U Utah Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization Announces Fall 2018 Seed Fund Recipients

The University of Utah’s Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization has announced the recipients of its second round of seed funding. Awardees include an LED facial-recognition camera for mobile phones, a catheter-mounted microscope that helps diagnose cardiac disease and a high-voltage lithium battery that maintains consistent energy intensity. TVC formed the seed fund in early […]

Alumni Ventures Group is the most active venture fund you’ve never heard of

Alumni Ventures Group’s (AVG) limited partners aren’t endowment or pension funds. Its typical LP is a heart surgeon in Des Moines, Iowa. The firm has both an unorthodox model of fundraising and dealmaking. Across 25 micro funds, AVG is raising and investing upwards of $200 million per year for and in tech startups. Tucked away in Boston, far […]

UChicago Opens Its High-Profile NVC Accelerator to Alumni Startups

The University of Chicago wants to give its alumni network a chance to participate in its sought-after startup accelerator program. UChicago’s New Venture Challenge, ranked among the top accelerator programs in the country, is launching an alumni track as part of its annual startup competition. Dubbed the Alumni New Venture Challenge (ANVC), the program will give graduates of […]

New innovation fund creates avenue for translational research at University of Oregon

The timeline for translating some UO research innovations into new products and businesses is about to get shorter thanks to a new seed grant program announced by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. The VPRI Innovation Fund will provide grants of $25,000 to $75,000 to qualifying UO faculty members to cover the […]

Bridging the gap between public and private research 

Although many paradigm-changing research discoveries are made by academic scientists at the university level, universities are fundamentally not set up to commercialize these discoveries and rely on out-licensing deals to translate their ideas into products. The downside is that they see a very small fraction of the profits generated by commercially successful ventures deriving from […]