ILLINI HOOPS MEDIA DAY
A FOOTBALL FAMILY
Despite missing pieces, V’Angelo Bentley’s family managed to raise a star athlete and valedictorian. Page 1B
MEET THERESA ROCHA-BEARDALL: Law student, mother, aspiring professor, impassioned advocate for Native Americans and women. Page 6A
The Illinois men’s and women’s basketball teams held media days yesterday. For more, turn to Page 1B
THE DAILY ILLINI
THURSDAY October 10, 2013
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The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
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Vol. 143 Issue 27
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Pedestrian killed on Lincoln Avenue Driver in custody following crash DAILY ILLINI STAFF REPORT
Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup confi rmed that one victim is dead after being hit by a pickup truck on Lincoln Avenue on Wednesday morning. The victim was transported to Carle Foundation Hospital and was declared dead after failed attempts to revive her, according to a press release from the Urbana Police Department. Her identity has not yet been released. A second victim, University student Spandana Mantravadi , was also hit by the truck and transported to Carle. She is not believed to have life-threatening injuries, according to the press release. The two victims were struck by the truck on Lincoln Avenue near Nevada Street, according to Urbana Police detective Matt Rivers. The truck was driven by Willie Craft, Sr., 58, of Urbana. Craft was traveling south on Lincoln Avenue around 10 a.m. and drove across a sidewalk several times, while also hitting street signs and an occupied vehicle in traffic. He was also transported to Carle for treatment and consented to blood and urine samples. Craft was cited for improper lane usage and operating an uninsured motor vehicle. The two victims were walking near the McKinley Health Center, said witness Jeremy Thurman, a construction worker working outside McKinley. He said one victim was swept under the truck and the other was thrown over it. Hanna Hawkins, sophomore in Applied Health Sciences, said she was nearly hit by the truck
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One pedestrian is dead following an accident on Lincoln Avenue on Wednesday morning. Spandana Mantravadi, the other pedestrian injured in the accident, suffered non-life-threatening injuries. before it hit the two females. “I heard a loud noise, and I turned around and the truck was flying down the sidewalk,” said Hawkins. “He just kept going, then I heard two screams and then I just kept running down the sidewalk.” Miranda Coello, junior in Media, was in the
Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house near the accident when it occurred. Coello said she went outside to the scene and saw one of the victims receiving CPR from paramedics on the sidewalk before being taken away by an ambulance. All car traffic between Nevada Street and Pennsylvania Avenue on Lincoln Avenue was
blocked off by police following the accident. Traffic reopened around 2:30 p.m. The investigation is ongoing.
Hannah Prokop, Maggie Huynh, Dani Brown and Miranda Holloway contributed to this report.
Research Park helps startup companies UI research EnterpriseWorks 10th anniversary celebrates with startup success stories engineer to run for US House BY JACQUI OGRODNIK STAFF WRITER
As EnterpriseWorks approaches its 10th anniversary Friday, Research Park celebrates with graduate companies, current startups and future entrepreneurs. EnterpriseWorks is a technology venture incubator. Its construction was funded by the state of Illinois in 2003 as part of an overall technology and economic development initiative the state was leading, said Scott Pickard, former director of Research Park. “Its mission is to help start up
Eric Thorsland hopes to prevail over Rep. John Shimkus BY ELEANOR BLACK STAFF WRITER
University physics research engineer Eric Thorsland doesn’t look like your average politician, and he’ll be one of the fi rst to admit it. But for the sake of his campaign for the Illinois 15th Congressional District, he’s willing to make some changes. “I will admit, for The DI, that my haircut is very new. There are certain things that seem to be characteristic of someone in politics and unfortunately, you need to fit that mold,” he said. “People expect when you walk in the room, that you have a shirt, and a tie, and a suit and are relatively clean-shaven. So to not disappoint, I’m willing to go along with that norm. And then we’ll see what happens after the election is over.” His hair and goatee are welltrimmed and he’s casually dressed in a button-up, a black hoodie and a baseball cap. On his right arm there’s a tattoo that wraps around his wrist with three suns. “That’s my three children — two boys and my girl. My wife has moons on her wrist, on this side we hold hands. So we have the sun and the moon when we’re together.” D e s pite his casual demeanor, Thorsland is serious about politics. He considers himself a lifelong democrat, reinforced by an event in his childhood. His father, an air traffi c controller, went on strike because he wanted one day off per week. For this, he and others were fi red by President Reagan. Thorsland said his father did not get his job until 17 years later, under the
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Clinton administration. “That only solidifi ed my belief that democrats think more about people than the other party does,” he said. “(The Republican Party) is more interested in power and prosperity — I’m not against prosperity, but not at the expense of the people.” He then watched in 2012 as Angela Michael, an anti-choice candidate, ran unopposed in the democratic primary. “When that happens, she’s allowed access to the airwaves. They use that access to air ads ... that were very graphic, anti-choice ads. She’s not a democrat, she’s never voted as a democrat,” he said. “So I felt as a good, lifelong democrat, that it was probably best to put a real democrat on the ballot in the primary.” The issues that Thorsland cares about are issues that he believes matter to a rural district like the 15th; issues he says current Rep. John Shimkus (R-15) neglects. As a farm owner himself — he and his wife own a 38-acre organic farm that produces food for
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SERIONIX, INC. Serionix, Inc. is a startup environmental material company designing high-performance material to remove toxic chemicals from drinking water and the air. The company was recently awarded a contract with the Army to build an air filtration system to remove toxic chemicals from the air in certain facilities.
