The University of Hawaii has launched a new systemwide program that aims to help UH Ph.D. candidates and postdoctoral researchers turn their inventions into commercial products.
The program, Patents2Products, is run by the UH Office of Innovation and Commercialization. It launched in mid-August with an inaugural cohort of seven fellows.
According to a release from the university, Patents2Products will include intellectual property training, mentorship from industry leaders, professional development workshops, networking opportunities and more. Fellows will also have access to “state of the art facilities and specialized equipment,” UH officials said in the release.
A spokesperson for the Office of Innovation and Commercialization told PBN that Patents2Products fellows will participate in up to four workshops each month, as well as ongoing one-on-one sessions.
“A recent workshop focused on the importance of protecting intellectual property and pathways to a patent,” the Office of Innovation and Commercialization spokesperson told PBN in an email. “An upcoming workshop will share strategies and tactics for customer discovery to help fellows better understand the problem they are trying to solve and align the solutions with potential stakeholders that their technologies may impact.”
The program is funded through part of a $2.4 million grant from the Office of Naval Research, according to the release. OIC declined to share the total cost of the program, but each fellow will receive salary compensation, as well as a $10,000 research stipend for supplies, according to OIC.
The program will run for one year.
“Our mission for Patents2Products is to educate and empower the next generation of academic innovators in order to grow and expand Hawaii’s innovation ecosystem and explore and support emerging industries,” Rebecca H. Chung, the Patents2Products program lead and OIC associate director, innovation programs, said in an email to PBN.
“We hope that our fellows come out of this program with an entrepreneurial mindset and the critical skills and network necessary to accelerate the advancement of groundbreaking technologies toward commercialization, as well as broaden their approaches to addressing scientific research problems,” Chung added.
The fellows that comprise the inaugural cohort are:
- Jonathan Bennett, a UH Manoa postdoctoral researcher who is developing a body composition assessment technology to improve early detection for obesity risk factors, with a focus on under-served communities
- Danielle Bartz, a UH Manoa Ph.D. candidate who is creating a water filtration system to conduct environmental DNA analysis
- Suman Chhetri, a postdoctoral researcher who has created a desalination tool that uses solar thermal conversion to convert seawater into freshwater
- Kaylee Clark, a UH Manoa postdoctoral researcher who is developing a wearable sensor ring that can detect the presence of date-rape drugs in beverages
- Min Ki (Carl) Jeon, a UH Manoa Ph.D. candidate who has created a new technology that can analyze influenza in wastewater, in an effort to help develop flu vaccines
- Ludwig Mayerlen, a UH Manoa Ph.D. candidate who has developed a tool that can produce vaccine antigens
- Christopher Tran, a UH Manoa Ph.D. candidate whose project is a tool to develop clinical therapies that can help treat genetic disease.
UH officials said that OIC will begin recruiting for the next cohort this fall, with an information session slated to take place Nov. 1. For more information about the program, visit research.hawaii.edu/patents2products.
