps public and private sector organizations pull back the curtain and have a clearer picture of the socio-technical complexities of the digital ecosystem.
ResilienX is solving the problem of health and integrity monitoring, fault management, and graceful degradation in complex system of systems. As IoT-like ecosystems become more safety and business critical, solutions are needed to maintain uptime and availability in the face of the adverse and off-nominal conditions these systems face in the real world. ResilienX is providing this solution.
Thanks to the innovative hybrid concept, which combines proven aerodynamic principles with the latest technologies, AIRIAL ROBOTICS creates a completely new drone category that clearly exceeds current industry standards in terms of flight time, payload, range and efficiency whilst at the same time having a highly modular system architecture that can be customized for a wide variety of commercial UAV Missions.
Airtonomy is the leader of enterprise-scale autonomous robotics for delivering precise inspection insights. A SaaS/RaaS company, Airtonomy enables scaled, autonomous robotic harvesting of unstructured asset data by frontline workers, specifically for machine perception, within the energy and utility sectors, in a $6.5B domestic market.
CyberSpara is developing a transformational and unique game-based learning platform, called Digital-PASS to empower individuals to mitigate security threats from the Internet.
At Circle Optics we make the World’s only 360-video systems capable of real-time spherical imaging that is stitch-less, parallax-free, and doesn’t require a gimbal to operate on aerial platforms.
Romaeris Corporation’s mission is to provide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with unbeatable cost and mission flexibility advantages for remote sensing and other types of missions.
Exovolar aims to augment our main mobility tool, the legs, to make flying as simple as walking. The combination of jet engines, exoskeleton, and our patented thrust vector nozzle design allows the legs to fulfill their destined duty – to support and move our body – just now in the sky!
