Talent attraction/retention nonprofit Engage! Cleveland has officially kicked off a series of Cleveland-friendly social activities and professional development opportunities through its first annual Cleveland Young Professionals Week.

The weeklong succession of cost-free events aimed at the youthful and talented began Monday and will continue through Oct. 11, says Engage! Cleveland executive director Ashley Basile Oeken. Each day will feature a variety of around-the-clock happenings on both the East and West Side, including fitness classes at local studios, speaker-centric "lunch-and-learn" programs, and nightly networking get-togethers. That's 25 events over six days, if you're counting.

"You hear about other cities and how they've engaged young professionals," says Basile Oeken. "We wanted a signature event to put our name on."

Programming is generally aimed at people age 21 to 40, although the nonprofit is inclusive of anyone who considers themselves a YP. Events are filling up, notes Basile Oeken, so if you're interested in a spinning class at Harness Cycle or listening to a talk by PlayhouseSquare president Art Falco, it's best to act fast.

Basile Oeken views Engage! Cleveland's first-ever CLE YP Week as a chance to show off everything the city has to offer, whether to a lifelong resident or someone who moved here a month ago. Attracting and retaining young talent means linking it to influential leaders and local organizations, she believes.

"It's acclimating people to how much is going on in Cleveland," says Basile Oeken. "There's an opportunity to get everyone living in this community to support it collectively."

While programming will end with a closing party at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, the nonprofit director expects the energy generated by a week's worth of events to resonate throughout the year.

"If you're involved, Cleveland can sell itself," Basile Oeken says. "People are more likely to stay when they're engaged."

The Make Them Pay/Old Angle Boxing Gym in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood offers young people and adults a sense of community and a place to blow off steam. Across the city, other boxing gyms serve a similar purpose.

The Incubator at MAGNET has announced six finalists for its first product-focused pitch contest.

The ProtoTech competition, co-sponsored by NASA Glenn Research Center,  concentrates on technology-driven wares and the companies aiming to bring those products to market. A MAGNET press release listed the finalists:

* Advanced BioSensors-Ohio, creator of a "Continuous Glucose Monitor" for diabetic patients.

* Axenic, maker of non-toxic liquid-based solutions that clean organic waste.

* EveryKey, a Case Western Reserve University-based company that makes a high-tech wristband that syncs with keys and passwords.

* FGC Plasma Solutions, creator of a fuel nozzle designed to save money and reduce emissions.

* Real Time Imaging Technologies, designer of a low-dose dental x-ray imaging system.

* RoboNail, maker of robotic tools that enable contractors to install roofing with more efficiency.

The final pitch teams will present their work before a panel of judges at an Oct. 21 event at the Ariel International Center in Cleveland. Would-be inventors are encouraged to create fundraising sites highlighting their efforts, with the money they raise going back into product creation.

The pitch contest was introduced in July with the intention of highlighting physical technology rather than IT or service-based ventures. Incubator executive director Dave Crain believes the competition did well to represent the diversity of product-centric innovation in Northeast Ohio.  
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“Interest from the community and event partners has been very strong," Crain says. "Everyone is excited for the event and the opportunity to support a showcase of our rich product startup landscape."

 
"Think big" was the theme of an Amplify Speaker Series luncheon on making the most of Northeast Ohio's steadily developing information technology presence.

The region must continue to expand its fiber optic infrastructure alongside ongoing efforts to transform Cleveland into a bustling tech hub with worldwide reach, said a foursome of panelists during the October 1 event sponsored by Contempo Communications.

The physical network itself is burgeoning, notes Lev Gonnick of OneCommunity, a nonprofit foundation helping to grow high-speed internet in Northeast Ohio. Since its founding in 2003, the organization has laid 111 miles of fiber in Cuyahoga County alone.

An advanced fiber optic/digital base transporting data at high speeds can be a boon for the area's already robust healthcare sector, says Kevin Goodman, managing director/partner of downtown Cleveland cloud-computing provider BlueBridge Networks. Crystal clear doctor-to-patient conferencing is just one example of how robust telecommunications can aid the industry.

