The Polsky Center and Chicago water hub Current have launched the Great Lakes RENEW Scaling Lab, a nine-month program to accelerate early-stage water-technology startups, and a broader set of Polsky-connected ventures and researchers reported new funding, partnerships and awards.
Polsky Center and Current launch Great Lakes RENEW Scaling Lab
The Great Lakes RENEW Scaling Lab will offer selected companies nine months of discounted lab and office space at the UChicago Science Incubator at Hyde Park Labs, access to more than $2.5 million in existing equipment, and connections to the technical, entrepreneurial and commercialization networks of both partners. The inaugural cohort will include up to five startups working on priorities such as recovering critical minerals from wastewater, removing harmful drinking-water contaminants and other “waste-to-wealth” innovations. Applications are open through November 13.
Seed and growth funding for Booth-linked startups
Austin-based Scaffold, cofounded in 2024 by Ben Johnson, MBA ’16, raised $15 million in seed funding from investors that include homebuilding companies D.R. Horton and Pulte Homes. Scaffold builds a platform to help residential homebuilders manage site construction tasks such as purchase orders and field management trackers and plans to use the funding to expand its team and product for builders. Separately, Reserv, a property-and-casualty insurance software company cofounded by Booth adjunct professor CJ Przybyl, MBA ’11, closed a $125 million Series C.
Polsky-connected ventures advance technologies and commercialization
K1 Semiconductor, an NVC ’25 alum, is commercializing a wafer-splitting technology developed by a UChicago team. staC12, a George Shultz Innovation Fund recipient and current tenant of the UChicago Science Incubator, is using thin-film single-crystal diamond to pursue new semiconductor and quantum applications. NVC ’21 alum Daybird has placed functional makeup and skin-care products in more than 500 stores nationwide.
Quantum research and recognition
David Awschalom, the UChicago Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering and director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, won Falling Walls’ Science Breakthrough of the Year in Physical Sciences for work on quantum technologies that use molecules and proteins to create and control atomic-scale qubits. Awschalom was selected from nearly 200 submissions in the Physical Sciences category and will present at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin in November. In related recognition, Pranav Gokhale, PhD ’20 and cofounder and CTO of Infleqtion, received the IEEE Quantum Technical Community Distinguished Early Career Award. Gokhale previously cofounded and led Super.tech, a quantum software company acquired by Infleqtion in 2022, and now leads Infleqtion’s technology strategy across its quantum computing platform, software and applications.
Partnerships and diagnostics in health care
CancerIQ, an NVC ’13 alum, announced a partnership with Eon to reduce missed risk identification and incomplete follow-up: CancerIQ identifies patients who qualify for early cancer screening based on genetic, lifestyle and family-history risk factors, while Eon tracks actionable and incidental findings from radiology reports and helps care teams manage follow-up. CancerIQ reports it has driven a 4.2x increase in supplemental screening among health system clients; Eon reports follow-up completion rates above 90%. PersonaDx, cofounded by UChicago professor Dr. Sean Pitroda and a George Shultz Innovation Fund recipient, is developing precision diagnostics for metastatic cancers. Its lead assay, PersonaCRC, measures RNA expression of 150 genes in colorectal liver metastases and combines tumor classification with clinical factors to stratify patient risk; in clinical cohorts, five-year survival was about 80% for the lowest-risk group and about 40% for the highest-risk group. PersonaDx is expanding to additional metastatic cancers and building AI-enabled digital pathology to derive insights from routine tissue slides.
Skills, small business and AI
Michael Alter, the Rattan L. Khosa Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth, argues in a new podcast that effective selling starts with curiosity—asking better questions and listening—skills that entrepreneurs and employees use to win customers, investors and support for new ideas. Small-business owners in Chicago are also adopting practical AI tools: Mary Nguyen Aregoni, owner of West Loop restaurant Saigon Sisters and an alum of the Polsky Small Business Growth Program, began experimenting with Gemini earlier this year to draft email campaigns, respond to reviews, take meeting notes, review legal documents and handle practical questions such as whether 100 catering trays will fit in her car. Other local small businesses are using AI for marketing, paperwork, customer service, inventory and data analysis.
