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UNIVERSITY RESEARCH COMMERCIALIZATION 421

• Faculty Service: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
◉ Outreach via electronic and personal means Research universities must accommodate the need
significantly increased research faculty interac- for translational benefits from the taxpayers’ research
tions on both the engineering and medical funding. That doesn’t mean that scientific freedom is
campuses. to be sacrificed; on the contrary, good science is the
• Process improvement: basis for commercialization. Furthermore, society
◉ By focusing on “fewer but better” inventions needs to invest in commercialization. For example,
to add to the portfolio, we were able to free in a December 2013 presentation at the TTS-Asia
up a greater portion of the patent budget to Conference in Singapore, A*STAR (Singapore’s sci-
invest in new inventions as opposed to main- ence and economic agency) chairman Lim Chuan
taining unlicensed inventions. Additionally, Poh stated that 5% of every dollar spent on research
we ensured greater and deeper attention to needs to be spent on commercialization. If we were
making the most promising ones successful. to apply that rule to U.S. academic research funding,
◉ By applying Coulter-inspired, milestone-based it would equate to $1.5 billion annually. In addition
Ignition awards, increased the number of com- to universities’ investments in technology transfer,
mercializable projects (14). the federal government has launched a number of
◉ By requiring matching funding for Launch commercialization acceleration programs, such as
awards, increased the number that successfully NIH National Centers for Accelerated Innovations
garnered follow-on commercial funding. and Research Evaluation and Commercialization
• BU new venture spin-offs since 2010 (>$150 Hub and NSF Innovation Corps. The Small Business
million in cumulative VC equity funding): Innovation Research and the Small Business Technol-
◉ Sample6 received $32 million in VC funding ogy Transfer programs are similarly increasing the
(PIs: Jim Collins, Michael Koeris, Timothy federal government’s focus on commercialization.
Wu): There are still areas for improvement for a TTO
■ Applying synthetic biology to pathogen platform:
detection in food processing
◉ ByteLight raised $3 million and was acquired • We developed but did not fully implement an IT
by Acuity (engineering students and PI: Tom system to automate TTO workflow processes.
Little): Existing TTO IT systems lean towards data man-
■ Indoor position location using Light Emitting agement rather than platform process man-
Diodes for both lighting and data commu- agement.
nication • A key element in platform process management
◉ RayVio raised $40 million in VC funding (PIs: is to develop a technology benchmark that we
Ted Moustakas, Yitao Liao): call the Commercialization Readiness Level
■ Developing ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (CRL) (14). Figure 4 details such a process flow.
for disinfection and curing Simply, the goal of a university TTO would be to
◉ Enbiotix raised $3 million (PI: Jim Collins): manage every research project by improving its
■ Developing novel anti-infective therapeutics CRL score while making “collisions” with the
◉ Constant Therapy raised $2.8 million (PI: market until the market (industry, entrepreneurs,
Swathi Kiran): or financiers) is ready to license the underlying
■ Cognitive rehabilitation app for stroke, trau- intellectual property.
matic brain injury, and other brain repair • Develop an algorithm to match faculty research
◉ Synlogic raised $70 million in VC funding with industry interest for related innovation
from Atlas Venture and New Enterprise Asso- utilizing existing publicly accessible data sources.
ciates (PI: Jim Collins): Use the results from this search to encourage
■ Developing microbiome-related therapeutics research faculty to engage with industry and to
◉ Allegro Diagnostics acquired by Veracyte for submit invention disclosures.
$21 million (PIs: Avi Spira, Jerome Brody). • An increasing portion of universities’ inventions