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No. 7 | UCLA's Research Collaboration Newsletter
| Spring, 2004 |
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Additional Articles
UCLA Announces Pre-seed Investment Fund to Help Jump-start
Faculty Entrepreneurs
Lab2Market Investment Fund opens a new avenue for technology
transfer at UCLA. Two potential startups receive money from
the Fund, more to be announced.
by
Jeyling Chou
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A new pre-seed investment fund will help align UCLA faculty entrepreneurs with the venture capital community and UCLA technology with the marketplace.
The appropriately named Lab2Market Investment Fund, which will provide up to $25,000 to a faculty researcher whose work shows the potential of yielding a marketable product, is the first of its kind for the University of California.
Created by the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property Administration (OIPA) as a launching pad of immediate funding for product development research, the fund can help with initial costs of experiments and lead to additional funding from outside sources.
“Innovations are
often too early to determine their full market utility and
value,” said Andrew Neighbour, associate vice chancellor
for research and executive director of OIPA. “Providing
small pre-seed grants is a way to fill the gap between funded
basic research and commercial product development.”
“I
expect to help some of these technologies make their
way through the entrepreneurial cycle...”
—Tim
Draper, Founder, DFJ, Inc. |
Neighbour—along
with David Lundberg, executive director of strategic alliances
for UCLA—initiated the idea for the fund as a mechanism
to bring together local venture capital groups that had
expressed interest in UCLA research with faculty who needed
to establish connections with such funding sources.
The first recipient of the fund was Dr. Farhad Parhami, an associate professor of cardiology in the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, whose work has revealed new knowledge in a potential therapy for osteoporosis.
In the spirit of entrepreneurship, Parhami hopes to bring his discoveries to the marketplace, but needed a source of funding that—unlike a grant from the National Institutes of Health—was more readily available and would support the exploration necessary for product development.
The Lab2Market fund is managed by OIPA with the contribution of three California venture capital firms: Santa Barbara-based Cycad Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) of Menlo Park, and Zone Ventures located in Los Angeles.
“The UCLA pre-seed fund is a very exciting vehicle to bring forth technologies that look promising enough to commercialize,” said Tim Draper, the founder and managing director of DFJ.
“We at Draper Fisher Jurvetson look at the UCLA pre-seed fund as a technology smorgasbord, a great source of deal flow, and maybe even as a good financial investment.”
The joining of forces required to develop the fund is supportive of OIPA's initiative to increase collaboration between key academic, venture, and industrial players.
In a win-win situation for all parties involved, the participating venture firms will receive first option to invest in any start-up companies that emerge from research benefited by the Lab2Market fund. The involvement of these firms provides the perspective of marketability and commercial viability in research results. Faculty recipients, on the other hand, will be able to pursue research objectives with a reliable monetary source that might otherwise be difficult to locate and obtain.
“Moving university research to the marketplace provides a return to society and the public who have contributed through taxes to the support of the research,” Neighbour said.
“It also provides a linkage between industry and our faculty who may benefit from the partnership through additional research support, and access to equipment and materials that the private sector possesses,” he added.
Most recently, electrical engineering professor and department chair, Yahya Rahmat-Samii, became the fund's second recipient.
In Rahmat-Samii's case, the money will be put towards further development of his software for antenna design in the hopes of making it friendlier to the individual user and ultimately to the market.
“In a lot of research projects or software, we don't have additional funds to give much attention to simplicity of application, or taking it to the next level and making it user-friendly,” Rahmat-Samii said.
Rahmat-Samii was introduced to this funding opportunity by working with Ken Polasko, a business development manager for OIPA.
“Ken's interaction was pivotal to bringing this opportunity to our attention,” Rahmat-Samii said. “It's a great idea.”
The money has already allowed Rahmat-Samii to hire two engineering graduate students who will work on streamlining and increasing the graphics appeal of the software.
“Outside users don't want to spend too much time to get into the details of the program...they just want to utilize it,” Rahmat-Samii said.
“Funds of this nature allow some of these more sophisticated and powerful programs to find their way to another class of applications,” he added.
 
Related Links
UCLA Lab2Market Investment Fund, Press Release - more
UCLA Lab2Market Investment Fund, PoC: David Lundberg,
lundberg@support.ucla.edu
UCLA Antenna Research, Analysis, and Measurement Laboratory - www.ee.ucla.edu/antlab/
Cycad Group - www.cycadvc.com
Draper Fisher Jurvetson - www.dfj.com
Zone Ventures - www.zonevc.com
UCLA's OIPA - www.research.ucla.edu/oipa
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