#340: eVTOL Insurance, Virtual Expense Card, and more tech

Digest #340

This week, we have news about Joby Aviation, Paystand, Poly, Baskin Engineering, and more.

Save the date: The Startup Investment & Community Capital Expo returns this year online, September 28-30. Apply to pitch! One of the primary goals of this event is to bring startups and investors together. This year's theme is inclusivity and recovery.

Thank you so much to Paystand, Bay Federal Credit Union, Baskin Engineering, UC Santa Cruz, and Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County for renewing your partnerships with us. It really does take a village!

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Sara Isenberg

Founder, Publisher, Editor-in-Chief

Santa Cruz Tech Beat

http://santacruztechbeat.com

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Top Stories

Japanese insurer Aioi Nissay announces plans to invest in and work with Joby Aviation to develop specialized insurance products for eVTOL air taxis. Read the article .

Speaking of Joby, what happened to their Generation 2 eVTOL? After Joby engineers shared details of the two-seat air taxi in 2014, the company has revealed no further information. Has someone solved the mystery? Read the article .

What do remote learning, robotic testing, and equitable health tech have in common? They're all projects created to address COVID-related challenges, and chosen to receive seed funding by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at UCSC. Read the article .

Insight into Diversity magazine recognizes UCSC's STEM Diversity Programs with its 2020 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award . Read the article .

Watch: Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond explains how virtual expense cards and fully digital payments streamline payments, reduce fraud risk, simplify company and employee management, and more. Watch the video .

Meet Adwait Ratnaparkhi, the newly appointed executive director of the Natural Language Processing program at Baskin Engineering, former director of voice and natural language understanding R&D at Roku . Read the article .

UCSC scientists achieve the first complete assembly of human X chromosome. The first end-to-end completely gapless DNA sequence of a human chromosome is a major milestone for genomics research . Read the article .

Learn more about local biotech pandemic tools and tests at the SC Works Aug 5 o verview of local biotech, featuring Astrea Forensics, Ontera, Pinpoint, and more. Read the article .

Looking for investor funding? Apply to pitch at this year's virtual Startup Investment & Community Capital Expo, Sept 28-30. Read the article .

Cloud Brigade founder's "faux-paw" turns into a quest to develop an AI solution to stop neighborhood dogs from using his yard as a poop stop. Read the article .

Poly shares their study, Hybrid Working: Creating the “next normal” in work practices, spaces and culture. Read the article .