Start-up wins second place in competition

VPG Medical, a Rochester-based start-up, won second place and $500,000 in the recent Luminate NY Accelerator and “Finger Lakes Forward” competition. Led by Gill Tsouri, RIT associate professor of electrical engineering, the company designed HealthKam technology, which uses smart devices and laptops to enable cardia monitoring for better diagnosis and intervention. Members of Tsouri’s research and start-up team are doctoral and graduate students Ruslan Dautov, Celal Savur and Kamil Bukum in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering. Luminate NY, administered by NextCorp, is a key business accelerator for start-up firms in optics, photonics and imaging. Ten promising companies are selected each year and provided with funding and other business resources from New York state through the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative to advance the businesses as well as boost the state economy.