If a healthy digital platform can help build industry and bring jobs, it will give Northeast Ohio an advantage in the hunt for young professionals over similarly sized markets, says Ashley Basile Oeken, executive director of Engage! Cleveland, a talent attraction/retention nonprofit.

"We're falling behind cities like Pittsburgh and Indianapolis in bringing in talent,"  Basile Oeken says. "Cleveland has to find ways to stand out."

Dan Young, founder of technology and design agency DXY, is looking beyond county, state and even national borders when it comes to connecting with the next wave of innovators. Young helped establish a DXY satellite office in Germany, an experience that showcased the need for Cleveland to attract immigrant brainpower.

"The city has to be bigger and bolder about the conversation it's having," he says.

Creating a regional tech epicenter here would make drawing dynamic folks of disparate backgrounds all the easier easier, says Joy Roller, panel facilitator and executive director of Global Cleveland.
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"We need to be open to the flow of ideas and new people," she says. 

A fresh energy is crackling all across the 216, from ambitious new developments taking shape downtown and in University Circle, to bike-friendly avenues and the transformation of blight into pedestrian-friendly green space. But the fun’s just getting started. We rounded up 10 of the most exciting projects on the horizon that have us shaking with anticipation.

For every well-regarded artifact on display in Cleveland’s world-class museums there are countless more that fly under the radar. Fresh Water tagged along with curators from area museums as they showed off their favorite hidden gems, sharing often untold stories and behind-the-scenes peeks at choice treasures. 

Clevelanders will celebrate its diversity through artistic performance this Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 13 and 14 at the second annual Cleveland One World Festival. Taking place at the Cleveland Cultural Gardens at Rockefeller Park, the event will feature a variety of arts and activities for all ages, from a parade and performances on a dozen stages to international sporting competitions and art exhibits. Vendors and food trucks will offer authentic ethnic food and drinks. 
 
But for Clara Jaramillo, the One World Festival holds particular significance. She will become a U.S. citizen during the festival’s naturalization ceremony. Jaramillo is one of 25 people participating in the ceremony at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
 
“We’re excited about it,” Jaramillo says of becoming a U.S. citizen. “It’s been a long adventure.”
 
Born in Cali, Colombia, and raised in Medellin since she was eight, Jaramillo moved to San Antonio in 2000 with her husband, Jorge Zapata, for his career as an engineer in the medical field. From San Antonio, Zapata joined Phillips Medical Systems and they moved to San Jose, California, for eight years. They had two sons, Daniel and Nicolas, before they relocated to Cleveland nearly five years ago.
 
Jaramillo and Zapata settled in Chagrin Falls. “The schools are great, the boys are very happy,” Jaramillo says. “It’s a great place to raise a family. It’s quiet and the quality of life and the schools are much better. We think we’re going to stay here for good.”
 
Jaramillo is excited about becoming a U.S. citizen. “We’d like to be a part of the system, to be able to vote, to travel the world. As Colombians, we have to apply for visas to go to other countries.”
 
However, Jaramillo admits she is a bit nervous about the ceremony. “I’m normally very, very shy so it will be interesting,” she says. “It’s nice; it’s going to be a good moment to share with a lot of people.”
 
Zapata will receive his citizenship in a separate ceremony.

Tampa Bay successfully hosted the Republicans in 2012, and Denver hosted the Democrats four years before that. Fresh Water decided to reach out to representatives from each city to see if our fair city could glean some best practices on how to pull off a successful -- and inclusive -- convention.

More than 16,000 people in the United States are on the waiting list for a liver transplant, yet 10,000 die before they get one. Cleveland Clinic transplant surgeon Koji Hashimoto has spent the last nine years researching the practice of splitting a donor liver between two recipients, thus reducing demand.

“There’s a big gap between supply and demand,” explains Hashimoto. “In many smaller recipients, the liver is too large. You can’t transplant a large liver into a small patient. So we can split the liver.”
 
Hashimoto performed split liver transplants in 25 patients in his study, which was published in the July American Journal of Transplantation. Some of Hashimoto’s patients received the left lobe of the liver, some received the right lobe. Two patients benefitted from one liver donated.
 
“The survival was the same as whole liver transplants,” says Hashimoto. “We’ve had an 80 percent survival rate after five years.”
 
