UK OTC's January 2018 Commercialization Connect Newsletter

UK OTC's Commercialization Connect Newsletter

COMMERCIALIZATION CONNECT

January 2018

In this Issue:

Yang-Tse Cheng Becomes National Academy of Inventors Fellow
CEFoundry Completes UKAccel
Save-the-Date for Patent Palooza! 2018
KYIN-LEX SBIR Fraud, Waste and Abuse Training Event
SBIR/STTR Commercialization Clinic
By the Numbers: Patents and Licenses November and December 2017
OTC Team Announcements: Chairs, Boards & Speakers Oh My!
Events of Interest to Inventors and Entrepreneurs

1. Yang-Tse Cheng Becomes National Academy of Inventors Fellow

Dr. Yang-Tse Cheng, Frank J. Derbyshire Professor of Materials Science, was recently elected to the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellows Program, thereby becoming a part of a world-wide group of 912 university, government and non-profit institute inventors.

Election to NAI Fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society. Dr. Cheng holds 48 U.S. patents.

Dr. Cheng does research in the areas of energy conservation and storage materials, nanostructured materials, and sustainable manufacturing. Before coming to UK, he spent 12 years at the General Motors Research and Development Center.

In addition to the Fellows induction ceremony April 5, 2018 in Washington, DC, at NAI's Annual Meeting, Dr. Cheng will also be recognized for this honor at the OTC's Patent Palooza event March 27, 2018.

Dr. Cheng is also a fellow in the Materials Research Society and the American Physical Society.

2. CEFoundry Completes UKAccel

The UKAccel Program graduated another company in December 2017. CEFoundry is a team from the UK College of Medicine, which has developed and is further modifying a continuing healthcare education software platform. It is designed to assist healthcare organizations with the challenges that they face in planning and registering participants for live and online healthcare related training activities. This platform also tracks important data and provides much needed reports for these sponsoring organizations.

CEFoundry already had clients and revenue, but they wanted to participate in UKAccel to learn more about creating and running a startup company, and to optimize what they had been doing. Now CEFoundry will utilize the knowledge and information they discovered through the program to make an informed decision about the next steps for growth and development. CEFoundry is the 4 ^th team to graduate from UKAccel since its launch in the spring of 2017, with a fifth team/company having just begun the program: Kangaroo Keeper, founded by Stephanie Jenkins, a respiratory therapist at the UK Medical Center.

Warren Nash, Executive Director of the Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship says, “ The CEFoundry team, using the resources and mentorship provided by the UK Accel program, significantly evolved their business model and explored various other applications of the CEFoundry platform to other markets outside healthcare. I was also impressed by how fully engaged the team became with the UK Accel program, utilizing all the opportunities which the program to had to offer them.”

The University of Kentucky (UK) Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) and the Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship (VACE) are partners in the UKAccel program, which offers a professional development and experiential learning opportunity to UK researchers interested in turning their intellectual property into a potential startup. With guidance from the OTC and VACE, qualified participants will be granted UKAccel Membership to Awesome Inc , a Lexington-based start-up accelerator, to take part in an immersive experience in entrepreneurship culture. The goal is to discover if launching a start-up company is right for you!

A video overview of the program is available in the OTC Video Library .

View Past Issues of Commercialization Connect

3. Save-the-Date for Patent Palooza! 2018

Save-the-date for Patent Palooza! 2018. It will be held on March 27th at the Boone Center, from 4 - 6pm.

This will be the 2nd Annual event for the OTC, where we recognize innovation in the UK community. Recognition will be given to inventors on patents, inventors whose patents have been licensed, researchers and startup companies who have received SBIR/STTR grants, UKAccel graduates, and innovators being recognized by the National Academy of Inventors.

Last year’s event was a big success, with food, drinks and fun. Due to space limitations, attendance at the event is by invitation only. Recipients of this email that desire to attend should please contact Taunya Phillips , and we will make sure you are considered to receive an invitation.

4. KYIN-LEX SBIR Fraud, Waste and Abuse Training Event

The Kentucky Innovation Network in Lexington is sponsoring a webinar event (with discussion and networking) that will teach SBIR recipients how to comply with federal regulations without stumbling into the land of inadvertent Fraud, Waste or Abuse! SBIR is a $2.5B/yr program that provides grant funding in the range of $150,000 to >$1M to high-tech startups. But, free money is not free! The program has significant rules to protect the taxpayer.

The event is January 31st at 1:00pm, at Commerce Lexington (330 East Main St, Lexington, KY). FREE lunch will be provided by KYIN-LEX starting at 12:30pm. To learn more or to register, click here .

5. SBIR/STTR Commercialization Clinic

The OTC is joining with Kentucky Science & Technology Corporation to host a Commercialization Clinic on February 12, 2018, from 8:30am to 5:00pm in the Venture Studio, Room 124, in the Gatton College of Business & Economics. Lunch will be provided.

This SBIR/STTR Commercialization clinic will be an intense, hands-on clinic designed to cover strategies on how to leverage NIH SBIR/STTR Programs for commercial success. Presented by commercialization expert Dr. Lenka Fedorkova, the clinic will provide an overview and unique perspective based on actual cases and lessons learned from successful awardees. Fedorkova is the CEO of bioPrime, LLC, a professional advisory services firm dedicated to helping researchers, entrepreneurs and start-ups secure non-dilutive SBIR/STTR funding and develop commercialization strategies.

UK faculty, post docs and graduate students can receive a 20% discount on the clinic price, when the following registration codes are used by January 25, 2018 - UKFAC or UKPOSTDOC . Click here to register.

6. By the Numbers: Patents and Licenses November and December 2017

UK IP LICENSING DEALS

Epionc, Inc.

David Watt, Chunming Liu (Molecular & Cellular Biochemistry)

W. Neudorff GmbH KG

Douglas Archbold, Marta Nosarzewski (Horticulture)

Flow Max, LLC

Andrezej Wala, Todor Petrov (Mining Engineering)

Parcure, LLC

Vivek Rangnekar (Radiation Medicine)

Enepret, Inc.

Joe Chappell, Chase Kempenski (Pharmaceutical Sciences)

ISSUED PATENTS

9,821,037

Joe Chappell, Tom Neihaus, Kristin Linscott Pharmaceutical Sciences)

9,835,621

Mark Lovell, Bert Lynn (Chemistry)

7. OTC Team Announcements: Chairs, Boards & Speakers Oh My!

The OTC Team is working to make an impact in the area of technology commercialization through participation in national and regional groups and meetings. As well, some team members have been recognized for their efforts outside of the realm of commercialization.

Ian McClure has been named the current Chair of OVALS (a group tech transfer offices from the Midwest/Ohio Valley)
Sabrina Darnell has been named the co-chair of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) Compliance Course Committee
Taunya Phillips has been named to the board of the Midwest University Research Network
Taunya Phillips received the Terry B. Mobley Philanthropy Service Award
Ian McClure will be speaking at the upcoming AUTM Annual Meeting on a panel titled “Business Development: Does it Impact the Bottom Line? (1:45-3:15pm on Monday, February 19)