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Activities

August 2016 Innovation Gateway Highlights

Three new staff recently joined Innovation Gateway. Senior Associate Director of Startups Ian Biggs will focus on strengthening UGA’s startup program by improving startup scalability, increasing the number and quality of fundable ventures, enhancing education and mentoring, and improving the overall speed and efficiency of the UGA startup process.

  • Three new staff recently joined Innovation Gateway. Senior Associate Director of Startups Ian Biggs will focus on strengthening UGA’s startup program by improving startup scalability, increasing the number and quality of fundable ventures, enhancing education and mentoring, and improving the overall speed and efficiency of the UGA startup process. Administrative specialist Linda Dodson will help ensure that licensee companies comply with license agreement terms, including timely reporting and prompt payment of royalties, and administrative associate Heather Pierce will help support the startup program and the incubator facility.
  • EMD Millipore and Innovation Gateway entered into two license agreements for the sale of three polyclonal antibodies developed by Harry Dailey, emeritus professor of biochemistry and molecular biology.
  • Innovation Gateway, UGA and the US Department of Energy entered into a Memorandum of Understanding that provides for technologies developed at UGA by Debra Mohnen, Janet Westpheling, and Michael Adams, to be included in the next SBIR/STTR call for proposals. The biofuels-related technologies were developed through funding from the BioEnergy Science Center (BESC).
  • The Plant Breeding Practicum class led by Brian Schwartz, department of crop and soil sciences, invited guest speakers from Innovation Gateway to discuss intellectual property practices around new plant varieties.
  • UGA horticulture innovators John Ruter and Donglin Zhang participated in meetings with Innovation Gateway staff and a representative from an ornamental plant nursery regarding the potential licensing of new plant cultivars.
  • The 2016 Investor Initiatives for NCI SBIR Awardees program selected UGA start-up and incubator resident Lectenz Bio to showcase technology at Redefining Early-Stage Investments (RESI) Conference’s Innovation Challenge. G&D also received the “Best Poster Award” for their GlycoSense technology at the Biomanufacturing Technology Summit.
  • Innovation Gateway licensed an ornamental grass as well as an ornamental peanut developed by Wayne Hanna, department of crop and soil sciences, to a Georgia company for production and sales in Georgia.
  • A technology for the augmented production of metabolites derived from the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle was licensed to a major Asian company with global operations for the production of L-glutamic acid from biomass. The technology was developed by Mark Eiteman, College of Engineering, in collaboration with Elliot Altman and Ravi Gokarn.
  • A license was executed with Hayden-McNeil Publishers for the publication and distribution of a new lab manual for STAT 2000, authored by Jennifer Kaplan and Kristen Roland, department of statistics, in collaboration with colleagues at Meredith College and N.C. State University.
  • Innovation Gateway executed multiple agreements for peanut cultivars developed by Bill Branch, department of crop and soil sciences.
  • Innovation Gateway staff met with incoming graduate students at the 2016 Graduate School Orientation and Information Fair to discuss technology transfer, intellectual property, and startup programs.
  • The SEC Technology Transfer Directors meeting in Atlanta was hosted by Innovation Gateway for the fifth consecutive year. Technology transfer directors from 11 of the 14 SEC universities attended the meeting to compare notes and allow SEC institutions to benefit from the collective wisdom and experience of all the member universities.