When Invention 2 Venture launched 10 years ago, the tech transfer event drew about 70 attendees.
Last week’s 10th anniversary edition attracted more than 180 researchers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, students and sundry other interested parties who picked up information, shared ideas and made new contacts, all with goal of turning promising research ideas, many originating with UVM faculty, into marketable products and services.
“It’s wonderful to see the increase in attendance,” said Corine Farewell, director of UVM’s Office of Technology Commercialization. “It’s also great to see Invention 2 Venture evolve into a much more interactive event, with a lot of information exchange taking place between the different groups attending.”
Farewell was also pleased to see the number of students increase to more than 20 percent of attendees. Most were from UVM students involved in the Technology Commercialization courses taught at both the undergraduate and graduate level by a new business school faculty member in entrepreneurship Erik Monsen.
The event featured 12 roundtable discussions that attendees rotated through with titles like “Finding the Money,” “How to Speak Science to Business” and “Intellectual Property: Patents, Copyrights and More.”
The “How to Speak Science to Business” discussion, which attracted an overflow crowd at every rotation, was led by Linda Rhodes, chief scientific officer of Aratana Therapeutics, Inc., who also delivered the event’s keynote speech, titled, “A Tale of Two Companies: Expanding the Opportunities for Biotechnology.”
“Having someone of Dr. Rhodes’ caliber speak at the event was a real highlight,” said Farewell. “We also appreciated the fact that she rolled up her sleeves and led a series of very animated roundtable discussions.”
While the event’s objective, Farewell said, is to promote the commercialization of promising research by bringing together all the resources UVM faculty and other innovators need to move their ideas to market, an equally important goal is to “thank the UVM researchers who have put some much time and effort into working with us,” she said.
“They've made the effort of working with us on patents and licensing and many other things, which is a lot of work, and the day really exists to honor them.”
Farewell also hopes the publicity will spur others to follow suit.
“The more people we can get engaged, the more people understand and see the process and see colleagues who have been successful in the process, the more likely they are themselves to engage, which would be a great outcome for everyone.”
In recent years, the University of Vermont has seen a dramatic increase in its intellectual property and technology transfer activity. Sixty of the university’s 133 patents were issued in the past five years. UVM has more than 50 active licenses with commercial entities engaged to bring a variety of products that reflect the breadth of scientific disciplines at UVM to market. Over 20 startups have been formed, including 16 companies in Vermont.
Awardees at the 2015 Invention 2 Venture conference included the following:
Hall of Fame (awarded to inventors with first commercial sales of a product or service)
Methods and Treatments for optimizing treatment of Atrial Fibrillation
- Jason Bates, Ph.D.
- Peter Spector, M.D.
MEMS Vibration Energy Harvester
- Jun-Ru Wu, Ph.D.
- Robert Andosca, Ph.D.
UVM License Awards (awarded to inventors of technologies that have been licensed to a commercial entity for development)
BioSense Webster Inc.
- Peter Spector, M.D.
Pre-Tel Inc.
- Roger Young, M.D.
Mhission LLC
- Tom Simpatico, M.D.
Mitotherapeutix Inc.
- Mercedes Rincon, Ph.D.
- Ketki Hatle, Ph.D.
- Wiser Systems LLC
- William Cats-Baril, Ph.D.
- Isabelle Desjardins, M.D.
- Sanchit Maruti, M.D.
- Robert Althoff, M.D.
Patent plaques (awarded to inventors of record on issued patents)
Micro-Fabricated Double Condenser Method and Apparatus for the Measurement of Number-Size Distribution of Airborne Nano-Particles
- Terence Barrett
- Britt Holmen
Treatments Involving Glutaredoxins and Similar Agents
- Yvonne Janssen-Heininger
- Niki L. Reynaert
- Vikas Anathy
- Scott Aesif
Breath Biofeedback System and Method
- Peter M. Bingham
- Jason Bates
Aeroacoustic Duster
- Jeffrey Marshall
- Di Chen
- Nicholas Mario Vachon
- Darren Hitt
- Jun-Ru Wu
Highly sensitive immunoassays and antibodies for detection of blood factor VIII
- Behnaz Parhami-Seren
- Kenneth Mann
- David Fass
Portable Ultrafine Particle Sizer Apparatus
- Andrew Vize
- Matthew Casari
- Britt Holmen
- Jeff Frolik
Low Numerical Aperture Exclusion Imaging
- Guy Kennedy
Mesoporous inorganic oxide spheres and method of making same
- Christopher Landry
- Terry W. Nassivera
Uses of systems with degrees of freedom poised between fully quantum and fully classical states
- Stuart Kauffman
- Samuli Niiranen
- Gabor Vattay
Methods and Systems for Determining Spatiotemporal Variability for Mapping Cardiac Fibrillation
- Peter Spector
Detection of Glutathionylated Proteins
- Yvonne Janssen-Heininger
- Niki Reynaert