12th Annual Cade Prize Winners Announced
Press release from the Cade Museum
The Cade Museum for Creativity & Invention is pleased to announce that SPKL, LLC of Tampa, Florida is the winner of the 2021 Cade Prize for developing the rbSEE blood flow monitor, a vastly better way to measure blood flow and improve treatment of traumatic brain injuries, stroke, and a variety of diseases.
The company developed a non-invasive, wearable blood flow monitor that can be used on any tissue surface of the body – the arm, leg, brain, or wounds – to obtain continuous blood flow measurement of a localized area at the patient’s bedside.
Other Cade Prize winners are: Second place – EcoaTEX of Athens, Ga. for its sustainable, nanoparticle textile dyeing process that will save enormous amounts of water; third place – Aurita of Gainesville, Fla. for its three-dimensional tool to help researchers defeat cancer; fourth place – Versatile Sensor Technology of Gainesville, Fla. for its rapid Covid test that uses a handheld electrical sensor to detect COVID in saliva; and, fifth place – ResonanceDX, Inc. of Atlanta, Ga. for its rapid test to diagnose and help treat septic shock. Versatile Sensor Technology won the People’s Choice Award.
Judging took place prior to the Cade Prize Awards Ceremony on September 30 at the Cade Museum in Gainesville, Florida. In addition to first place winner SPKL, LLC, four more Cade Prize winners were chosen from a field of 21 Fibonacci Finalists and will share $64,000 in cash prizes: $34,000 for first place, $13,000 for second place, $8,000 for third place, $5,000 for fourth place, $3,000 for fifth place, and $1,000 for the People’s Choice. The winners will each receive $2,000 of in-kind legal services.
This year’s Cade Prize drew innovators from research universities and the private sector whose work addresses critical issues impacting the Southeast: Agriculture/Environmental, Healthcare/Biomedical, IT/Technology, Energy, and a Wild Card category.
“This is the twelfth year the Cade Prize has celebrated innovators with groundbreaking, early-stage inventions that can one day change the world,” said Richard Miles, Cade Prize Committee Chair. “Funding and recognition from winning the prize is a catalyst for nascent companies. It will be exciting to see how this year’s life-changing inventions will make a difference when they come to fruition years from now.”
Past winners and finalists have included the NEWgenerator, whose technology is being adapted to grow food on the Moon and Mars, and On Running Shoes, now worn and promoted by celebrity athletes like tennis star Roger Federer.
“Winning the Cade Prize validated our idea, funded the research to advance it, and now we’ve become part of the supportive Cade family,” said 2014 Cade Prize Winner, Dr. Daniel Yeh, PhD, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of South Florida.
Yeh and his team developed NEWgenerator, a solar-powered machine that converts human wastewater into clean water, renewable energy, and nutrient fertilizer, providing a solution to the clean water and sanitation problem in the developing world. Since winning the Cade Prize, NEWgenerator has been field-tested in India and South Africa through a partnership with the Gates Foundation. In the future, NEWgenerator could be used in natural disasters – such as hurricanes – domestically and worldwide.
This is the second year the competition has extended beyond Florida to include Georgia and Alabama, with plans to expand across the Southeast.
The Cade Prize is sponsored by Scott R. MacKenzie, Florida Trend, Modern Luxury, the Community Foundation of North Central Florida, James Moore Certified Public Accountants and Consultants, Rhys Williams, and Saliwanchik, Lloyd & Eisenschenk Intellectual Property Law.
Visit cademuseum.org/cadeprize to learn more.
About the Cade Museum
The Cade Museum’s mission is to transform communities by inspiring and equipping future inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. In 2004, Dr. Robert Cade and his family established the Cade Museum Foundation to build the Cade Museum forCreativity & Invention in Gainesville, Florida. Dr. Cade, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of Florida, was best known as the lead inventor of Gatorade in 1965. The Cade Museum is located at 811 South Main Street, Gainesville, FL 32601. An independent 501(c)(3) public foundation, the museum receives no operational funding from federal, state, or local governments, or the University of Florida. Visit CadeMuseum.org for more information.