NCET award recipients

Bret Simmons, Colin Loretz, Dan Herr and Howard Olsen were recognized by the Nevada's Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology and the Reno Gazette-Journal for excellence in technology and entrepreneurship.

They were honored at a ceremony Feb. 21 at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa.

Simmons, an associate professor for the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno, received the New Entrepreneurial Activity of the Year Award.

He is credited for founding TEDxUniversityofNevadaReno, an event that discusses ideas on a variety of community topics, such as health care, education and business and entrepreneurship.

Loretz, a former College of Business student, was awarded the Technology Advocate of the Year Award. Loretz is the CEO and co-founder of Cloudsnap, an online application programming interface that helps build, manage and extend apps.

Herr, currently a student in the College of Business at UNR, received the Entrepreneurial Program of the Year Award.

Herr is the program manager at the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization, a nonprofit involved in forming clean energy technologies into job creation businesses.

Olsen, a former marketing professor for the College of Business, received the Software Company of the Year Award, tying with Richard Kelsey, president and CEO of Sun Science Corp.

Olsen co-founded and is a lead market researcher and strategist for M3 Planning, a market research, meeting facilitation, strategy development and execution management company.