Submitted: 12/11/2006 5:22:31 PM

• University of Cincinnati start-up venture, Progressive Cooling Solutions (PCS) LLC, announced today that it has relocated to Berkeley, CA. Mr. Ahmed Shuja, UC alum and founder, has been employed by Siemens Technology-to-Business (TTB) as an Innovator where he will continue the development the micro loop heat pipe technology that drives PCS's thermal management devices. The development project will allow Mr. Shuja to get PCS ready for A-round investment.

University of Cincinnati start-up venture, Progressive Cooling Solutions (PCS) LLC, announced today that it will be relocating to Berkeley, CA. Mr. Ahmed Shuja, UC alum and the founder, has been employed by Siemens Technology-to-Business (TTB) as an Innovator where he will continue the development the micro loop heat pipe technology that drives PCS's thermal management devices. The development project will allow Mr. Shuja to get PCS ready for A-round investment. “This is a tremendous recognition of the hard work and future potential of Progressive Cooling Solutions,” commented Dr. Charles H. Matthews, Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship Education & Research and a professor of Mr. Shuja's. “Mr. Shuja has done an absolutely incredible job conceptualizing, planning, and bringing this venture to life.”

Progressive Cooling Solutions will provide superior and novel MEMS-based thermal dissipation hardware for cooling commercial micro-chips and electronics that is more efficient, smaller, and far more compatible and effective than other commercial systems. PCS is a new venture based upon breakthrough silicon MEMS based technology developed at the University of Cincinnati, for which the PCS founder and UC doctorial candidate, Ahmed Shuja (ECECS Dept. College of Engineering), has been partially responsible. “This has been a truly interdisciplinary effort spanning the colleges of engineering and business,” said Mr. Shuja. “I cannot thank enough the great support provided by Drs. Henderson, Gerner, and Matthews.”

Progressive's entrepreneurial journey included developing its business model in the Center for Entrepreneurship Education & Research in the College of Business at UC. PCS took 2nd Runner-up honors in the UC Spirit of Enterprise Business plan competition and went on the road to present its business model in seven cities including Austin, TX, Boston, MA, Silicon Valley, CA, and Portland, OR. Multiple monetary and professional awards were won such as Best New Product both at the MOOT Corp® Business Plan Competition in Austin, and Nanotech 2006 in Boston. PCS also received a $5,000 grant from the E-Center's Bearcat Bridge Fund to assist in the launch. Progressive also took home a $10,000 check just last week for a first place finish in the Cincinnati Creates Companies annual competition.

The monetary winnings were applied to business development activities such as the Larta New Venture Showcase in Silicon Valley June 26-29th, “The Larta showcase was an excellent venue, and has opened many doors in terms of beta customer contacts,” commented Mr. Shuja. PCS has made a number of potential customer contacts at Siemens, Boeing, Dupont, Dell, Sharp, Meggit Aerospace, and Sony, to name a few.

Siemens Technology-to-Business Center (TTB) has decided to employ Mr. Shuja at their Berkley, CA office. Over the twelve to eighteen months PCS will develop beta prototypes for commercial applications. A revised business model will then be prepared when PCS is ready for A-round investment. Siemens TTB will then spin PCS out on its own and also encourages the participation of other outside investors as well.

“I want to thank the Center for Entrepreneurship Education and Research for the moral, physical, and financial support it has provided to our start-up company. The funds allocated through the Bearcat Bridge Fund have been critical in the early stage development of our venture,” commented Mr. Shuja. “We were also participants in the third Cincinnati Creates Companies technology entrepreneurship cohort, and would like to thank Dr. Matthews and this group as well.” Mr. Shuja also acknowledged the great help of his legal team at Welsh & Katz of Chicago and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati of Silicon Valley for their invaluable help.

About the Siemens TTB Program

The Siemens TTB model complements the process of innovation development within Corporate Technology by helping Siemens to leverage radical innovations such as Progressive's new liquid cooling technology. A team of venture technologists continuously scout universities, small start-up companies, and other innovation sources for new inventions, different approaches, and radical ideas. TTB then applies a variety of techniques to bring these technologies into the Siemens sphere. For example, they hire the inventors and invest in a company for licensing intellectual property. Every project is treated as an entrepreneurial venture, both-developing and validating the technology and the business case for it, to make either a new Siemens business, or a new stand-alone company working with Siemens. TTB's vision is to combine the strength of a global enterprise with the speed and flexibility of a small company, and to quickly move the latest technologies into Siemens' business.

About the UC Center for Entrepreneurship Education & Research (E-Center)

Founded in 1997, by Dr. Charles H. Matthews, the E-Center's vision is to provide a state-of-the-art entrepreneurship curriculum and research base not only for potential student entrepreneurs and scholars, but also for people in the many organizations that interact with small, entrepreneurial, and family-owned businesses on a daily basis. Its mission focuses on, “Removing barriers and creating gateways for entrepreneurs, especially student entrepreneurs.” The University of Cincinnati has been ranked as one of the top 50 programs for entrepreneurship in the U.S. by Success magazine and one of the top 100 programs in the U.S. (Entrepreneur Magazine) in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

About University of Cincinnati's Center for Microelectronics Sensors and MEMS & Microscale Heat Transfer Lab

Collaborative effort has been ongoing for nearly 20 years between these two Engineering labs. These projects have included silicon micro heat pipes, ultra- deep silicon microchannel single- phase cooling, and a silicon- based micro-sterling engine. The most recent project under development was the planar micro Loop Heat Pipe using Coherent Porous Silicon. This project was funded by NASA Glenn, NASA Space Power Center, NSF and EPRI. In total Dr. Henderson, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, and Dr. Frank M. Gerner, Associate Dean for the College of Engineering have advised over 30 students in the areas of microscale heat transport and MEMS fabrication.

Contact: Charles Matthews, PhD
Phone: (513) 556-7123
e-mail: Charles.Matthews@uc.edu

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