Only a handful of hospitals are actively performing split liver transplants, with the Cleveland Clinic being one. “Many centers don’t do it because you have to have lots of people on the team and it’s very challenging,” Hashimoto explains. “With a split liver transplant you have two patients receiving livers at the same time. You have to divide the blood vessels too -- sometimes using microscopes in the transplant -- and one surgeon goes out to split the liver in the donor body.”
 
While the split liver allows surgeons to place an organ in smaller patients, such as children, larger patients benefit as well. “The liver is the only organ that can regenerate in the body,” says Hashimoto. “Eventually the liver will grow to the size to fit the patient.”

Case Western Reserve University has opened the new Tinkham Veale University Center just in time for the start of the school year. In the coming weeks, six new eateries will be unveiled. The addition of mouthwatering new venues like Melt University, the latest from Matt Fish of Melt Bar & Grilled fame; Naan, an Indian venue by James Beard Award nominee Chef Raghavan Iyer; and Cool Beanz, which will serve Zingerman's Coffee out of Ann Arbor, are enough to make us want to go back to school.

Fortunately, we won't have to. All of the venues are open to the public, and the soon-to-be-named restaurant (a student contest will determine its name) will serve a prix fixe menu when the orchestra plays in town. Cleveland Botanical Garden Executive Chef Tony Smoody will serve as chef of the restaurant.

Additional eateries include 8Twenty6, where customers can build their own salad from an eight-foot counter stocked with 20 seasonal ingredients and six housemade dressings, and Pinzas, which serves personal pizzas, pasta bowls and Italian sandwiches served on pagnotelle rolls. Melt University will serve items off the Melt Bar & Grilled menu as well as "exclusive CWRU-themed sandwiches only available at Melt U, the Case Western BBQ and The Spartan Burger," according to a press release from Bon Appetit Management, the food service company.

"This is an opportunity to showcase the beauty of regional Indian cooking," said Iyer during a recent visit to the university center. "What you typically see in the U.S. is just a sliver of Indian cooking, and what I bring is multi-regional cooking."

CWRU has a large population of foreign-born students, so the ethnic diversity of these options will no doubt prove popular. The university has not only transformed its physical environment in recent years, adding student amenities that create a more vibrant campus, but has also seen a dramatic increase in enrollment.

Previously, there was no full-service restaurant on the CWRU campus, and dining options were a bit limited. These six new eateries add to the increasing vibrancy that can be found on campus and throughout University Circle.

When doctors perform surgical procedures, they typically use cold surgical irrigation fluid to expand the patient’s body cavity. The cold fluid can increase their risk of hypothermia, which in turn leads to three times the risk of surgical site infections and other complications. 

Now hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals have turned to a local company for a solution. Thermedx has developed the first smart surgical irrigation device to provide fluid warming in arthroscopic and hysteroscopic procedures.
 
“We developed a smart version of an irrigation pump,” explains Thermedx co-founder and executive vice president Mike Haritakis. “It’s a touchscreen, multi-functional irrigation pump that can actually allow a procedure to be done with one device”
 
The Thermedx’s Fluid Smart System, which is used primarily in endoscopic and laparoscopic gynecological, urological and orthopedic procedures, pressurizes the body cavity safely during surgery to improve visibility, warms the irrigation fluid and monitors the fluids and prevents hypothermia.
 
“It really consolidates the devices and streamlines the staff in the OR,” explains Angela Dubik, clinical services manager. “The end result is it makes surgeons’ and nurses’ jobs much easier, it saves the hospital money and it improves patient care.”
 
Thermedx developed the Fluid Smart System in part through funding from Third Frontier and BioEnterprise. The company employs 18 people and is growing. “We’re just looking to continue to develop new products,” says Haritakis. “We want to continue to add jobs to support Northeast Ohio growth in the medical device community. We’re all about growth, essentially.”

As the 2014 Gay Games play out with eclectic events all over town, it becomes clear how they will leave a lasting positive effect on the host city of Cleveland. Uniting beneath a banner of inclusion, collaboration and unity, participants and sponsors establish a spirit that will endure long after the lights have dimmed and the last athlete has left the track.