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UCLA launches tech incubator to bring research to marketplace

For four years, a team of researchers led by Eric Hoek worked on adding nanoparticles to a water-purifying membrane in an effort to increase its efficiency to desalinate sea water for human consumption. Their goal: to address the growing and global scarcity of potable water by making the technology of desalination commercially viable.

The nanocomposite membrane yields twice as much potable water as regular membranes – at least in the laboratory. To help mass-produce nanocomposite membranes based on the UCLA technology, Hoek, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and a faculty member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), began a collaboration in 2005 with NanoH2O, a private industry startup devoted to developing the next generation of water purification technology.

The collaboration was a classic example – and one of the early success stories – of CNSI’s mission to fuel economic development by nurturing new technologies and transferring them from the lab to the clinical arena and commercial market. That objective was recently enhanced by inviting startups that use UCLA technology – and include a faculty representative – to conduct early research at CNSI, while taking advantage of a new component of the incubator program: Expert advice on business matters offered by the Anderson School of Management and the School of Law.

In a conference on March 24, CNSI launched a “technology incubator” – the first of its kind for UC – in conjunction with UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research (OIP-ISR). The event, held in the CNSI auditorium, brought together faculty entrepreneurs, representatives of industry startups and venture capital firms.

The UCLA on-campus technology incubator will be housed in the CNSI building and will offer four to five separate startup projects access to a total of 1,000 square feet of flexible lab space for 18 to 24 months. Only companies that use technology owned by the UC regents will be admitted, and the startups will pay a modest rent based on Westwood market rates.

“The very location of this incubation space – right here at the CNSI building – provides startups with direct access to eight state-of-the-art core lab facilities offering a wide array of instrumentation, including training and in-house technical expertise,” said Leonard H. Rome, CNSI’s interim director and senior associate dean for research at the David Geffen School of Medicine.

In addition to the labs, some of which are under construction, startups will have access to the 260-seat auditorium as well as conference rooms and interaction spaces, replete with wireless Internet facilities, Rome said, adding that CNSI is making efforts to double the incubator space and establish a $10 million endowment for seed funding of startup projects.

Besides NanoH2O, which became part of the incubator in July 2007 and secured $15 million in funding to commercialize its technology in September 2008, CNSI added another startup last November: Matrix Sensors, Inc., a gas and biological sensor systems company developed by Chemistry Professor Jim Gimzewski in collaboration with researchers at Stanford University. The startup’s technology “promises highly sensitive and accurate detection of harmful gases for practical applications in public and industrial settings,” Rome said.

The incubator is a “culmination of a list of accomplishments made by UCLA over at least five years and highlights the cohesiveness of UCLA’s family – faculty, staff, administration and students, all coming together behind a goal of creating an improved culture of entrepreneurship,” said Kathryn Atchison, vice provost for OIP-ISR.

The first of several milestones along the incubator’s journey, she noted, was in 2004, when faculty requested then-Chancellor Albert C. Carnesale that “more attention be paid to their many critical, exciting research discoveries,” Atchison said. The Chancellor’s Office “responded aggressively” by offering more support for the faculty’s needs, including expanding the staff within OIP-ISR.

The on-campus incubator is essentially what Atchison described as “an experiment” to determine a set of best practices aimed at furthering UCLA’s research efforts geared toward private industry. UCLA is also considering a 20,000-square foot off-campus incubator, possibly in its existing facility in Santa Monica, to conduct early-state research. Eventually the university plans to develop a full-fledged research park, she added.

To determine the criteria for what kind of startups will be housed in the incubator and how long they should stay, OIP-ISR has established a faculty advisory committee that includes CNSI members, the School of Medicine, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Public Health, the College of Letters and Science, the Anderson School and the School of Law.

The success of startups in the incubator program will be judged by a set of criteria that the OIP-ISR is still in the process of determining. The extent of funding, especially in today’s economic climate, will be one measure, Atchison said, adding that another measure will be the speed with which startups accelerate their research by demanding increased access to core lab facilities. Companies are already showing interest. “We received 13 applications today – and we haven’t even had an official opening,” quipped Atchison.

The CNSI’s activities and its interim director’s effort to promote them have generated “lots of excitement and are really going to pay off,” said Chancellor Gene D. Block in the conference’s keynote address. Recounting what he called an “intellectual property story that was painful for me,” he said that 12 years ago he was riding in a car driven by a former colleague of his from the University of Virginia when he noticed that the colleague’s use of a cell phone was hampering his driving.

“Normally we have these high-frequency corrections on the steering wheel, and I noticed that when you’re on a cell phone you weave a little bit because you can’t pay attention to two things at one time,” Block said. He recalled thinking that “if you have an artificial intelligence program that keeps track of steering wheel movements, you could pretty accurately tell whether a person’s fatigued or inebriated – and there might actually be a way to prevent an accident.”

Block said that “being an inventor,” he shot off a proposal to the UVA’s patent foundation. “And I get this response: ‘Well, you know, we need some more research, and we really don’t have the facilities … and we can’t really support these activities to get them to a place where they might be marketable.’ ”

Still, Block “always liked that idea.” Sure enough, he later came across a magazine article about automobile gizmos, “and right there it said that the high-end Mercedes is coming out with a program that measures wheel movements using artificial intelligence programs …”

The moral of that story, Block said, is that “there is a need for investments in intellectual property” because, more than ever before, California requires business-oriented technology from universities like UCLA, the largest land-grant university in the nation’s second-largest city, where the unemployment rate is currently high.

UCLA graduates often end up in Northern California for information technology opportunities and in Southern California for opportunities in the pharmacological industry, Block said, adding: “One of the goals of this incubator is to keep technology here in Los Angeles, where we have a tremendous debt to our community.”