Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.

Mika, a Germany-based cancer patient support app developer allied to University Hospital Leipzig and Charité – Universtätsmedizin Berlin, has completed a €1m ($1.1m) round backed by Ananda Impact Ventures and IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft, the VC arm of state-owned business development bank Investitionsbank Berlin. Founded in 2017 and also known as Fosanis, Mika has created a software app with features such as nutritional advice and therapy information intended to help patients living with cancer. The spinout was co-founded by Gandolf Finke, a former senior research associate at ETH Zurich, and Jan Simon Raue, former research fellow at Technische Universität Berlin. It will use the capital to fund a clinical study and to continue developing its app. Aclarity, a US-based water purification technology developer exploiting University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst research, has obtained $1m in a pre-seed funding round involving Maroon Venture Partners Fund, Alchemy Group and Springfield Venture Fund, an impact fund established by insurer Massachusetts Mutual Life. Founded in 2017, Aclarity has launched a water purifying device that outputs an electric charge to destroy harmful contaminants in water, such as pathogens, bacteria and metals. The funding will help Aclarity pursue its go-to-market strategy, work on adjacent product lines and expand its operational capacity.  Aclarity’s device is intended to be both cost-efficient and easily scaled, having been invented by its chief executive officer Julie Mullen, a PhD candidate in the lab of David Reckhow, professor at the UMass Amherst Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Electro-Active Technologies, a US-based biofuel conversion system creator founded on research from the US government-funded Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has formally licensed two biorefinery technologies from ORNL for commercialisation, Green Car Congress reported on Saturday. Founded in 2017, Electro-Active Technologies is developing a system that relies on electrolysis-induced biological processes to break down organic waste, such as food and plant biomass, into hydrogen molecules that can be used as a biofuel. The approach was devised at ORNL by Abhijeet Borole, a research professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s chemical and biomolecular engineering department, and Alex Lewis, who trained under Borole’s wing as a doctoral candidate at the university’s Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. The company has joined the IndieBio Accelerator and was selected for the H2 Refuel Accelerator, a hydrogen-focused contest sponsored by oil producer Shell, carmaker Toyota and the state-owned New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

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