Volume 8 ~ Issue 6 ~ February 2012       

Biotechnology of the Month:

First-in-Class GTPase Targeted Cancer Therapeutic & Diagnostic  

Physical Sciences Tech of the Month:

Fullerene Separation Through Use of Shape-Persistent Cubic Cages 

Recently at TTO

Recap + Video: "Inside The Black Box"  

In late January, TTO hosted an event for key stakeholders offering a look at the inner workings of tech transfer at CU. TTO's leadership (Dave Allen, Rick Silva, Tom Smerdon and Kate Tallman) provided details about how CU inventions turn into royalties, new companies and jobs, and how various internal and external groups play a role in making this happen; the event also offered a deeper look at TTO performance metrics analyzing both new and mature cohorts of CU inventions as they progress through the patent and licensing stages. We've made the slides from this event available in PDF format here (supplemental materials available here). TTO media partner w3w3.com also provided a video excerpt from the event featuring TTO head Dave Allen, and event photos available here (free registration required).

Call for Posters: CU-Boulder Save the Date: Entrepreneurship Under the Microscope

On March 14, TTO (with the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship) will host this annual event recognizing and celebrating innovation and commercialization around the CU-Boulder campus and beyond. The event will include a poster session presenting CU-Boulder technologies that are ready to take the next step toward commercialization - please email us if your lab would like to participate in the poster session.

Legislative Update: Start-up Colorado Technology Transfer Grant Program

HB 12-1044, as amended, passed out of the House Economic and Business Development Committee and has been introduced to the House Appropriation Committee. The bill, if enacted, would provide grants to Colorado's universities and research institutions (to offices of technology transfer) directed to the creation of start-up companies.

Don Elliman Appointed Interim CU Denver Chancellor

Colorado Cleantech Announces New Chairman

InDevR Expands Commercialization Team

CBSA BioBreakfast: The CU Biofrontiers Institute 

February 22, University Memorial Center, Boulder

Hosted by the Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA), this breakfast will provide an update on the University of Colorado Biofrontiers Institute, an interdisciplinary multi-campus initiative to leverage and expand Colorado's leadership in biotechnology. Featured speaker: Tom Cech, Director (Distinguished Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute).

CPIA Quarterly Meeting: Technology Transfer from Colorado Universities to the Private Sector 

February 22, Rocky Mountain Instrument Company, Lafayette

Hosted by the Colorado Photonics Industry Association (CPIA). Learn about the process, pitfalls, and possibilities of university tech transfer from a panel composed of representatives of several Colorado university technology transfer offices and Colorado photonics companies which utilize university technology.

Save the Date: RETool: Developing Business & Careers in the New Energy Economy 

Focused on a clean-energy future? Get ahead of the curve and take RETool: a 4-day executive education certificate program hosted by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) at CU-Boulder. RETool provides a deep-dive short course for individuals seeking to "retool" their skills to enter the clean energy field, as well as for businesses seeking new opportunities in cleantech. 2012 Spring sessions (may be attended individually):

Friday, February 24: Clean Energy Policies

Friday, March 23: The Business of Clean Energy

Friday, April 13: Clean Energy Integration & the Future

What Investors Want: How to Position Your Company for Funding Success 

February 28, Denver Athletic Club, Denver

Hosted by the Rockies Venture Club. Learn how to identify the right funding sources for you; how to research what investors want. How to most effectively establish relationships and communicate with investors. And how to position your company to make it attractive so that investors are coming to you rather than the other way around.

Winter 2012 Venture Capital in the Rockies 

February 28 - March 1, Park Hyatt, Beaver Creek

VCIR Winter showcases the rocky mountain region's most promising emerging growth companies for an audience of over 300 venture investors, CEOs, entrepreneurs and service professionals.

Energy Innovation Speaker Series: "U.S. Wind Energy Challenges and Opportunities" 

March 1, CU-Boulder

Rob Gramlich is Senior Vice President of Public Policy for the American Wind Energy Association, the national trade association of approximately 2500 entities involved in all aspects of wind energy production, based in Washington, D.C. Hosted by the CU Law School, the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), and Silicon Flatirons.

Entrepreneurs Unplugged: Jim Franklin, SendGrid 

March 5, CU-Boulder

CU's Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP present Jim Franklin as the featured entrepreneur with moderators Brad Bernthal, Brad Feld and Jill VanMatre. Jim Franklin is the CEO of SendGrid, Inc., a Foundry-backed infrastructure applications company.

