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UTech Dorm Room Welcomes First Tenant

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

 A start-up company established by a Nobel Laureate chemist is the first tenant in the UTech Dorm Room, a cooperative research laboratory located at The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Pharmacy.

Altermune, home-based in Corona del Mar, California, is expected to begin operations this month in the UTech Dorm Room wet laboratory.  Dr. Kary Banks Mullis, a 1993 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, established Altermune, a company that seeks to use the body’s own immune system to specifically target and attack infectious diseases and cancers through “programmable immunity.”  Utilizing the body’s natural antibody defense, Altermune drugs work to redirect antibodies to specific cellular biomarkers using modified nucleic acids called aptamers.

“We are delighted to welcome as our first tenant a research company with such impressive credentials from its founder,” said Dr. Lynn Crismon, Dean of the College of Pharmacy at UT Austin. “Altermune is on the forefront of the battle against infectious diseases.  I am delighted that our professional degree students, as well as our graduate scholars will have opportunity for interaction in these research efforts.”

The UTech Dorm Room is a cooperative venture between the College of Pharmacy, the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and the City of Austin.  While most labs at UT Austin are devoted to the research of a particular faculty member, the UTech Dorm Room is designed to provide bioscience entrepreneurs outside the university community the opportunity to contractually reserve wet lab space for a period of time, as they test and develop their technologies and potential products.

“There are few start-up incubator facilities in a city where bioscience entrepreneurs are flourishing,” said Bradley Hall, lead scientist for Altermune’s product development.  “Wet lab space is required for bioscience research and Altermune is excited to begin work in the UTech Dorm Room.  As a former UT graduate student and research educator through the Freshman Research Initiative, I look forward to working with bright students and world class professors.”

The City of Austin, through its economic development department, committed $35,000 to assist in purchasing equipment and in refurbishing the lab space.  The funds will also support the salary of the lab management team.

Dr. Cindy WalkerPeach, ATI Biosciences Director, said the deal with the first tenant represents a success story in Central Texas to support life sciences and biotechnology startups.  “The UTech Dorm Room is the beginning of our long-term plans to encourage interaction between healthcare-focused start-up companies and university faculty and reduce facility barriers to commercialization. Access to Web Labs is critical for proof of concept testing in bioscience, yet space is rare and very expensive.  We all worked tirelessly – ATI, the City of Austin, the UT Austin College of Pharmacy – to create the UTech Dorm Room, and to make sure it extends beyond university students to serve industry needs overall.  Welcoming Altermune to the UTech Dorm Room is a huge validation of this commitment.”

View http://www.utexas.edu/pharmacy/news/spotudr11.html for the full release.

For additional information concerning this story, please contact:

• Dr. Bradley Hall, Altermune

   Bradley.hall@altermune.com, or (512) 809-1800.

• Dr. Janet Walkow, Drug Dynamics Institute, UT Austin College of Pharmacy

   jwalkow@mail.uaatexas.edu, or (512) 471-4841.

• Dr. Cindy WalkerPeach, Austin Technology Incubator        

cwalkerpeach@ati.utexas.edu, or (512) 305-0040

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The 9th Annual Texas Wireless Summit Provides an Interactive Forum on Wireless Innovation

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

The 9th annual Texas Wireless Summit (TWS), co-hosted by The University of Texas at Austin’s Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) and Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), continues its tradition again this year as an interactive event for leaders in the wireless industry to discuss emerging technologies and new business models, changing the industry over the next few years.

Register to attend the event on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center at The University of Texas at Austin at www.twsummit.com. The early bird special ends October 7, 2011. TWS 2011 is also still in need of sponsors. Review our sponsor program on our site and then contact ATI-Wireless and ATI-U Director Kyle Cox at kcox@ati.utexas.edu to start process.

Leading business and wireless technology execs, research academics, venture capitalists, corporate investors and high-potential startups will inform and engage attendees on disruptive innovations and trends in the wireless industry. TWS 2011 will also include the MobileMonday Austin showcase, an interactive showcase of innovative mobile applications. Additionally, WNCG will host two break-out poster sessions to show their latest research in wireless innovation and answer audience questions.

“Austin is at the nexus of wireless: research and commerce, and so we are excited to once again co-host the 9th annual Texas Wireless Summit, bringing together the latest from industry and academia to explore and discuss trends affecting the industry,” said Kyle Cox, Director of ATI’s Wireless and University incubators.

