The Launch Pad and one of its entrepreneurs were among the winners at the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s annual Technology Leaders of the Year Awards.

Developed at the University of Miami as a novel entrepreneurship initiative that helps both students and alumni create new enterprises, The Launch Pad won in the “Technology Organization” category, while Tyler McIntyre, the CEO of a company that specializes in software development for the growing mobile application market, won the “Technology Student Entrepreneur” award.

The Technology Leaders of the Year Awards were created to honor individuals, teams, organizations, and companies that support and develop the future of the South Florida technology community. Winners were selected because of their effective use of technology to improve business performance or to develop new markets, products, or communities, as well as for their significant contributions to the South Florida technology community.

In the past year The Launch Pad has hosted and promoted more than 20 events in support of educating, connecting, and promoting both technology entrepreneurs and developers, including Refresh Miami, Startup Weekend, the Android Developer Group, WordCamp Miami, and Lean Startup Group Miami. The majority of Launch Pad Tech events were held at the offices at Terremark’s NAP of the Americas.

The Launch Pad’s next project is to actively engage the South Florida community in educating and connecting the tech community through the Launch Pad Tech initiative. Available to anyone in South Florida, the initiative has a goal to train and mentor skilled programmers in the latest technologies available in their field of interest (mobile or Web). These new highly trained developers can then be fed into the South Florida technology startup ecosystem or use their knowledge to start their own high-growth technology startup.

William Silverman, assistant director of The Launch Pad, accepted the award. In his acceptance remarks, Silverman thanked Manny Medina, founder of Terremark. “Manny believed in our vision, making it possible for us to set up Launch Pad Tech in the Terremark NAP, which allowed us to connect to hundreds of technology entrepreneurs over the past year.”

Silverman also mentioned Refresh Miami and IT Women as “great friends and collaborators, and we all work together to support the [local tech] community.” He also noted the two “Technology Student Entrepreneur” finalists—Ketan Rahangdale, CEO of EarTop Technologies, and Mark Slaughter, CEO of Cohealo—and the category winner, Tyler McIntyre. All three are currently University of Miami students and Launch Pad entrepreneurs. “We are very proud of our three student tech entrepreneurs,” Silverman said. “The Launch Pad is all about growing great entrepreneurs here in South Florida, and they are perfect examples.”

McIntyre is CEO of Lucid Technologies, LLC, which has launched several applications, including LuciDmessenger, which allows for cross-platform communication between BlackBerry Messenger and iPhone and Android phones; one of the top downloaded weather applications globally, rated by Apple as “New & Noteworthy”; and Chat for Facebook, which is currently the sixth top-selling social networking app for the Mac OS.

McIntyre is enrolled as a third-year student in UM’s School of Business Administration and actively participates in The Launch Pad entrepreneurship program.