Area Innovation Award winners announced during IDEA Week

SOUTH BEND — Several local companies and individuals were honored with Innovation Awards during last week’s IDEA Week in the South Bend-Elkhart area.

Tracy Graham, founder and managing principal of Graham Allen Partners, a South Bend-based private equity firm that specializes in technology and technology-enabled companies, won Entrepreneur of the Year, the University of Notre Dame’s IDEA Center announced in a news release.

Susan Ford, a director at Graham Allen Partners and president of SEMMA Health, won Female Entrepreneur of the Year.

IDEA Week 2019 honored local entrepreneurs, inventors and innovative institutions with the inaugural IDEA Week Innovation Awards at a ceremony April 8 at the Palais Royale in downtown South Bend.

Mitchell Kokko, a six-time entrepreneur and an associate on the Pit Road Fund at the IDEA Center Notre Dame, won Young Entrepreneur of the Year. The Pit Road Fund provides seed funding for faculty, student, alumni and community startups.

Ray Parisi and Bob Metzger, both engineers at Warsaw-based Zimmer Biomet, shared Inventor of the Year honors. They also shared the South Bend-Elkhart Top Inventor award, with seven patents each. Other top inventors honored were Eugene A. Dylewski II with four patents and Kevin V. Keigley with three.

Notre Dame was the top South Bend-Elkhart company for patents issued in 2018 with 22, followed by Lippert Components with eight, L.O.F. with five, Truck Accessories Group with four, ABI Attachments and Elkhart Brass Manufacturing Co. with three each, and APCI, ASA Electronics, Carved, Emnet, KMC Controls, MORryde International, Shield Restraint Systems and TITAN with two each.