Digital Rochester announces 2018 GREAT Award winners

Digital Rochester announced the 2018 Greater Rochester Excellence and Achievement in Technology (GREAT) Awards on Wednesday at an awards ceremony at the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center.

Since 2010, the GREAT Awards have recognized tech businesses, students and entrepreneurs who are leading the way in Rochester’s tech scene. This year’s awards featured nine categories: best tech workplace, digital marketing, emerging tech company, emerging tech leader, project manager of the year, student achievement, tech for good, tech innovation and tech luminary. The tech luminary award is given to a longtime and influential member of Rochester’s tech scene.

“The businesses in our technology sector are big contributors to the local economy, proving jobs and adding to our quality of life in the region,” said Digital Rochester President Nicole Mahoney. “They’re also fun places to work, and an equally exciting industry.”

The award for best tech workplace went to Datto. Datto is a global data backup company based out of Norwalk, Connecticut, with a Rochester hub at The Metropolitan. Earlier in the day, Gov. Andrew Cuomo joined CEO Austin McChord, Mayor Lovely Warren and other dignitaries to cut the ribbon at Datto’s new space. In total, the company employs about 225 in Rochester.

The digital marketing award went to Site Hub. Site Hub is a custom marketing company that helps companies develop digital marketing strategies and websites.

The award for emerging tech company went to Intelon Optics. A competitor in the first cohort at the Luminate NY accelerator, Intelon is the proprietor of a unique diagnostic and surgical tool which can be used to treat myopia and other eye conditions using a Brillouin Optical Scanner System (BOSS).

The award for emerging tech leader went to Jamie Eisenhauer. Eisenhauer is vice president of people and culture at Innovative Solutions.

“To be a great leader, the most important thing is surrounding yourself with great people, so I just have to thank my team at Innovative,” Eisenhauer said.

The award for project manager of the year went to Christine Principe. Principe is project manager at Rochester Regional Health and, in turn, is responsible for pioneering many of the med tech projects taken at Rochester General and other hospitals in the RRH system.

Nathan DeMario of Phase Innovations took home the student achievement award. A first-year grad student at RIT, DeMario and Phase are developing clean tech meant to create safe, efficient and sustainable cooling for buildings.

The winner in the tech for good category was Positive Science. Another competitor, and third-place winner, in this year’s Luminate cohort, Positive Science develops eye tracing software which effectively allows a viewer to see the world through the eyes of a child, a chimpanzee, a soldier on the battlefield and everything in between.

The tech innovation award went to SSRN. SSRN is a academic research repository focused on bringing access to research papers via a digital library. The company currently hosts nearly a million research papers from just under 400,000 researchers.

Finally, the award for Tech Luminary went to Andre Godfrey. Godfrey serves as president and CEO at Entre Computer Services, and with over 30 years in the industry, his work predates the internet as we know it.

“I’ve been in this industry a long time, and I’ve been with Digital Rochester a long time, we have a long, long history and I was very proud to be part of this organization,” Godfrey said.