U Texas-El Paso POC Fund Supports 3-D Printing Breast Cancer Application

Women undergoing lumpectomies to remove tumors or breast cancer are often faced with two options: spend months filling the void with a series of fat injections, which then have the potential to be reabsorbed into the body; or do nothing, which can leave breasts disfigured and asymmetrical. Now an Austin entrepreneur, in partnership with a […]

Iowa State announces $300m in proof of concept awards

Three projects received awards under a smaller, proof-of-concept category. These awards provide pursuit funds for emerging research areas that are more limited in scope or require proof of concept before investigators can pursue larger funding. Each project will receive up to $100,000 for one year

Florida bill establishes the Florida Technology Seed Capital Fund

CS/HB 705 passed the House on April 17, 2013 and subsequently passed the Senate on April 26, 2013. The bill amends s. 288.9625 F.S., to include innovation businesses among the entities eligible to receive assistance from the Florida Institute for the Commercialization of Public Research (Institute). The bill also grants the Institute the ability to […]

University of Iowa Accepting Pre-Proposals For Commercialization Awards Program

UIRF is accepting pre-proposals for the 2013 commercialization award program. Despite the delay in the Iowa state final budget approval, UIRF is now accepting pre-proposal innovation summaries. As we did last year, we will work with PIs to perform IP and market assessments on each summary. Pre-proposals successfully completing these assessments will be asked to submit […]

One Year In, Harvard XFund Backs Three Start-ups, Ratchets Up Student Entrepreneurship

When a group of Harvard alumni formed the Experiment Fund (Xfund) a little over a year ago, they were hoping that their seed fund would nourish a burgeoning entrepreneurial culture on campus—and beyond—and make a profit as well. New companies are spawned in garages, basements, and at kitchen tables everywhere. But the most productive environments for incubating […]

U Houston GEAR Program Supports Researchers At $30K An Idea

Ask any professor: A good idea alone isn’t likely to receive serious research funding. Big awards almost always have some data that supports the project, that shows the researcher’s idea should work. In a classic catch-22, though, getting this data itself takes money. Materials for experiments, graduate student time, lab space, computing power – none […]

U Virginia Launches Crowdfunding Initiative

The University of Virginia (and an increasing number of research universities) is leveraging crowd-sourced funding to support and highlight ongoing research projects. “We hear from a lot of stakeholders and a lot of others that they would like to know more [about projects] and understand how to better engage with us,” said Mark Crowell, executive […]

UT Horizon Fund Aims to Build, and Capture, Value from Its Startups

Like other universities, UT has already acquired ownership stakes in spinoff companies by accepting equity as part of the compensation for licensing its intellectual property to startups. Since the Horizon Fund began operations last year, it has been able to invest aggressively, at a time when many universities can’t. The UT Horizon Fund has also […]