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Twice in three days, the community was introduced to the 10 teams that comprise Cohort 2 of the “Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator” that recently began its three-month run.

First up was an event hosted on Tuesday night (4/11) by the Knoxville Chamber for its “Premier Partners” at the TenHats data center just east of the Old City.

One of the dignitaries who dropped by was Knoxville Mayor Indy Kincannon, pictured here with Chamber President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mike Odom (behind the Mayor); TenHats CEO Brian Strong; Maha Krishnamurthy, President of the University of Tennessee (UT) Research Foundation; and Caleb Knight, the Chamber’s Director of Business Attraction.

At the Tuesday event, each of the start-ups had an area where team members greeted the visitors, described their companies, and explained what they wanted to achieve during the 13 weeks. On the left side of this photo, Narayan Iyer, Founder and CEO of Laminar Scientific, chats with Matt Kittrell, Director of Consulting Delivery for CGI Inc., while the Founder of Arizona-based Crow Industries chats on the right with Mike Shamblin (back to the camera), PYA’s Managing Principal of Audit and Assurance Services, and Pat Lewis, Principal overseeing PYA’s Client Accounting Advisory Services.

On Thursday (4/13), there was another opportunity to meet each of the companies during a general event at the Techstars space on Gay Street. Top executives from the three sponsoring organizations attended and briefly spoke. They were Jeff Smith, Interim Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Jeff Lyash, President and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority; and Done Plowman, Chancellor of UT, Knoxville.

(Written and Posted By Teknovation.Biz)