SPEAK MODalities wins Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition, Gold Edison Award

SPEAK MODalities co-founder Dr. Oliver Wendt receives the 2017 Edison Gold Award for the company's apps, SPEAKall!® and SPEAKmore!®. SPEAK MODalities also won the ChanceLight Behavioral Health and Education Prize and the Milken Family Foundation Grand Prize at the Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition for its work developing evidence-based speech and language therapy applications for individuals with severe autism or developmental disabilities. (Edison Universe photo) Download image

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – SPEAK MODalities LLC, a Purdue-affiliated company developing technology that helps communication and language development for children and families affected by severe, nonverbal autism and developmental disabilities, was recently announced as a winner of three prestigious awards.

SPEAK MODalities won the ChanceLight Behavioral Health and Education Prize and the Milken Family Foundation Grand Prize at the Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition, the nation’s largest business plan competition for education-related startups. The company received $60,000 in prize money.  

SPEAK MODalities was also announced as a gold Edison Award winner in the language learning category. Edison Awards honor excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centered design and innovation. The Edison Awards symbolize the persistence and excellence personified by Thomas Edison, while strengthening the human drive for innovation, creativity, and ingenuity.

SPEAK MODalities was co-founded by Oliver Wendt, Purdue assistant professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, and educational studies; Michael Zentner, an Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP) senior research scientist who assists faculty with research projects through the Purdue Foundry; and Diana Hancock, ITaP commercialization director.

Wendt traveled to Philadelphia’s Penn campus on Tuesday (April 25) to pitch their venture to investors, researchers, and practitioners.          

“We are absolutely thrilled to not only win the behavioral health and education prize, but also the overall and Milken Family Foundation grand prize,” Wendt said. “More and more learners on the autism spectrum or with developmental disabilities are served in the public school system and there is a movement to provide more inclusive education and better support to promote student success. These accolades give us the confidence to know that we can make an impact in K-12 classrooms and provide effective solutions to make inclusion real. It is an honor to be highlighted as among the strongest and most innovative new startups that are changing the way students with special needs learn.”

SPEAK MODalities attended the recent Edison Awards Ceremony and Gala in New York.

“As stated by the Edison organization, the finalists were chosen as the ‘best of the best’ by 3,000 of the world’s top senior business executives, academics and innovation professionals and over 400 nominations were reviewed,” said Michael Zentner, CEO of SPEAK MODalities. “To be named the gold award winner for best new product in the language learning category is an incredible achievement that provides our technology and the work we do with top-level validation.”

The apps that were entered into the two competitions were SPEAKall!® and SPEAKmore!®. SPEAKall! is designed to help children with autism who are minimally verbal develop functional communication and initial speech and language skills by using photos and graphic symbols that represent what a child wishes to say and helps the child construct sentences from those images. SPEAKmore! is designed for children who have advanced beyond the initial app and now need to expand on vocabulary and complexity of messages. SPEAKall! has been downloaded more than 40,000 times and is used by 7 leading augmentative and alternative communication centers and 16 speech and language clinics across the globe. A video about the company can be viewed here.           

The SPEAKall! and SPEAKmore! technologies are patented and licensed through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization. SPEAK MODalities receives entrepreneurial assistance through the Purdue Foundry, a startup support center based in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship at Purdue, and Wendt has participated as a scholar in the Purdue Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy.

About SPEAK MODalities

SPEAK MODalities was formed in 2013 and obtained an exclusive license to the SPEAKall! and SPEAKmore! technologies from the Purdue Research Foundation. The first commercially supported version of SPEAKall! was released in January 2014. SPEAK MODalities has a mission to expand the reach of SPEAKall! and subsequent products that assist children with special needs to develop speech and language skills.

About Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization

The Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization operates one of the most comprehensive technology transfer programs among leading research universities in the U.S. Services provided by this office support the economic development initiatives of Purdue University and benefit the university's academic activities. The office is managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, which received the 2016 Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities Award for Innovation from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. For more information about funding and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org. For more information on licensing a Purdue innovation, contact the Office of Technology Commercialization at innovation@prf.org.

Media Contact: Hillary Henry, 765-588-3586, hkhenry@prf.org 

Sources: Oliver Wendt, 765-494-2462, olli@purdue.edu

Michael Zentner, 765-494-7705, mzentner@speakmod.com