With endowments from Washington’s top tech leaders, the University of Washington continues to apply more than a billion dollars per year to sponsored research. The brain trust that shepherds this research is profound. There are no less than 6 Nobel prize winners among the current UW teaching staff and many more are nationally recognized in their fields.
How can a university producing breakthroughs in research find its way from the halls of academia to the shopping aisles of consumer choice? It takes a launch pad.
Last summer, UW hired a one-man technology incubator of its own to help propel the new ventures that the grow out of university research. He is president Michael Young.
As reported in the PSBJ, Young is encouraging the Seattle business community to be directly involved in what is known as “technology transfer” from the university. He did the same during his tenure at University of Utah, with a sevenfold increase in the number of startups to spin out of that instiution.
Young has the help of the UW’s Center for Commercialization which has shared the same mission statement since 2005.
Last month, C4C unveiled its New Venture Facility in Fluke Hall of the UW Campus where the Washington Technology Center used to be. The new space offer startup companies office space, conference rooms and access to wet and dry labs to develop their ideas.
These efforts connote UW not only as incubator but as launch partner, assisting these startups with the resources to monetize the research they conducted while operating as UW Research teams.
For Young, it’s a question of moving technology from the drawing board to the marketplace. “If you cure cancer, and it stays in a test tube, it’s interesting cocktail party conversation, but nobody gets better,” he says. “How do you it to the bedside? The commercialization process is the vehicle for that!”
Vikram Jandhyala and his partner, Steven Cathcart, have already moved in.
Jandhyala is the director of the university’s Applied Computational Engineering Lab and the brains behind the 2006 startup, Nimbic, a software program that provides a testable model of new machinery for businesses, like semiconductor companies, so they can see if a new design will work before spending the money to build it. Other spaces are already being occupied – by VIxim, Nexgenia, a nanotechnology company, and Envitrum, transforming used glass into green building materials. [24×7]