The TWS 2011 keynote speaker is Roberto Padovani, Executive Vice President, Qualcomm, Inc. Others speakers include Dr. Jim Truchard, Co-Founder & CEO, National Instruments, Jerry Pi, Director, Samsung Telecommunications, Brian Modoff, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Tom Crowe, CEO, Virginia Diodes, Ted Rappaport, WNCG, Founding Director, NSF WICAT Center at UT Austin, Dr. Mike Knox, NYU Polytechnic, and Dr. Fa Foster Dai, Professor, IEEE Fellow, Assoc. Dir. of AMSTC, Auburn University. Topics to be discussed include, “Terahertz Wireless Devices”, “The Data Explosion Continues” and much more.

Dr. Bob Metcalfe, Professor of Innovation at UT Austin, will moderate the Venture Capital Panel. Panelists include Eric Zimits, Granite Ventures, Ned Hill, DFJ Mercury, Al Schuele, Sevin Rosen, and KP Wilska, BRV Ventures. Jeff Andrews, Director of WNCG, NSF WICAT Center at UT Austin, will moderate “The Rapid Evolution of Cellular Networks: Femto, Pico and all that” panel discussion. Panelists include David R. Wolter, AT&T, Amitava Ghosh, Nokia Siemens Network, Tingfang Ji, Qualcomm, and Phil Kelley, Crown Castle.

Jeff Andrews, WNCG Director said, “We are happy to continue to co-host the Texas Wireless Summit. The quality of the TWS 2011speakers, WNCG academic poster sessions, and the panel discussions forecasting the upcoming trends in the wireless industry and the challenges of today and tomorrow will make this year our strongest event yet.”

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3 Day Startup Call for Applicants

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

Can you start a tech company over the course of three days? 
 
Absolutely. The idea of 3 Day Startup is simple: rent work space for a weekend, invite 40 entrepreneurs with a wide range of backgrounds, cater food, drinks, snacks, coffee, pick the best idea for a software startup during the Friday brainstorming session, and release a minimal prototype by Sunday night. The goal is to build enough momentum and a network of motivated people to sustain the company beyond the weekend. 
 
3 Day Startup (“3DS”) is currently accepting applications for its Fall event, October 21-23. 
 
We’re looking for a good spread of skills and talents. Here are the roles we strive to cover: 
 
* Software Engineer 
* Business (Finance, Marketing, Biz Dev) 
* Graphic Design (Web, Print) 
* Legal 
* Advertising, PR 
* Raw Passion 
 
What’s in it for you? An intense weekend and equal equity in the new company. If you have an idea for a tech startup, and you’ve been delaying to actually act on it for whatever reasons (“no time”, “no motivation”, “no co-founders”), this event could be the perfect vessel to have a team other people help your idea come to life. 
 
There will be sponsors, mentors, press coverage, and of course, the invited participants don’t pay for anything. 
 
If you’re interested, apply at http://austin.3daystartup.org/apply/.

Check out our website at http://austin.3daystartup.org or our Facebook Page.

Questions? Email austin@3daystartup.org.

 

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2011 FALL SPEAKER SERIES EVENT

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Are you interested in technology commercialization and entrepreneurship?  On behalf of the University of Texas, Cockrell School of Engineering, and the Chair of Free Enterprise, we would like to invite you to attend weekly technology entrepreneurship seminar series.

This is a graduate level seminar hosted in conjunction with the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), and the Idea to Product® Program (I2P®).  It is open to the community and the public and will be held on Fridays from 3 – 4 pm in the Engineering Teaching Center, ETC 2.136. ETC is located at 204 E. Dean Keeton St. Networking Office Hours with Austin Technology Incubator will follow the seminars.

The seminar series will cover topics essential to technology commercialization and entrepreneurship, and feature outstanding UT Faculty and professionals that have commercialized their technologies.  A schedule of the seminar is below and a poster of the first seminar is attached to this email.

The first seminar is on August 26th, 3PM in ETC 2.136: Professor Metcalfe: Disruptive Innovation – How Ethernet Started 3Com to Change the World. Dr. Metcalfe invented Ethernet in 1973 at Xerox Parc and founded 3Com in 1979 in Silicon Valley. 3Com became part of HP in 2010 and this year a billion Ethernet faucets where added to the Internet’s plumbing, if you count WiFi, which Bob does.

 

Technology Commercialization Seminar & Office Hours, Fall 2011, Fridays 3-5pm, ETC 2.136

  
Date Topic Speaker:

26-Aug

How Ethernet Started 3Com to Change the World

Dr. Bob Metcalfe

2-Sep

 Computer Science Commercialization

Dr. Emmett Witchell

9-Sep

The accidental entrepreneur

Dr. Cindy WalkerPeach

16-Sep

 UT Office of Technology Commercialization

Richard Miller, M.D.

