Newsletter
Summer 2020


Over the course of three weeks, roughly 400 participants and mentors from around the world – including from many of the world’s top education, research, and technology institutions – have teamed up as a result of the UCSF COVID-19 Hackathon hosted by the UCSF LaunchPad and UCSF Catalyst Program to design new innovative and technical solutions to the health, medical, and scientific challenges we face due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects have ranged from innovative mental health applications, fascinating telehealth models, pioneering medical devices and PPE, state-of-the-art epidemiology and public health solutions, as well as cutting edge therapeutics and diagnostics. All these innovative and elegant solutions have made great strides since their initial video submissions and all the hard work, creativity, and collaboration is both inspiring and making a real difference in the fight against the novel coronavirus. 

View the Hackathon's Kickoff Event and Showcase Finale !

Hackathon Awardees

$2500 –  Syntegra  sponsored Grand Prize –  bunnyPAPR
$1500 – UCSF LaunchPad sponsored S econd Place Prize  –  Calm On
$1000 – UCSF LaunchPad sponsored T hird Place Prize –  text COVID

  • One-year sponsored lab bench at MBC BioLabs
  • One-year sponsored access to our core facility equipped with >$2 million worth of research instruments
  • Access to the shared amenities and services provided at MBC BioLabs


QB3

Mentorship and pitch sessions:

All projects are eligible for the following Amazon Web Services benefits: 
  • $5,000 in AWS Credits valid for 2 years
  • 1 year of AWS Business Support (up to $1,500)
  • 80 credits for Self-Paced Labs

Thank you to all of our sponsors for you generous support!


2020 Catalyst Awardees
Catalyst Awards are the centerpiece of the Catalyst Program. UCSF principal investigators with promising early-stage research projects designed for patient benefit and with commercial potential spanning therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, digital health, and biotools can apply. Awarded projects receive mentorship and advice from our pool of expert industry advisors as well as seed funding. The most recent Catalyst Award cycle was very competitive with over 80 project applications and 25 finalists selected to present their projects to the Catalyst Industry Advisor Award Committee that selected the following 16 projects as the 2020 Catalyst Awardees:

The Catalyst Awardees are currently working on their Target Product Profiles (“TPP”) to help advance the awarded projects along the translational pathway and this summer recruited 65 interns from UCSF, UC Berkeley, UC Hastings, Stanford, and San Francisco State University to help the 2020 Catalyst Awardee Project Teams create the TPP. In June, the Catalyst Program facilitated a workshop with the program's expert industry advisors for the Catalyst Awardee Project Teams and Catalyst Interns focused on the development of a TPP. The workshop topics included the role of the TPP in translational studies, Project Management, Intellectual Property, as well as the importance of the TPP for product development and commercialization. Project Teams will develop and present their TPP this Fall to expert industry advisors for additional feedback.
Erica Pascal, PhD, JD (left) presented on Intellectual Property and Ken Fang, MD (right) presented on the importance of the TPP for product development and commercialization during the TPP Workshop.


Highlighted Efforts from Members of the Catalyst Program Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Aenor Sawyer, MD , Chief Health Innovation Officer at the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, Director of the UCSF Skeletal Health Service, and catalyzed the Digital Health Track of the Catalyst Program, innovatively engineered a way to refurbish thousands of expired N95 masks. Learn more.

UCSF professor of Laboratory Medicine and Catalyst Program Awardee Charles Chiu, MD, PhD and his lab are sequencing COVID-19 virus genomes to track mutations and understand the spread of the infection. Learn more .

Additionally, Dr. Chiu's new CRISPR technologies are critical to the next generation of COVID-19 testing that could give results in about 45 minutes. Learn more.

Success Story
Congratulations to previous Catalyst Awardee Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD , on the US FDA approval of the first video game therapeutic as a treatment for ADHD in children based on his research. Learn more .
Digital Health Awards Again to Honor Digital Healthcare
UCSF Innovation Ventures and Health Hub have announced the second annual  UCSF Digital Health Awards . These awards will honor outstanding new digital technologies that not only dramatically improve healthcare but do so by means that reduce costs and improve access to medical innovations. This year the award show will be live-streamed to ensure our participants good health.

Applications are being accepted now. Learn More.
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