Tampa firm wins big

Tampa-based wastewater technology firm BioRenew has been awarded the $50,000 Cade Museum Prize from the Cade Museum for Creativity + Invention in Gainesville.

The firm, according to a release, won for its NEWgenerator invention. The device recovers and generates nutrients, energy and water from waste. The Community Foundation of North Central Florida presented the cash award to BioRenew, founded at the University of South Florida, at a gala event May 8 at Santa Fe College in Gainesville. The company will also receive $10,000 in legal services from Edwards Wildman, a law firm with 600 attorneys in 16 offices nationwide, including Miami and West Palm Beach.

“It's our goal every year with the Cade Museum Prize and this event to inspire others to dream about all the possibilities out there,” Cade Museum Director of Development Jennifer Denault says in the release. “Each of our contestants starts in the same place — with an idea. Then it's the creativity, hard work and team building along the way that gets the idea to our stage.”

Three Gulf Coast-based firms, in addition to BioRenew, made it to the round of the final 16 companies in the Cade contest out of more than 80 entries from across the state. Those firms include: Advanced Technologies and Testing Laboratories, a Tampa-based firm that develops products that eliminate airborne bacteria, viruses, allergens, mold and volatile organic compounds; St. Petersburg-based Innovatia Medical Systems, which creates miniature wireless high-definition video cameras for minimally invasive surgery; and Sarasota-based Aqua Mizer, with a system that reduces water usage, improves flush performance and prevents water waste from leaking toilets.

The Cade prize and related museum is named for Dr. James Robert Cade, a medicine and physiology professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine who invented Gatorade. The Cade Museum is scheduled to open late next year, the release states, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the invention of Gatorade.