Athens, Ga. – Erico Mattos, a University of Georgia alumnus and co-founder of the horticultural grow light company PhytoSynthetix, was selected to attend the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The three-day meeting began June 22 with a morning address by President Barack Obama, who announced the first summit in 2010.

Mattos was among the 700 entrepreneurs selected from a pool of more than 5,000 applicants from across the world to attend the summit, which showcased inspiring entrepreneurs and highlighted entrepreneurship as a means to address some of the most intractable global challenges. It featured workshops, panels, pitch competitions and networking sessions designed to give participants opportunities to gain skills and forge relationships that will help their ventures grow.

“The GES offered a unique opportunity to connect with like-minded people from all around the world, who I would not have the chance to meet otherwise,” Mattos said. “I was also able to contribute to the summit by sharing my experiences and talking about projects and technologies we are developing in partnership with UGA.”

Mattos’ company grew out of research he conducted while working as a graduate student in UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences that focused on using LED lights to grow crops indoors. His company now develops and sells high-performance lighting systems, which allow growers to more precisely control plant biomass production, flowering and product quality.

The lighting technology developed by PhytoSynthetix monitors a plant’s light use, and computer software adjusts light output to match plant requirements, allowing growers to achieve high-production yields without using a lot of energy. This technology could serve as the foundation of controlled-environment farming, in which food crops are grown indoors and humidity, temperature and light exposure are all optimized to fit the plant’s needs.

“We have worked very hard to perfect our products and refine our business model, but I’m excited to meet with other entrepreneurs and business experts who will help us take our company to the next level,” Mattos said.

The company is currently housed in UGA’s Innovation Gateway startup incubator, which allows young companies to accelerate their early growth through access to space, state-of-the-art equipment and support services.

To learn more about PhytoSynthetix, see https://phytosynthetix.com/. For more information about the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, see www.ges2016.org.