23-Sep

Commercializing Low-Cost Nanopatterning Technology

Dr. SV Sreenivasan

30-Sep

 DermDx Inc.: Development of a noninvasive skin cancer diagnostic device

Dr. James Tunnell

7-Oct

 No seminar scheduled  

14-Oct

 Commericalization experience and funding sources – SBIR/STTR

Dr. Sriram Vishwanath

21-Oct

Business Plans for Technology Commercialization

Dr. Gary Cadenhead

27-Oct (Thursday) 1-5pm

Venture Expo – Showcase of Texas Venture Labs Companies

AT&T Center

If you have any questions, please contact Jakub Felkl, Idea to Product Program® Coordinator, at jfelkl@mail.utexas.edu or 512.232.4102.  

 

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San Antonio Clean Energy Incubator Inaugural “Lunch & Learn” and “Campus Showcase” Events

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

INVERTERS: A WAY TO ENSURE AMERICA’S RELEVANCE IN THE SOLAR INDUSTRY

There is much excitement around the solar industry today, however the importance of inverters in the solar value chain and the range of innovation that is taking place in this segment of the industry are both often overlooked. As many domestic photovoltaic panel manufacturers are feeling pressure from foreign competitors, American inverter companies are producing the next generation of leading products that could allow us to dominate that sector of the market for years to come, if we keep innovating.

Next Tuesday, please join us and hear from a trio of Texas-based inverter companies with innovative industry-leading technologies, from 1 MW integrated utility-scale systems to lightweight inverters to integrated microinverters.

We also welcome you to meet the leadership of the San Antonio Clean Energy Incubator, the Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute, and some of our other key partners. We’ll hold one session near UTSA’s Downtown Campus and one session at UTSA’s Main Campus on 1604. There will be an optional tour of the solar installation and IPC inverter on the UC building on the Main Campus.

Speakers

American Electric Technologies, Inc. (AETI)

Ideal Power Converters

SolarBridge Technologies

UTSA’s Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute

What is the San Antonio Clean Energy Incubator?

Earlier this year, UTSA and its partners received a grant from the Texas State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) and the Austin Technology Incubator’s Clean Energy Incubator to launch a new clean energy incubator for the San Antonio region. Housed at UTSA, the Incubator is focused on helping develop promising early-stage clean energy companies in the region.

Partners include CPS Energy, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio Water System, Startech, InCube, Texas A&M University, Joint Base San Antonio, Defense Transformation Institute, SAMA, Mission Verde Alliance/San Antonio Clean Technology Forum, San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, UTSA’s New Venture Institute, and UTSA’s Institute of Economic Development.

EVENT CO-SPONSORS

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch & Learn Details

Date/Time:

Tuesday, August 23

12:00 – 1:00

(with networking 30 minutes before and after)

Location:

Washington Place Training Room

215 S. San Saba St.

San Antonio, TX, 78207

(across I-35 from UTSA’s Downtown Campus)

Campus Showcase Details

Date/Time:

Tuesday, August 23

4:00 – 5:00

(with an optional tour of the Ideal Power Converter inverter and SunEdison solar panels on the roof of the UC building following the program; a campus Solar Fair will also be occurring)

Location:

Harris Room in the University Center (UC) Building on UTSA’s Main Campus (1604 Campus)

One UTSA Circle

San Antonio, TX,78249

RSVP

Please email cwinland@goodcompanyassociates.com to let us know that you plan to attend either (or both) of the events.

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To Go or Not To Go, That is the Question for ATI’s SEAL Teams

Monday, July 18th, 2011

The Austin Technology Incubator’s (ATI) 3rd annual Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch (SEAL) program is well underway and teams are already reaching some critical milestones on their way to validating their business models and assessing the viability of their entrepreneurial ventures.

This summer’s teams include:

  • ARC Chemicals has developed a novel waste treatment process that generates high-value nitrogen compounds from current anaerobic digestion models.
  • PHeir Health is disrupting the healthcare IT space with a scalable, cloud-based SaaS solution targeted at helping prevent medication errors.  
  • ShapeScan is commercializing a 3D body surface scanning technology that quickly combines weight and scanning inputs to immediately determine subject’s BMI and body fat percentage.
  • Vecturalux has developed ParaLux™, a fiber optic technology yielding 15x speeds and 3x distance over multimode fiber; vital for bandwidth growth in data networks, consumer electronics and telecommunication.
  • Virtegrity is developing a suite of information security tools focused on the difficult and burgeoning area of virtualized servers.

