Five Ottawa-based companies take a cut of $1.9 million in funding from Precarn and its partners, which is meant to help commercialize technology. Sherlock Inc., which makes 3-D face-recognition software, Biopeak Corp., med-devices company Brytech Inc., Heliocentric Technologies and visual search engine developer Incogna Inc. are among the 12 Canadian companies chosen to receive up to $60,000 each in funding from Ottawa’s not for profit Precarn through its Industrial Technology Gap program. The not-for profit company is in all providing close to $700,000 of the funding, while its partners are kicking in the additional cash (about $1.2 million) aimed at supporting small or start-up businesses which, Precarn notes, need a leg up during these days of financial downturn. “Even in the best of economic times, it’s difficult for small companies to commercialize their products largely due to financing challenges,” says Tony Eyton, president and CEO of Precarn. “As a result, many valuable ideas are needlessly shelved – there’s a black hole on the ‘research to reality’ road where innovative and viable technologies get lost.” He adds that the funding is chiefly meant to accelerate commercial sale of the technologies by supporting go-to market activities such as building engineering prototypes, refining and implementing designs, conducting scale-up activities, product-specific market research or field studies, or carrying out technical and market assessments.