Opertech Bio, Inc. to Fast-Track the Future of Taste Evaluation at Pennovation Works
Media Contact: Jennifer Rizzi, Director, Communications, Facilities & Real Estate Services, 215.573.6107, rizzi@upenn.edu
May 7, 2018
The University of Pennsylvania’s Division of Facilities and Real Estate Services announced today that Opertech Bio (Opertech Bio, Inc.) has committed to just over 400 square feet within the Pennovation Center, the University’s rapidly expanding business, technology and laboratory incubator within the 23 acre Pennovation Works innovation ecosystem.
Founded in September 2011 by Scott Horvitz (President and CEO) and R. Kyle Palmer (Chief Science Officer), Opertech Bio supplies its customers with a pioneering approach to “making sense of taste” and serves the multi-billion dollar market driven by the food and beverage, flavor ingredients, pet food and pharmaceutical industries. Opertech Bio occupies two of the Center’s Inventor Offices, benefits from a recently outfitted on-site testing lab, and plans to leverage access to shared lab equipment to foster further exploration and innovation.
Opertech Bio received a patent for their taste evaluation and software system in December 2017 and has already partnered with some of the world’s largest and most well-known food and beverage, consumer healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. Palmer’s novel approach to measuring taste and inventive departure from traditional taste panel testing has proven to help a wide range of companies: more efficiently evaluate the taste of new flavor ingredients and formulations, significantly reduce associated time and costs, and accelerate informed decision making and product development timelines.
Penn alumnus, engineer, and entrepreneur Vivek Sharma of BioMated Solutions is credited with building Opertech Bio’s proprietary TaStation® (taste + station). Horvitz and team look forward to continuing to blaze the path towards a faster, more accurate, and less resource-intensive methodology for taste testing and measurement at the Pennovation site, and, equally importantly, within the Pennovation community. “Pennovation Center provides us with access to a state of the art facility in a vibrant environment surrounded by fellow entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of science and technology,” attests Horvitz. More about the company’s patented sensory technology can be found at http://www.opertechbio.com/.
“Entrepreneurs joining the Pennovation Center are bringing world-changing ideas to reality,” says Anne Papageorge, Vice President, Facilities & Real Estate Services at Penn. “The Pennovation Center provides the resources and facilities for these professionals to take their work to the next level. Opertech Bio is joining a community of innovators which is taking shape at the Pennovation Center, and we are excited to welcome them.”
About The Pennovation Center
The Pennovation Center is a 58,000 square-foot three-story facility designed for start-up companies, entrepreneurs, and inventors looking to be part of a unique community of innovators, and includes a full service technology incubator; basic wet and dry laboratories; private offices, Inventor Garages, as well as a coworking space for up to 200 members, operated by Benjamin’s Desk. It opened in October 2016 as the centerpiece of the University of Pennsylvania’s Pennovation Works, a 23-acre development adjacent to the University campus on the southern bank of the Schuylkill River providing facilities and amenities to bridge intellectual and entrepreneurial initiatives among University researchers, private sector innovators, and start-ups. Owned by the University, and operated by its Division of Facilities and Real Estate Services, Pennovation Works houses research labs from Penn’s schools of Arts & Sciences, Dental Medicine, Design, Engineering & Applied Science, and Veterinary Medicine, and companies such as Qualcomm Philadelphia Research Lab, Netronix, and Novapeutics.
Visit pennovation.upenn.edu and follow Pennovation Works on Facebook, @Pennovation on Twitter, and @pennovationworks on Instagram.
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