Programs and Projects

Dr. Thomas Lendvay, Associate Professor in the Department of Urology co-founded C-SATS, a startup spun out of UW CoMotion that uses technology to help surgeons improve skills and health outcomes by facilitating performance reviews. In 2012, CoMotion at the University of Washington began supporting this startup, helping the innovation move from idea to impact by lending expertise on licensing and supporting team formation, as well as providing funding through the Innovation Gap Fund (IFG). C-SATS was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in April of 2018. Read more about this startup success in Geekwire and learn about other past IGF winners here.

Greg Newbloom, Founder & CTO of Membrion, Inc. is one of our CoMotion Commercialization Fellows Program (CFP) alumni. The program hires grad students after graduation for one year so they can continue working on their innovation. CFPs meet together monthly with a group of Innovation Managers and a guest speaker and discuss their current successes and challenges. They receive advice, connections and, by way of having a secure income for a full year, are able to focus on commercializing their project. Newbloom shares that Membrion would not exist if the Commercialization Fellows Program funding didn’t arrive when it did.

Ross Reynolds, executive producer for Community Engagement at KUOW and University of Washington staff, and his team were a recipients of an Amazon Catalyst award in 2016 for their “Ask A_” project. The project brings participants together to have conversations with people of different backgrounds. They will meet, talk one-to-one, and break bread in an atmosphere of respect, which will create empathy and understanding. Participants will learn that people are not defined solely by labels, but have full multi-faceted lives that defy stereotyping. Ross and his team also later won a CoMotion Innovation Gap Fund and is creating an online toolkit with advice on outreach recruiting, organizing and staging, so any individual, organization or group could organize a successful person-to-person session. Learn more about Amazon Catalyst Fellows here.

Advancing our region’s goal to be a global leader in building a smart city transportation system, the University of Washington and Challenge Seattle — a private sector initiative of 17 of the Seattle region’s CEOs to address issues that will determine the region’s future — partnered to create a new Mobility Innovation Center (MIC), helping to build the transportation system of the future. Projects led by MIC are also in partnership with public and private sector transportation agencies and emphasize deliverables with real-world solutions. Read about winning solutions from the October 2018 Imagine Mobility Ideathon, and recent capstone projects.

Launched in 2018, the Mistletoe Research Fellowship is the Mistletoe Foundation’s flagship program. This professional development program awards research grants to postdoctoral fellows and advanced PhD candidates as well as providing opportunities to collaborate with startups with a high potential for social and humanitarian impact. The Mistletoe Research Fellowship  was created with three goals in mind–funding scientific research and providing professional development opportunities for early-career academics, helping frontier startups to succeed in advancing nascent technologies with humanitarian impact and creating a bridge between the academic and entrepreneurship communities that will lead to new career opportunities, increased partnerships and collaboration, and research innovation. The University of Washington, one of seven universities partnering with Mistletoe, had 13 Fellows in the 2018-2019 academic year, and seven in 2019-2020.