MIT and Imperial launch seed fund to support ‘risky’ research

David Matthews is a reporter covering research, links between universities and businesses, higher education in South America, universities in the south of England, as well as Oxford, Cambridge Imperial College London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in supporting “risky” research that might otherwise not be funded. […]

Yale, UConn Get $10 Million To Spur Biotech Ventures – Hartford Courant

Yale and UConn are collaborating to launch a new initiative to spur the creation of biotechnology companies in Connecticut. With a $10 million grant from Connecticut’s Bioscience Innovation Fund, the new effort will be called Program in Innovative Therapeutics for Connecticut’s Health or “PITCH” and will be created by the Yale Center for Molecular Discovery […]

U Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative fund, Oculus, team on new fund

The University of Maryland is working to establish itself as the premier virtual reality research center in the nation, and on Thursday it received a huge public sector vote of confidence. The Department of Computer Science at UMd will have all of the private donations it receives of at least $500,000 for endowed professorships doubled […]

University of Wisconsin FluGen snaps up $12 mln Series A

FluGen Inc., a biotechnology company developing a novel “universal” influenza vaccine, has completed a $12 million Series A financing. Venture Investors LLC, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, and other new investors participated in this first institutional financing of the company, along with many of FluGen’s existing investors led […]

Indiana University to fund $300M in research

Indiana University will invest at least $300 million during the next five years in a new research program designed to develop transformative solutions to world problems. Titled the Grand Challenges research program, it will fund up to five large-scale research projects that will be selected through a competitive review process, the university announced Wednesday. Applications […]

The United States needs a research investment fund to compete with China

America may no longer be able to boast, “We’re No. 1!” In their 2011 bestseller “That Used To Be Us,” Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum compellingly suggested the mantra no longer applies. And about a year ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made it official: China has overtaken us as the world’s largest economy. China […]

Perceptive Navigation Receives $225,000 From Maryland State Venture Fund

Perceptive Navigation, a medical device company in Baltimore, has been awarded a $225,000 investment by the Maryland Venture Fund (MVF), the state’s primary venture capital investment program. Perceptive’s first product, an ultrasound probe dubbed Vu-Path, uses the company’s advanced imaging techniques to allow surgeons to precisely place and guide the instrument during procedures. The state’s […]

Harvard offers a bridge for promising research with accelerator grants

A few years ago, Andrew Myers’ laboratory discovered a new way to synthesize an important class of antibiotics that one day could tackle the toughest, most resistant infections. “I knew we were onto something important,” said Myers, the Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, “but I couldn’t get federal funding to take the idea […]