Research Park at FAU Company Joins NSF CAKE at FAU
The Research Park at Florida Atlantic University® recently announced that its client company, GoAwake, has joined the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Industry/University Center for Advanced Knowledge Enablement (CAKE) within FAU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science.
GoAwake is Global Ventures at FAU’s first recruit from overseas, joining the initiative from Brazil where it has become a leader, creating innovative solutions to prevent accidents caused by drowsiness and distraction when driving.
Global Ventures at FAU is an entrepreneurial support initiative for established international and domestic companies ready to scale up to the next level of growth. The initiative seeks to scale-up domestic and international second-stage companies into profitable and sustainable companies. Second stage companies are those that have achieved approximately $1 million in annual sales and employ at least six people.
GoAwake, founded in Canoas, Brazil, established itself with clients in the logistics industry using its solution that identifies signs of driver fatigue, distractions and mobile phone use while a vehicle is in motion. It alerts the driver, records, and sends the findings to a control center for analysis and aggregation.
“We are very happy to have GoAwake as a member company of our NSF CAKE Center, which was formed in 2009 and has had more than 40 company members,” said Borko Furht, Ph.D., director of the NSF CAKE Center at FAU. “We have already formulated a project with GoAwake for our faculty and students to work on.”
Initially, GoAwake will work on research and development of new solutions and functionalities for its platform, with the help of three FAU students who will join the team focused on the development of a new release of the GoAwake system. The team will tackle projects covering innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, helping to develop a tool to be even more disruptive and useful.
“The U.S. is ready for an application like GoAwake’s, and the Research Park at FAU was an ideal soft-landing destination for its debut in a state with about $1 trillion in GDP,” said Paulo Jotz, head of business development with GoAwake.
GoAwake plans to grow its employee base in the Research Park at FAU, and to expand its partnership with FAU’s CAKE.
“Global Ventures was created to foster industry-university collaborations, which have shown to be an efficient way to develop new technology and market solutions,” said Andrew Duffell, president of the Research Park at FAU and Global Ventures. “This is an opportunity for a foreign-owned business to grow in the U.S. while creating jobs for South Florida, as well as the opportunity for FAU’s faculty to work on leading technology while students get valuable real-world experience.”
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