News Release
UC San Diego's Entrepreneurism Center Funds Nine New Faculty Projects for Technology Commercialization
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Paul Kedrosky Executive Director The von Liebig Center |
San Diego, CA, May 22, 2006 -- The William J. von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at the University of California, San Diego has awarded approximately $430,000 to nine projects led by faculty from UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering.
Nine professors and four other senior researchers will embark on projects that include: a bioengineered treatment for anemia; a new miniature camera for certain types of minimally invasive surgery; and a way of spinning carbon nanotubes into thread that could be woven into a material with more tensile strength than today's carbon composites. Six of the nine projects deal with medical technology (see below).
"This latest solicitation was the largest and most successful in the center's history," said Paul Kedrosky, executive director of the von Liebig Center. "We had the strongest field of proposals ever, including a number of excellent partnership proposals where Jacobs School faculty partnered with others from the School of Medicine and elsewhere."
The von Liebig Center has now awarded a total of more than $2 million to 51 projects led by Jacobs School faculty. Over the last four years, the center has helped faculty commercialize their inventions, with more than a dozen licenses signed. The von Liebig Center's grantees have generated in excess of $35 million.
Two departments -- Bioengineering, as well as Computer Science and Engineering -- account for three newly-approved projects each. Two others are based in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and one in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department.
This was the eighth round of funding since the von Liebig Center was set up in 2001 to foster entrepreneurism education and to provide funding and advisory services to technology projects at the Jacobs School that have strong commercial potential. Each round of awards was the result of a rigorous screening process, including reviews by an external committee of industry experts.
BIOENGINEERING
Trey Ideker and Steven Briggs, "Development and Commercialization of a Designed Regulatory Protein (DRP) that Activates the Erythropoietin Gene in the Treatment of Anemia"
Michael J. Heller, "Active Microelectronic Array for Massively Parallel Peptide Synthesis and Binding Constant Analysis"
Andrew McCulloch, "Patient-Specific Optimization of Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy"
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Pavel Pevzner and Vineet Bafna, "Next-Generation Computational Mass Spectrometry for Proteomics"
Yannis Papakonstantinou, "App2you: Customizable Web Applications for Everyone"
A platform for the construction of innovative web applications.
David Kriegman, "Software for Specularity Removal from Images and Video."
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
Yoav Mintz (PI), Yuhwa Lo and Truong Nguyen, "Intra-Cavitary Miniature Portable Camera"
MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING
Kenneth Vecchio, "Continuous Yarning of Ultra-Long Carbon Nanotubes for Structural Integration"
Mark Tillack, "A Technique for Debris Reduction in Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Light Sources"
Media Contacts
Doug Ramsey
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-822-5825
dramsey@ucsd.edu