A new fund launched by the University of Chicago's Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation aims to bring more of its inventions and early-stage technologies to market.
The objective of the Proof-of-Concept Fund will be to take early-stage research projects and provide non-dilutive funding to advance them commercially.
"We had these interesting technologies, but there was a gap in the next stage of funding to make them more attractive to industry to continue conversations about licensing opportunities or potentially turn into startups," David Gross, senior director of technology marketing and innovation growth at the Polsky Center, told Chicago Inno.
The fund chose two projects, both in the medical device space, after launching as a way to support internal research projects that do not have other sources of financial support. Awarded as milestone-based payments, the funding will be used to develop prototypes for the devices.
Michael Millis, a professor of surgery, designed a smoke mitigation device for operating rooms that helps remove surgical smoke, which was one of the projects selected for the pilot fund. The other, a new technique for detecting gamma rays, is from UChicago professor Henry Frisch.
Each project received around $25,000 to be used for prototype development.
Gross said that for both concepts, there has been interest from industry to see these projects developed.
"The best-case scenario is that these are brought to market either by an industry partner or through a startup," he said.
Gross thinks Proof-of-Concept recipients like Millis and Frisch essentially have two paths moving forward: One is that the researcher would become the founder or chief scientific officer for the startup. The other is to develop the technology to a point where it is attractive to be licensed by a big med device company.
Gross plans to do a second round for the pilot for the next fiscal year. Moving forward, he hopes to fund more projects in different fields.
