Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

From George Washington University:

While George Washington (GW) University’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) has served for 14 years as a hotbed of programming around innovation and supporting GW entrepreneurs and the Mid-Atlantic start-up community, it has simultaneously cast its net globally to help a wide variety of nations and universities build their entrepreneurial ecosystems by launching scores of new and impactful enterprises.

Perhaps no program serves as greater evidence of that than the Korean Innovation Center’s (KIC) Tech Frontier Program, which since 2016 the KIC has sent cohorts of graduate and undergraduate researchers from universities and research labs in Korea to D.C. to learn from OIE experts at GW. Jim Chung, a former OIE Director and Associate Vice Provost for Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, initiated the partnership.

The South Korean government funds the partnership between KIC and OIE, mainly because it sought to create a similar program to the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program. GW has been a leader in that program since its inception, becoming an I-Corps site in 2016 and then an I-Corps Hub in 2021.

For three weeks every summer, GW instructors have guided cohorts of early stage Korean teams to develop business models and test their competitiveness in the U.S. market through a customer discovery process. The major idea of the Tech Frontier program is to explore the viability of university technologies from Korea in the U.S. marketplace.  This past summer, 41 South Korean teams made their way to the nation’s capital to learn from GW expertise.

From Clemson University:

Clemson University is the newest member of Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), a prestigious alliance of universities dedicated to cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset among engineering students.

With membership, Clemson marks a milestone that puts it in the same organization with 66 other universities ranging from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University.

KEEN encourages the exchange of best practices and co-creation through conferences and other collaborative opportunities, offers faculty development and mentorship, and expands its mission through designated champions, community catalysts, and ambassadors to professional societies.

From Duke University:

Duke University’s Office for Translation and Commercialization (OTC), which is responsible for managing Duke-owned intellectual property and supporting Duke inventors, has released its fiscal year 2024 annual metrics. From groundbreaking therapies to new materials, OTC also celebrates 100 years of innovations from Duke inventors as part of the Duke Centennial.

In FY24, OTC brought in $82.6 million in revenue, the result of Duke inventions making it to industry and the market. This revenue is distributed to Duke inventors and their labs, departments, and schools. OTC received 302 new invention disclosures, entered into 63 total agreements, submitted 428 patent applications, and was issued 94 patents.

These annual metrics, while lower than last year’s records, come at a time when the investing ecosystem has been challenging, particularly in biotech.

“Looking forward, we’re focusing our efforts on outreach to our faculty and clinicians to support Duke innovation and grow the pipeline of Duke inventions, start-ups, and industry partnerships,” said Robin Rasor, Associate Vice President for Translation and Commercialization.

From the University of Michigan:

Research led by University of Michigan (U-M) faculty and researchers generated a record-breaking 615 new inventions last year — a feat rarely achieved by any research commercialization office in the country.

Additionally, 28 start-up companies were launched to support the commercialization of U-M research discoveries. These new companies are advancing technologies across an array of disciplines, ranging from novel breath diagnostic treatments to AI models designed to combat climate change to innovative solutions for improving election security.

Innovation Partnerships, the university’s central hub for research commercialization activity, recently announced its numbers for fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30. Among the highlights were:

• The Corporate Research Alliances team within Innovation Partnerships provided direct relationship and negotiation support for 104 new on-campus, corporate-sponsored research awards totaling $29.2 million, a significant contribution to the $178.6 million in new corporate research awards reported across the research enterprise.
• Innovation Partnerships also reported 273 license and option agreements during the last fiscal year. U-M start-ups raised about $515 million in capital fundraising and liquidity events during the period as they continued to advance their technologies for broad societal use.

From Harvard University:

The Harvard Business School’s (HBS) Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship has announced its Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR), Venture Capital Advisors (VCA), and Lawyers-in-Residence (LIR) for the 2024-2025 academic year.

The Rock Center is the hub for entrepreneurship at HBS. It’s where HBS students who are founders, joiners, or investors activate their ideas and build their ventures to drive global impact. At the Rock Center, HBS students join a dynamic community with access to leading Entrepreneurship faculty, curated programs, funding opportunities, and a network of knowledgeable and experienced experts.

Many of our experts have been selected from the HBS global alumni network, of which more than 50 percent of graduates found new ventures. Across entrepreneurship programs, HBS is consistently the leader in graduate founder count, company count, capital raised, female founders, exits, and unicorns.

This year the 17 EIRs, 15 of whom are HBS graduates, have founded, sold, or IPO’d successful ventures in the tech, consumer products, healthcare, biotech, media, and entertainment industries, among others. Appointed by Srikant Datar, Dean of the Harvard Business School, for a four-year term, EIRs are available throughout the year to meet with MBA students one-on-one, facilitate Rock Center programs, and work with faculty on research and course development.

This year’s VCAs are Managing and General Partners from some of the most successful venture capital firms in the world. They provide students with fundraising information and feedback on their ideas, business models, pitch presentations, and other core aspects of their venture. VCAs also play a critical role as judges in the annual Student New Venture Competition.

Finally, the LIR program offers students the opportunity to meet on campus with skilled attorneys to discuss questions around incorporation strategies, founders’ agreements, intellectual property, starting a U.S.-based company as a non-US citizen, and more.

To view the names, click on this link.

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