Daily Business Report-Dec. 1, 2020
Ruth Young-Loaeza, an entrepreneur and creator of the patented product, Neet Sheets.
Local entrepreneurs from San Diego
neighborhoods grow businesses
during the pandemic, with lots of help
Local entrepreneurs have taken their innovative ideas from prototype to the market with the help of Innovate-Up, a program offered through the Brink Small Business Development Center (Brink SBDC) at the University of San Diego that launched last year and is supported in part through a $300,000 County of San Diego grant from Supervisor Nathan Fletcher.
While the pandemic has introduced new challenges for small business owners, Innovate-Up has focused on virtual events and one-on-one consulting to help businesses pivot to digital delivery and embrace new opportunities that the shift opened to entrepreneurs.
The Innovate-Up program includes special outreach and on-ramps for entrepreneurs from six under-resourced San Diego neighborhoods near and important to USD — Chollas, City Heights, Encanto, Linda Vista, Rolando Park and Redwood Village — with a full suite of completely free resources to start and scale up their businesses.
“Prior to coming to the Brink and the Innovate-Up program, I spent close to $15,000 on the prior patent attorney,” said Ruth Young-Loaeza, an entrepreneur and creator of the patented product, Neet Sheets. “I have just received my second patent… and I haven’t paid a dime. It definitely has made the difference for my business and my product.”
Throughout the program, Innovate Up has leveraged the power of USD and San Diego Imperial Small Business Development Center Network to support over 248 clients in these neighborhoods with business advice, supported 16 new business starts, helped 13 companies increase sales, and created over 50 jobs, supporting many more.
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Northrop Grumman lands potential $4.8 billion
Air Force Global Hawk UAS modernization contract
GovCon Wire
Northrop Grumman has received a potential $4.8 billion contract to update, refurbish and sustain the U.S. Air Force’s fleet of RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial systems.
The contract includes task orders for specific UAS modernization services in line with the Air Force’s Global Hawk program, the Department of Defense said.
Contract work in support of the UAS and its variants cover various activities including program management, engineering, analysis, overseas contingency operations support, fielding assistance, logistics services, facilities modification, quality assurance and requirements specification management.
The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center will obligate multiple fiscal-year appropriations for the sole-sourced award.
Northrop will perform work under the IDIQ contract in San Diego through Sept. 30, 2030.
Since 2001, the Air Force has deployed Global Hawk to support long-distance operations such as intelligence-gathering, emergency response, search-and-rescue and weather forecasting.
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Dept. of Finance Report: State oil
regulators improperly issued oil well permits
CalMatters
California oil regulators ignored their own rules and issued inappropriate permits for hundreds of new wells last year, according to a scathing Department of Finance audit released the day before Thanksgiving. Although the audit found that the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, “generally” complied with regulations, it also identified significant breaches that the department is required to address in a corrective action plan due in 60 days.
CalGEM’s breaches include:
- Issuing 201 oil well permits between April and October 2019 using “dummy folders,” which allowed the projects to move forward without required reviews or approval.
- Allowing companies to modify large projects without required reviews — in one such case, CalGEM approved adding 400 new wells to an existing project.
- Failing to update permit review policies and procedures for the past decade.
- Incorrectly mapping and diagramming some proposed fracking projects, while failing to document risk assessment for others.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has come under fire for approving new fracking permitseven as he tasked the state Legislature with halting the practice by 2024. Many of the new permits have gone to Aera Energy — a firm represented by lobbyist Jason Kinney, whose birthday Newsom was celebrating at the infamous French Laundry dinner.
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Maddox Defense wins bid to provide
reliable disposable gowns for U.S. government
San Diego-based Maddox Defense has been awarded a one-year contract by the Defense Logistics Agency to provide disposable gowns for the Strategic National Stockpile under the Department of Health and Human Services’ management. The contract is worth potentially $1.2 billion combined between the eight successful companies.
Contract work includes the supply of 73 million isolation gowns through January 2021 to support the U.S. government’s COVID-19 response efforts.
COO of Maddox Defense, Anni Hernandez added,
“While we have been in the business of delivering medical supplies for many years, as part of the plan laid out in our winning bid, we have shown how we plan to ramp up our manufacturing which will include hiring approximately 3000 Americans and expanding our warehouse operations across the United States,” said Anni Hernandez, chief operating officer of Maddox.
The first delivery milestones have already been met.
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Final six members of county’s
redistricting commission selected
By Tracy DeFore | sdnews.com
All 14 of the required members for the County’s new Independent Redistricting Commission are now on board. The final six were selected on Friday.
The commission is responsible for redrawing the boundaries of the County’s five supervisorial districts. The district lines change every 10 years after new federal census numbers are released.
The 2020 census will show whether one district is more populated than the others. Each supervisor should represent a diverse population of about 650,000 residents. District lines can shape a community’s ability to elect the representative of their choice.
Nearly 300 residents applied for the commission. The Clerk of the Board of Supervisors selected 60 of the most qualified applicants. Staff then drew eight names from the pool during two random drawings at the Oct. 13 Board of Supervisors meeting. The eight new commissioners took the responsibility of appointing the remaining six members based on a number of requirements.
The six who met the requirements are: Elidia Dostal; Carmen-Rosette Garcia; Kenneth Inman; Kristina Kruglyak; Fernandez Ponds; Ramesses Surban.
The makeup of the overall commission largely reflects the county’s diversity.
