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Upstate SC professor wins lifetime achievement award

The Dr. Charles Townes Individual Lifetime Achievement Award presented by Innovision honors an individual who has exhibited a sustained commitment to the advancement of technology and the community for the benefit of our state. The award is named after the only person other than the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa to win both a Nobel Prize and a Templeton Prize. Mike Switzer interviews the most recent recipient of this prestigious award, Dr. Martine LaBerge, a professor and chair of Bioengineering at Clemson University. She was also recently inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame.

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After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.