TechTransfer and Ventures | |
Our pitch: a commitment to solving real-world problems | |
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In February, we launched VCU’s first Startup Accelerator to fast-track university-borne companies. Those eight-plus weeks of intensive consulting concluded in May with a Shark Tank-style Pitch Day competition for the five participating startups.
The competition was held at the HQ of our partners at Activation Capital, where a panel of judges awarded first place to a virtual-reality surgical training platform and second place going to an electromagnetic shielding technology to protect devices from cyber criminals. Yet Pitch Day was more than a competition — it’s one of many initiatives designed to support faculty-founded startups to ensure their technologies are known, grown, and eventually turned into products, devices, and therapies to improve society and human health.
Since we began supporting startups in 2021 with coaching and advising from our lineup of entrepreneurs-in-residence, each year we eclipse the previous number of invention disclosures, filed patents, and licenses to startups — and we are on track again in 2024.
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VCU is a part of an ecosystem of organizations transforming the Richmond region and Virginia at large into an innovation destination. In May, I had the honor of joining a dozen companies (including several VCU startups, see below) for the launch of a new statewide initiative to accelerate startup capital deployment. Virginia Invests, led by our partners at the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), is engaging seven investment funds to attract $250 million into over 100 high-growth Virginia startups. For our VCU entrepreneurial faculty, this is a huge opportunity to attract capital and bring your ideas to life over the next several years.
So here is my call to you:
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If you are VCU faculty and have entrepreneurial dreams, I encourage you to reach out to our team to learn how we can support your goals.
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If you are a partner or investor with interests in university IP and startups, contact me directly.
We hope you enjoy this edition of Launchpad and some of the stories of innovation taking shape at VCU.
Ivelina Metcheva, Ph.D., MBA
Assistant Vice President for Innovation
VCU TechTransfer and Ventures
Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation
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VCU startups on hand for launch of Virginia Invests | |
Gov. Youngkin with entrepreneurs and members of Virginia's innovation community at the launch of Virginia Invests. Among the handful of companies invited to present their technologies during the announcement were two VCU startups: Perfusion Medical's Gerard Eldering and inventor and co-founder Martin Mangino, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the School of Medicine, along with Psychology assistant professor Jarrod Reisweber, Psy.D, and local visual-effects expert Mark Lambert of Lighthouse XR, a virtual-reality platform to help individuals with substance use disorder. Several other VCU faculty-entrepreneurs were in attendance, too. | |
Former CDC director highlights importance of research, encourages educators to embrace working in government and join policymaking process | |
Rochelle Walensky, M.D., the former director of the Centers for Disease Control during the COVID-19 pandemic, delivered the keynote address during VCU Research Weeks in April. She emphasized the importance of research at a public institution: “It was how I got to the policy table. It was things that made me angry, that allowed me to move the needle forward, that allowed for policies to change because I could do science that would move those policies.” See more of her remarks. | |
See TechTransfer and Ventures' 2023 Annual Report | | |
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In our 2023 VCU TechTransfer and Ventures Annual Report, you will see stories of the VCU inventors responsible for our growing rankings, and find our year-end figures around invention disclosures, patent filings, licenses to startups, licensing revenues and much more. Our report is a showcase of a university and region whose potential is truly UNlimited. | | |
Exploring a promising pathway to treating fibrosis | A collaboration between the schools of Medicine and Pharmacy focuses on what may be a cellular trigger for the organ-scarring diseases. And it's all building of a recent Nobel Prize-winning discovery. Meet Patricia Sime, M.D. and her team. | |
Virtual-reality surgical trainer earns top spot in the first Pitch Day event for VCU faculty entrepreneurs | |
A team led by a VCU adjunct associate professor and Central Virginia Veterans Administration Health Care System urogynecologist won the university’s Startup Pitch competition for her work on a virtual-reality surgeon training system. Here's more on Pitch Day. | |
Here are the VCU inventors who got funding from a Virginia agency over the last year | |
To take ideas from a laboratory and commercialize them requires partners beyond the university and academic medical center walls. One of those partners is the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp., which drives funding, infrastructure, and policy initiatives to support innovators and startups. And VIPC's Commonwealth Commercialization Fund regularly backs VCU tech.
Here's a roundup of recent VCU fundings.
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For second year, VCU is a top 100 university for utility patents by National Academy of Inventors | |
The ranking recognizes VCU’s research culture of innovation and commitment to solving real-world problems.
“At no other time in the university’s history have our researchers been more widely recognized for their contributions to transformative innovation, said P. Srirama Rao, Ph.D., vice president for research and innovation.
Here's more on the ranking.
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...And Richmond is the No. 1 place to visit! | |
We'd be remiss not to mention that, here in Richmond, our social media feeds have been flooded with the news that our capital city was named "America's Best Town to Visit" by CNN Travel. They focused on smaller cities, looking at each town’s attractions, food and beverage offerings, nightlife and cultural scene, sense of identity, proximity to other interesting spots and "wow factor." Here's what they said about "RVA!" | | | | |