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James Gary Eden, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Sung-Jin Park, professor of micro and nanotechnology, dedicated their company to commercializing a new form of lighting that is thin and flat, based on microplasma technology developed at the University. Founded in 2007, Eden Park Illumination followed a “pathway similar to a number of other companies that are formed here in the Champaign-Urbana area,” Eden said. After graduating more than a year later, the company moved to its current, larger facility in northern Champaign, 903 N. Country Fair Drive, where it has 23 employees and a full assembly line for the lamps it produces — something it couldn’t accommodate at its EnterpriseWorks facility.
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and support technology-based companies and have them graduate and become viable, sustainable companies that are actually selling a product in the marketplace and making an impact,” Pickard said. “And in the process, those companies create high quality and technical management jobs.” EnterpriseWorks’ 141 startup incubator graduate companies provide services ranging from biotechnology to engineering to consultation. Currently, 38 companies operate within EnterpriseWorks.
Of all the services EnterpriseWorks offered, Eden said the proximity to the campus and to other companies was an advantage that could not have been overlooked. “There is a simple proximity to other companies who are attempting to do professionally the same things we are,” Eden said. “But a number of them are more advanced, so we can benefit from their experiences.” An example of this “experience sharing” is EnterpriseWorks’ series of lectures where individuals are invited to speak to the companies regarding topics such as financing or serial entrepreneurship. Eden Park Illumination lamps have been exhibited at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas for the past two years.
One E nte r pr i s eWo rk s resource Serionix takes advantage of is Research Park’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, which employs local experienced technology entrepreneurs to provide monthly consultation to startup companies and prospective technology founders. “We were able to meet with
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Co-founded by electrical and computer engineering professors Patrick Chapman and Philip Krein, SolarBridge Technologies develops solar power conversion hardware for rooftop solar panels. The company, originally named SmartSpark Energy Systems, began as a startup in the EnterpriseWorks incubator in 2004, before graduating from the incubator and moving to another space in the Research Park. SolarBridge continued to grow until the company relocated to Austin, Texas, where it continues to operate. A company that started with one employee now employs about 72 people and has sold
EP PURIFICATION, INC. Eden and Park also founded another startup company at EnterpriseWorks in 2010 called EP Purification, Inc. This company uses the same microplasma technology as Eden Park Illumination, instead using it to make small ozone genera-
a number of people in the program to consult and advise us on business strategies and the legal aspects of business,” said James Langer, president and co-founder of Serionix. Langer, who started the company while he was a graduate student, said EnterpriseWorks made the whole process of jumping out of the academ-
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more than 20,000 units that are now in the field producing solar energy, Krein said. “SolarBridge builds electronic hardware, and we originally built them for certain kinds of customers,” Krein said. “The kinds of customers we sell to have changed, the requirements have changed, but, in the end, we’re still building electronic hardware.” Krein said EnterpriseWorks’ flexible space helped advance the company because of how easy a company could move in to a little space before gradually growing. “It gave us the flexibility to grow without committing to something that wasn’t really suitable either right away or later,” he said.
tors for the purpose of disinfecting and purifying water. “EnterpriseWorks has provided the same space as Illumination ... allowing us to manufacture generators on a small scale,” Eden said. “It’s not a huge space, but it’s plenty to do what we need to do.”
ic research environment and into the business world easier. “It was a soft landing for us,” he said. The company began in spring of 2011 and will graduate from the EnterpriseWorks incubator in 3 to 4 years.
Jacqui can be reached at ogrodni2@dailyillini.com.
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