TROY – The Entrepreneurial Initiative of Southeast Michigan forum on April 9 will feature presentations by emerging companies selected by a panel of the group’s business leaders and investors. EISEM is a series of programs that works to highlight entrepreneurs and their businesses and further develop their message to reach customers and investors.

Keynote Speaker: Keith W. Cooley, CEO, NextEnergy Center

Cooley is the President and Chief Executive Officer of NextEnergy Center, a non-profit corporation dedicated to developing alternative energy technologies that contribute to economic competitiveness, energy security and the environment. As CEO of NextEnergy, Mr. Cooley works to build technology collaborations, foster supplier diversification, progressive energy policy and strategy as well as support new business ventures. Through his leadership of the NextEnergy team, Michigan is becoming a leader in the emerging alternative energy industry, a state with solid potential for sustainable job growth in this new industry.

Prior to joining NextEnergy, Cooley was the Director of the Department of Labor & Economic Growth (DLEG) and a cabinet member to the Governor of the State of Michigan. Cooley has also played significant roles in the corporate sector with General Electric, General Motors and Motorola Corporations, as founder of a private consulting company, and as a leader in the non-profit community. His experience includes work as an experimental physicist, strategic planner, sales executive and CEO of Focus: HOPE; where he championed the celebrated civil and human rights organization to become a leader in manufacturing technology and workforce development serving underrepresented urban youth.

Presenting Companies:

RF-IDI is a developer of active RFID tracking systems, integrating world-class hardware with customizable, highly portable middleware. The easy to install, fully scalable smart reader design is the backbone to our lightweight infrastructure. Because there are no IT integration requirements, the system is running within minutes and is accessible from any Internet connection. A deployed system provides real time tracking of high value and mission critical assets at a fraction of the price of competitive systems. RF-IDI is positioned to gain market share in the exploding active RFID market which is projected to reach $18 billion by 2019.

Ventech, LLC is a revolutionary rapid heating system, known as the Liquid Heat Generator, provides school districts with much-needed cost savings in the form of near instant heat in school buses. Ventech�??s product helps solve key issues including reduced idling, less fuel consumption, decreased emissions and improved engine life-cycle. The overall result? Cost reductions and improved air quality. With field tests already completed in below-zero weather in northern Minnesota and critical technology hurdles already completed, Ventech is poised to do very well in the school bus market.

WindSight provides laser-based systems that concurrently measure wind speed/direction, density, and temperature at distances up to 10km. Our systems enable real-time wind and atmospheric mapping for site assessment and operational farms. For site assessments, our system maps entire sites with 3D volumetric wind/atmospheric data. With WindSight�??s software, turbine placement and hub height are optimized for maximum energy capture. Operational wind farms benefit from real-time measurement and forecasting of winds up to tens of minutes before those winds reach the turbines, with implications for increasing efficiency of wind capture, reducing maintenance costs, improving turbine placement/upkeep/replacement decisions, and decreasing hourly-time-frame integration costs.

Cost: There is no cost to attend

For more information, click on AutomationAlley.Com

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