It began quickly at SEAL Kick-Off day, June 7, 2011, as each team gave 15-minute quick-pitches to a packed room of ATI advisors and industry mentors, highlighting their technology and presenting their startup’s three most threatening potential deal killers. The subsequent 5 weeks have entailed many late nights, countless face-to-face strategy sessions with mentors, and hundreds of phone calls, emails, and meetings with potential customers and strategic partners as they continue to validate and iterate their initial assumptions and business models.

During the final 3 weeks of the program, the teams will be stretched to their limits as they execute against their task lists, validate their assumptions, and strive to reach their identified critical milestones. For some, that is completing SBIR grant applications and identifying initial funding sources, others that is landing their critical first pilot customer, and yet others are faced with exploring new markets and reassessing their initial thesis as the results of initial trials have come in.

The SEAL program provides facilitated contact with industry and the real world by delivering:

  • Coaching and mentoring by ATI Directors and Industry Advisors
  • Structured problem solving with an ATI senior associate & interns
  • An enforced timeline and clear deliverables
  • A co-working environment at the heart of the Incubator 

During the program the teams develop team-specific roadmap, milestones, and analysis where they:

  • Breakdown business issues into specific analyses
  • Perform primary research through facilitated introductions with industry and technology experts by ATI leadership and relevant industry advisors
  • Vet conclusions and recommendations from analyses with ATI leadership and relevant industry advisors

Don’t miss this year’s SEAL Decision Day, set for August 2, 2011, 4-6 p.m. in the ATI auditorium. (WPR Building, 3925 West Braker Lane, Austin, 78759)

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NanoLite Systems ‘Conquering Breast Cancer’

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Austin Technology Incubator new member company NanoLite Systems, Inc. was recently featured in an article, “Conquering Breast Cancer” by Marjorie Smith for the UT Austin Cockrell School of Engineering on June 28.

“Cancer is the top disease that is killing people,” said Dr. John Zhang, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Cockrell School. “And right now, we know biopsy is the standard. Doctors are removing tumors in the breast without having anything to tell them if the whole tumor has been removed … patients wait through a 24-hour time cycle to learn whether the cancer tumor is still there.”

The facts are that breast cancer affects nearly one out of eight American women during their lifetime and around 40 percent of patients undergo more than one surgery to remove malignant breast tissue.

Zhang has developed a new technology that acts like a GPS device for cancer surgeons. The instrument guides doctors during surgery, enabling them to see in real time whether all of the cancerous tissue has been removed. The key innovation behind the technology is a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) laser scanner. This handheld device — which uses a microchip that was created in his lab — generates real-time 3-D images of surface cell tissue, or more technically, ‘confocal images of epithelial tissue.’

Read the full Cockrell School of Engineering article HERE.

Since 2006, Zhang has continued to receive funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health (NIH), National Instruments and others. Recently, Zhang received nearly $1 million from NIH’s National Cancer Institute to fund his research initiatives over the next three years.

Zhang licensed his microchip technology with the UT Austin Office of Technology Commercialization, and created a spin-off company called NanoLite Systems Inc. The company was co-founded with Dr. Ting Shen who received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and later worked for McKinsey & Co. and Cisco Systems, but she left to become CEO of NanoLite.

“If we can take this [technology] to market and reduce that redo rate for cancer surgery by just a few percent, we are moving the needle in a lot of people’s lives,” Shen said.

Other NanoLite Systems News:

Read the recent ATI blog post on NanoLite Systems’ participation in the Texas Venture Labs Expo HERE.

On June 15, 2011, NanoLite Systems presented at the “LSI Q2 2011 Emerging Medical Technologies (EMT) Spotlight” event. Read the Businesswire PR that LSI released HERE.  

The National Science Foundation (NSF) commercialization partner Larta Institute also highlighted NanoLite Systems as an alumnus of the NSF SBIR program HERE.

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SEAL Program Featured by Rackspace

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

The Austin Technology Incubator recently kicked-off its 3rd annual Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch (SEAL) program, a two month accelerator for five select UT Austin student-led startups. The Rackspace Startup Program was invited to experience the early stage pitches from four of the five participating teams. Rackspace is a global leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry and its Rackspace Startup Program helps entrepreneurs with cloud technology and business connections through sponsorships. One of the participating startups, Vectralux, an optical transceiver vendor that enhances signal performance over multimode fiber, attracted Rackspace’s attention. According to a recent posting on the Rackspace Cloud Blog, there “could be a future for this device within Rackspace Hosting data centers”.

