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NAI CHAPTER SPOTLIGHT 801

on how to understand what the market might need, put any rules around whether or not someone can
and then crafting a company and technology to meet create an innovation group, program, funding, com-
needs. I-Corps awards funds to faculty and students petition, or event. People are empowered to create
to help develop a company or to help build out pro- programs at USC, and, as a result, we have many,
totypes for companies. many activities. Some of these activities overlap with
We have so much going on, but I’ll just mention each other, and, in the end, that’s fine because I don’t
one other thing that’s quite big at USC. It’s called the want to inhibit people in any way from coming up
Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at with innovative ideas.
USC, or AMI. AMI has a very large endowment that
was provided by Alfred Mann, who was very suc- What kinds of activities has the chapter
cessful in the medical devices sector. AMI offers gap sponsored so far?
funding in the life sciences space. Specifically, they USC Stevens will be hosting a new Innovation
take research that occurred in USC, further develop Summit with UCLA in fall 2018, and we are very
it, and then help commercialize it. It’s partly funding excited about that opportunity. We also hold an
that goes to a project, but also staffing to support the annual USC Stevens Student Innovator Showcase
transition out of the university. AMI has a budget in in the fall, which is a business competition for USC
the range of five to ten million dollars per year, so students where we award more than $30,000 in
it is probably one of the largest programs of its kind USC-sponsored prizes.
anywhere in the country. The institute has launched a There are two other things that we’re doing as a
range of technologies, some of which have produced university that connect to the chapter. We recently
international products and publicly held companies. became part of a group of universities that form the
One last thing I’ll point to is a website we maintain Alliance for Southern California Innovation. This is
called Incubate USC (incubate.usc.edu), a resource a new consortium that includes universities in the
created to connect faculty, students, and staff with all Los Angeles region as well as the San Diego region,
the different programs that exist inside the university. and our intent is to broadly publicize the innovation
It’s a one-stop shopping site, created with support that’s occurring in our area.
from the Blackstone Foundation in association with The second thing I would mention is called Silicon
our Launchpad site. In addition, I organize meetings Beach, located in the Westside region of Los Angeles,
among our innovation program leaders. We have where tech start-ups, including a blend of computer
more than 40 programs that fit into innovation and science and Hollywood-style media, are located. In
entrepreneurship. We meet regularly to share USC fact, computer science, entertainment, and game
activities, including pitch competitions, industry development have been major areas of our research
speakers, mentorship programs, and technology through our Institute for Creative Technologies. Sil-
transfer. Having our leaders in the same room helps icon Beach has received a lot of attention of late.
to coordinate our many activities. USC has been instrumental in forming the Alli-
To sum up, we have a single office to oversee all ance for Southern California Innovation and in
of the business aspects of intellectual property, pro- building Silicon Beach. Another big goal for uni-
tection of intellectual property, and licensing, and versity impact is building up a biotech research park
that’s the Stevens Center. We have many other pro- around our Health Sciences Campus. That will be the
grams that have been developed across our various next item on our agenda.
schools that have advanced innovation in particular
areas, and that’s represented in Incubate USC. As an When USC did the chapter launch event, how
entrepreneurial university, we encourage all parts did the faculty respond?
of the university to create new programs to advance They loved it. We held it in the USC building, a
innovation. large high-rise structure in the downtown area where
Overall, USC has an extraordinarily rich innova- we are the major tenant. It’s the home for the Stevens
tion culture. It’s not centrally directed, and we don’t Center, our technology transfer office, along with