The Milwaukee, WI-based Water Council and Guest of Honor Wisconsin Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch announced the fifth round of winners of the BREW Accelerator and graduated the fourth round of startups during a special ceremony at City Lights Brewing in Milwaukee. Ecoli-Sense from Ontario was among the winning startups.

The BREW Accelerator is a seed accelerator focused on innovation-driven startups with commercialization potential solving global water challenges. The accelerator pairs the water-focused startups with a community of credentialed experts, services and resources of Wisconsin’s historic world water hub to help entrepreneurs from around the world launch their businesses.

“Milwaukee, a city that brewed beer for decades, is internationally recognized for brewing water technology innovations to help solve our world’s water challenges,” said Dean Amhaus, president and CEO of The Water Council. “From a gel filtering technology to giant bubbles, we are eager to get to work with this new batch of startups.”

After a comprehensive application and judging process, the following startups were selected to participate in the fifth year of the program:

  • Ecoli-Sense from Ontario, Canada creates biosensor technology for a monitoring platform for water quality and agriculture, including a prototype of a magnetic bio-ink E. coli detection system.
  • Pulsed Burst Systems LLC (PBS) from Richfield, Wisconsin is a patented low-pressure large bubble provider for better mixing in the water and wastewater industry. The PBS mixer accumulates small bubbles over a period of time and rapidly releases a series of giant or Megabubbles.
  • Hydrate Gel Filtration from Brisbane, Australia develops a new ultrafiltration-range separation technology using a gelatinous layer of aluminum hydroxide hydrate that enables simple, high rate and cost-effective production of filtered water.
  • Water Resources Monitoring Group (WRM) from Lancaster, Wisconsin addresses deficiencies in current agriculture water run-off monitoring programs. WRM created an agricultural hydrology monitoring program that provides low-cost, high-quality data that aids accurate decision making to help increase farm profits and improve water quality.
  • Plasma Environmental from Milwaukee, Wisconsin has developed a new way in which to reliably generate reactive ions in sufficient quantity to be useful and to mix these in the aqueous media to provide clean water.

Each year, BREW winners receive up to a $50,000 equity investment, work space in the Global Water Center in Milwaukee, business training through the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Institute for Water Business, research and talent connections, immersion into The Water Council’s global membership network, mentorship from water industry experts, and much more.

The ceremony also celebrated the “class of 2017” BREW Accelerator startups graduates, including Smart Waters from British Columbia, which increases city resilience by harvesting rainwater and holding it indefinitely in order to provide strategic reserves for all municipal water needs. Since participating in the BREW, they are working to secure a permanent US office in Milwaukee.

The BREW has worked with 25 water technology startups to date, 14 of which have patents granted or pending. Since 2013, participating startups have conducted 2,000+ customer interviews, raised $2.6 million in additional capital, provided 65+ full-time positions and 38 internships, facilitated 115 contracts, pilot sites or memorandums of understanding and made thousands of connections to mentors, partners, international delegates and practitioners in the water technology industry.
Supporting partners of the BREW Accelerator include GRAEF, International Water Association, Marquette University, Michael Best & Friedrich, Sage Water, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Institute for Water Business, WIPFLI and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

The graduate of the first round and winner of the second year of BREW Corporate Accelerator powered by A. O. Smith Corporation, an expansion of the BREW Accelerator that partners with global corporations, were also recognized at the ceremony.

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