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Fruit flies reveal new insights
into space travel’s effect on the heart
Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have shown that fruit flies that spent several weeks on the International Space Station (ISS)—about half of their lives—experienced profound structural and biochemical changes to their hearts. The study, published in Cell Reports, suggests that astronauts who spend a lengthy amount of time in space—which would be required for formation of a moon colony or travel to distant Mars—could suffer similar effects and may benefit from protective measures to keep their hearts healthy. The research also revealed new insights that could one day help people on Earth who are on long-term bed rest or living with heart disease
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Cal State San Marcos professor
behind national study on e-cigarettes
A Cal State San Marcos professor is one of the experts behind new national research offering significant evidence that a new type of electronic cigarette is less damaging to health than traditional cigarettes.
Dr. Kim Pulvers, a professor of psychology at CSUSM, was the principal investigator of a study published Nov. 18 in the American Medical Association journal JAMA Network Open on the world’s first randomized clinical trial of fourth-generation “pod” e-cigarettes. The research shows that, in the short term, e-cigarettes are substantially safer than combustible cigarettes.
“My hope is for this research to contribute to lessening the burden of preventable death and disease from cigarette smoking, particularly among those who experience tobacco-related health disparities,” Pulvers said.
Pulvers collaborated on the study with researchers from Brown University, the University of Kansas School of Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco. Myra Rice, a recent graduate of CSUSM, also contributed.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
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Salk assistant professor gets grant
to study impact of tobacco on pancreatic cancer
Salk Institute Assistant Professor Dannielle Engle has been awarded a New Investigator Award from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) to examine how tobacco use promotes cellular changes that lead to pancreatic cancer. The TRDRP funds research that “enhances understanding of tobacco use, prevention and cessation, the social, economic and policy-related aspects of tobacco use, and tobacco-related diseases in California,” according to their website. Engle will receive over $1 million over three years to develop new models for examining how tobacco carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) lead to tumor development and metastasis.
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Engineers develop new defense against
neural network Trojan attacks
Engineers at UC San Diego have developed a new defense against neural network Trojan attacks on autonomous devices such as cars, drones, or security cameras. Their algorithm and hardware co-designed solution is the first end-to-end framework that enables the online real time mitigation of these Trojan attacks for embedded deep neural network algorithms.
The CleaNN defense is completely unsupervised, meaning it doesn’t require access to Trojan samples or any labeled data sets. It is the first defense to recover the ground-truth labels of Trojan data without performing any model training or fine-tuning.
Researchers also developed a customized hardware stack that is specifically designed to optimize the performance of their defense algorithm so that it can work in real time settings. They trained CleaNN on image analysis tasks, but they believe it would work on other types of data as well.
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Totum Labs closes $13 million Series A financing
Totum Labs announced it has completed a $13 million Series A financing. Heroic Ventures and Space Capital co-led the investment round with participation from existing investors, including Qualcomm Co-founder Dr. Andrew Viterbi and new strategic investor Qamcom.
The investment brings Totum’s total funding since launch to $15.5 million and will enable the company to accelerate the deployment and commercialization of its low power sensor to satellite network and connectivity.
Totum is developing the revolutionary communication system and chip level technology required for simple, global, outdoor and indoor low-cost connectivity that will allow Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) connections to scale into the billions.
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Anne Williams appointed chief credit
officer at Bank of Southern California
Bank of Southern California N.A., a community business bank headquartered in San Diego, announced that Anne A. Williams has joined the company as executive vice president, chief credit officer. In this role, she will oversee Bank of Southern California’s credit functions, including credit administration, credit approval process, and loan policies and procedures, all while ensuring the overall quality of the Bank’s loan portfolio.
Williams is an accomplished credit risk professional with over 35 years of industry experience. Before joining Bank of Southern California, she was with California United Bank where she served as executive vice president, chief credit officer (2005-2017) and chief operating officer (2008-2017) and was a bank director (2009–2014). Prior to that, Williams served as senior vice president and credit risk manager for US Bank’s Commercial Banking Market for the State of California, and was previously the executive vice president and chief credit officer at California United Bank (and its successor, Pacific Century Bank) from 1992 to 1999.
Air & Space Museum to host
live virtual debrief with Korean
War pilot Capt. Royce Williams
On Wednesday, educators, teachers and leaders will have the opportunity to meet and interact with Korean War hero, CAPT Royce Williams (ret).
The interview is part of the Old Guys and their Airplanes “Debrief” series and brought to the public by the Distinguished Flying Cross Society (DFCS), South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB), South Dakota Air & Space Museum and San Diego Air & Space Museum. There is no charge to participate in this online, streaming event.
Williams’ mark on history was made on Nov. 18, 1952 when he faced seven Russian-flown MiG-15 fighter planes and single-handedly downed at least four, flying a distinctly inferior aircraft. During the fight, Williams’ F9F Panther received a number of hits that dramatically reduced the aircraft’s ability to maintain controlled flight. Nevertheless, Williams was able to evade enemy fire and return to the carrier. Additionally, at 38 minutes, the dogfight was one-of, if not the, longest duration dogfights in American history.
To watch the live Dec. 2 interview and learn how to participate in the Q&A opportunity, go to:
https://www.sdpb.org/OGTADebrief
Chamber’s International Tribute Awards
celebrate binational leaders
The Cali-Baja region is a national model for productive and collaborative cross-border trade and commerce and plays a pivotal role in the evolving relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.
In celebration of our region’s outstanding commitment to binational collaboration, the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce will bring together business, government, and community leaders from San Diego and Baja at the virtual International Tribute Awards.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau will deliver featured remarks on the future of the U.S. Mexico relationship.
The Chamber will also present three awards to those whose efforts have helped define the region’s cooperative spirit. This year’s International Tribute awardees are:
- International Business of the Year — Toyota
- Cross-Border Hero — Cross Border Xpress
- Cross-Border Leader of the Year — Luis M. Hernandez, President of INDEX Zona Costa
When: Today, Dec. 1, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
RSVP to Alison Phillipsfor the livestream link.