See the Rackspace interview with ATI IT/Wireless Director Bart Bohn here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qaK3aDTKVIU

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ATI Announces 2011 Summer SEAL Participants

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a nonprofit unit of The University of Texas at Austin, announced the kick-off of the 3rd annual Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch (SEAL) program today to follow-up on the successes with previous participating startups Mutual Mobile, Solavicta, Wibole, Ordoro and SpectraPhase. 

In both 2009 and 2010, five startups participated and several went on to be successful startups. Mutual Mobile has garnered millions of dollars of revenue, Solavicta won MOOT Corp 2010, Wibole and SpectraPhase are spinning out UT Austin IP and are members of ATI, and Ordoro is also a new member of ATI and has ramping revenue.

This summer’s SEAL program includes the following early-stage ventures:

Azotergon delivers a novel waste treatment process that generates high-value nitrogen compounds. MedMa has a SaaS solution to help nursing homes prevent medication errors.

The Body Browser offers a 3D body surface scanning technology initially targeted at fitness tracking in health clubs. Vectralux provides an optical transceiver vendor that enhances signal performance over multimode fiber. Virtegrity is a novel security software startup tackling the difficult virtualization market.

Kyle Cox, the new ATI – On Campus Assistant Director, said “this 2011 SEAL class is extraordinary in terms of their technical sophistication and focus on solving specific, well-defined problems with technology-based breakthroughs.”

Recently at UT Austin, there has been increased interest in entrepreneurship spurred on by several new programs like the Idea to Product Competition (I2P), the Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition, 3 Day Startup and the Hatchery Class. Courses, competitions, student organizations and UT departments serve students as they progress through the first three stages of a startup: develop innovation, light-touch market validation and business validity. However, as a student progresses through the entrepreneurial process, the last step of making the decision to significantly invest in the new business does not have institutional support at UT Austin, but ATI’s SEAL program does just that.

Each summer, ATI hosts the SEAL program, a two month accelerator for five select UT Austin student-led startups, sourced from other student entrepreneur programs at UT, to make the “Go / No-Go” decision. In order to determine whether their business can develop into a successful startup and to look at the possible roadblocks, the five SEAL teams participate in multiple strategy sessions, interview prospective customers and partners, create financial models, write a high-level pitch, and develop leadership and organizational skills along the way. At the end of the program, each team delivers their ‘Decision Day’ pitch to an audience of potential angel investors, venture capitalists, UT Austin faculty and members of the Austin startup community.

This year’s Decision Day is set for August 2, 2011 at ATI, located at the West Pickle Research (WPR) Building, 3925 West Braker Lane, Austin, Texas 78759. ATI is currently looking for mentors and sponsors for the event.

Bart Bohn, ATI IT/Wireless Director and Founding Director of the SEAL program said, “the continuing evolution of the SEAL program is critical to sustaining the momentum of student-led innovation and entrepreneurship.”

SEAL program partners include 3 Day Startup and the Hatchery Class.

For the full press release view:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/6/prweb8531048.htm

Contact:

Kyle Cox

ATI – On Campus

kcox@ati.utexas.edu

(512) 305-0011

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“What I Learned at ATI” Brad Camburn

Friday, May 13th, 2011

Now for the next profile in our new series Intern Experiences: “What I learned at ATI!”

ATI had the pleasure of working with Brad Camburn during the summer and fall of 2010.  Brad received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University before coming to the University of Texas to pursue his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Design.  At ATI, Brad worked under Bart Bohn in the IT and Wireless Incubator.  While working in the IT and Wireless incubator, Brad was responsible for performing due diligence on pipeline companies and product design for one of our member companies.  Here is what Brad had to say about his experience at ATI:     

ATI was a unique experience for me. In the words of another intern “it affords an opportunity to work above one’s pay-scale.” What this means is that we are able to get high level experience, by making decisions that are usually reserved for management level employees. Many student interns or ‘senior associates’ are given the ability to make go or no-go decisions on a daily basis about new potential clients. These decisions are critical to the potential success of the companies applying and ultimately to the success of ATI itself. Senior associates are also often engaged on specific development projects for individual member companies.


     My own unique project was to govern the product design process for the casing of an electronics device. This means I was responsible for characterizing the design needs to an extent to pick a vague design form, find firms capable of design and manufacture of that kind of device and compose project specifications and solicit bids. This was all pretty high level stuff for me, including many meetings with the sales reps and oft times even the presidents of various design and testing facilities.


     Finally ATI is an entirely open ended position, I was able to come in when I please, keep track of my own hours and work a second part time job as a teaching assistant. This was hands down one of the coolest jobs I have ever had. No middle management, interesting and meaningful projects, fair compensation and frequent laughs.

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