From initial disclosure to product launch and beyond
Dear friends of CoMotion,
The first milestone in the journey of the academic entrepreneur is the realization that a creative work, a piece of software, a research result, or a new device, material, or biologic could have a tremendous societal impact. These moments happen in UW labs, facilities, and classrooms every single day, and the combined potential for these ideas and technologies to serve the public good is limitless.
The second milestone is disclosure, or the process of letting the experts at CoMotion know what you’re working on and collaborating on a plan to scale your idea and make it commercially available. That could mean launching a startup to grow the concept toward a viable product or licensing the technology to an existing company. Disclosure is also a key step in protecting intellectual property from day one.
At CoMotion, we recently exceeded 9,700 disclosures of UW innovations since 1983. This number represents four decades of collaborative work with researchers in every academic unit, across our three campuses, and more than $8.7B raised by and for innovative ventures, transforming the economy of our region. We are thrilled to shine a light on two of the researchers who filed a recent disclosure: a mother-daughter team of physicists whose work has been instrumental in creating new ultrasound techniques with broad potential for the eradication of kidney stones and tumors.
The story of Tatiana and Vera Khokhlova reminds us that curiosity and resilience are powerful drivers of both academic and entrepreneurial success. UW researchers are leaders in academia and industry because we care about making a lasting societal impact by identifying solutions to challenges that are too pressing to tune out. We are dreamers and doers.
Beyond helping UW technologies reach emerging economies around the world, we at CoMotion are eager to share our expertise in innovation development with partners closer to home. Over the next several years we will do so in a formal manner with Montana State University, one of only 18 teams nationwide to win an Accelerating Research Translation award from the National Science Foundation. With an investment of $100M in geographically isolated and historically under-resourced innovation ecosystems, the program seeks to speed and scale translational research and jumpstart economic development. We look forward to collaborating with our friends at MSU to strengthen translational activities through mentoring, education, and other programmatic support.
Finally, please join me in congratulating our recently launched spinoffs, an exciting group that includes several biotech firms and a novel application of 3D printing to improve manufacturing processes. And stay tuned for more—the story of innovation at UW is still being written, one discovery at a time.
Be well,
François Baneyx
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Note: An earlier version of the article misstated the number of innovations disclosed to CoMotion since 1983. As of December 31, 2023, the number of disclosures is just over 9,700.