Boulder/Denver New Technology Meetup 

March 6, CU-Boulder

This ongoing event provides a forum for technologists and entrepreneurs to showcase the new (especially web-based) technology developing in Boulder/Denver tech community. Five companies have five minutes each to demonstrate their new technology, followed by five minutes for Q&A from the audience.

Entrepreneurship Under the Microscope 

March 14, CU-Boulder

Join the CU Tech Transfer Office and the Leeds School of Business' Deming Center for Entrepreneurship  in recognizing and celebrating innovation and commercialization around the CU-Boulder campus and beyond. Meet and network with students, faculty, staff, alumni, administration, and business community members. Hear from today's movers about big (and small) ideas in today's most interesting and exciting sectors. This event will include a poster session presenting CU-Boulder technologies that are ready to take the next step toward commercialization (email us if you'd like to participate in the poster session).

C-Level @ Mile High 

March 15, Sports Authority Field at Mile High, Denver

Hosted by the Colorado Technology Association, this annual event is a unique opportunity to bid on more than 60 C-Level decision makers who have the key to unlocking your business potential. No other event in Colorado has as many technology executives in one place and at one time ready to hear what your company has to offer.

Sustainable Opportunities Summit 

March 21, Colorado Convention Center, Denver

If you haven't made sustainability a key driver in your business strategy, the 2012 Sustainable Opportunities Summit is your chance to learn best practices and success strategies from the top sustainable business leaders in the Rocky Mountain Region. If you've already begun integrating sustainable practices, the Summit also offers valuable tools to expand your efforts and realize greater benefits going forward.

Mile High Tech Entrepreneurship Conference: Angel Financing 

March 22, CU-Boulder

Learn about angel investors, and the role of angel financing in Colorado's tech environment. Hosted by CU's Silicon Flatirons center, this year's confirmed participants include include Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group , and Anthony Chan of JP Morgan.

To have your event featured here, please send an email to TTOnews@cu.edu.

High-Tech Concentration of State Economies 2003-2008 

The most recent edition of the National Science Foundation's Science and Engineering Indicators presents some mixed results on the significance of high-tech companies and jobs in the U.S. economy. Via SSTI: tables of the state data provided in the NSF report including high-tech business formation, high-tech business establishments and high-tech employment and the proportion they represent in the state economy. High-tech business formation in most states was adversely affected by the recession that began in 2008. Only Colorado maintained a consistently high rate of high-tech company formation throughout the period from 2004 to 2008.

U.S. Government, Universities Must Partner to Address Shifts in International Competitiveness, Report Indicates 

A new report from the Center for American Progress contends that increasing globalization, connectivity, access and acceleration of technology has caused an urgent need for investment in innovation. To resolve this issue, the authors believe that the U.S. government and institutions of higher education must work in partnership "not only to accelerate its investments in research and innovation but also to continually reevaluate and redesign the traditional mechanisms (e.g., funding and public policy)."

Competition Intensifies Among U.S. Tech Clusters 

The weak economy of the past four years combined with cutbacks due to mergers and acquisitions have helped consolidate U.S. biopharma activity further within the nation's largest life sciences clusters. Yet that has not stopped several other U.S. regions from trying to carve out their own piece of the life science pie. The real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) highlighted nine examples of what it called emerging bioclusters (PDF). The regions in descending order as ranked by JLL are Minneapolis, Raleigh-Durham, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Florida, Atlanta, and Indianapolis.

Roundup: University, Community, State, National and International Initiatives

$1M Donation from Anonymous University of Buffalo Faculty Member will Create Fund to Commercialize Research 

A University at Buffalo faculty member has anonymously donated $1M to the university to establish a fund that supports commercializing the discoveries and inventions of his UB colleagues. The donation has been made as a match challenge, and will be used to finance prototype development, proof-of-concept studies and other research that will advance UB faculty inventions.

"Great Scientists [...] are men of bold ideas, but highly critical of their own ideas: they try to find whether their ideas are right by trying first to find whether they are not perhaps wrong. They work with bold conjectures and severe attempts at refuting their own conjectures."

Karl Raimund Popper, Austrian/British philosopher of science.

University of Colorado's Office of Technology Transfer Mission Statement