Gary Adams
• Retail Velocity (formerly Vendor Managed Technologies Inc. or VMT), a provider of demand sensing and retail execution solutions, announced that Gary Adams has joined the company's sales and marketing team.
• Mocha Monkey Café, a health-conscious coffee, smoothie and soup bar located at 2871 Carpenter Road, held a grand opening event April 1. Mocha Monkey Caf&eaucute; features a variety of coffee- and espresso-based beverages, serving coffee and pastries sourced from Michigan companies.
• The Clean Energy Trust in early April named winners of the 2013 Clean Energy Challenge. Prizes were awarded to Ann Arbor area businesses SkySpecs and Ornicept. SkySpecs, a University of Michigan-based firm that uses an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, to monitor wind turbines, bridges and other infrastructure, won the $10,000 Invenergy Renewable Ideas prize. Additionally, the Clean Energy Challenge judges agreed during deliberations to pool together from their own money a special $10,000 prize for Ornicept, an early-stage competitor from Ann Arbor that analyzes endangered bird migration patterns to help wind developers comply with siting regulations.
• SimuQuest, an Ann Arbor-based company that develops products to enable model-based design of embedded control systems, recently announced that its UniPhi product now provides engineers the capability to visualize modeled object dependencies (signals, parameters and features) at a user-selectable level of detail, enhancing collaborative development.
• Ann Arbor-based ProQuest has been hired to digitize more than 15,000 dissertations from European universities, providing online access to these works for the first time. These will include works from University College London, University of Aberdeen, Cardiff University, University of Leicester, University of Bath and University of Valencia.
• The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare (National Council) and Eli Lilly and Company are proud to announce the 2013 honorees of the prestigious Reintegration and Welcome Back Awards, which honor the contributions of individuals who live with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as those who treat and support them. Honorees were recognized at a special ceremony April 9 during the 2013 National Council Conference. Among the honorees was Dr. Timothy Florence, medical director of Washtenaw Community Support and Treatment Services in Ypsilanti, in the "Psychiatry" category. Judges said Dr. Florence has "dedicated his career to serving people with severe mental illnesses, particularly the chronically homeless and other vulnerable individuals... When faced with limited psychiatry resources in primary care sites, he implemented a novel co-visit model where he moved from room to room with primary care providers to give patients the benefits of integrated care."
• Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel recently added several new sales associates to its offices in southeast Michigan. Among those recently added were Robert Hoffman, Sylvia Romeijn and Alex Pinzkoski in the company's Ann Arbor office.
• Hobbs + Black Associates Inc., an Ann Arbor-based architectural firm, has been awarded the Two Men and a Truck headquarters expansion project. The $4.25-million-project will add approximately 25,000 square feet to the existing 35,000-square-foot facility. The project will also include the remodeling of the existing space. Hobbs + Black also designed the current corporate headquarters building in 2000, as well as additions in 2003.
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