TechAccel—a Kansas City-based company that helps accelerate technology for agriculture, animal health and food ingredients—has just won a major national award.

The State Science and Technology Institute has recognized TechAccel as the country’s most promising technology-based economic development initiative.

TechAccel helps fund and manage technology and discoveries developed by university researchers, then partners with international companies, startups and V.C. firms to commercialize that research.

“TechAccel provides a highly promising, innovative model that helps identify global market needs and transfer transformative yet high-risk technologies that address those needs into the marketplace by partnering with global companies,” said Dan Berglund, SSTI president and CEO.

“TechAccel’s unique combination of private management and co-investment provides a potential archetype for reducing the risk of university-developed technologies to the point that industry partners are interested in moving them from technical feasibility to commercial viability.”

The company was founded about a year ago by Michael Helmstetter, the former president and CEO of MRIGlobal, with Kansas State University and the Bicknell Family Holding Company.

“We are humbled to have received this national recognition just one year after our company’s inception,” Helmstetter said. “As a first-of-its-kind company, it took some time for our partners to get their heads wrapped around what it is that we do—our value proposition. In a short amount of time, we’ve rapidly become known as a valuable collaborator in the agtech and animal health sectors and have developed strategies designed to make a broad impact on the global food challenge.”