The Ignition Award Program awards funds to Boston University faculty to bridge the gap between government-funded, discovery-oriented research and the follow-on development work performed by external commercial or non-profit entities. By enabling researchers to generate relevant data, reach key milestones, develop a prototype, or test an implementation strategy the Ignition Awards will help bring raw technology and business concepts to a mature enough state where they can be either licensed, form the basis of a new company, or create a new, non-profit social enterprise.

Two awards apiece focused on healthcare and clean energy. The Ignition Award winners are as follows:

1) Preclinical validation of anti-hDEspR Mab-Rxtic* prototype: in vivo efficacy

PI: Victoria L.M. Herrera, MD; Professor of Medicine, Director of Ultrasound Micro-imaging Core; Department of Medicine, Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute, BUMC

Co-PI: Nelson Ruiz-Opazo, PhD., Department of Medicine, Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute, BUMC

2) Large Scale Rapid Response Energy Storage and Electrical Energy Generation System

PI: Uday B. Pal, Profesor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

Co-PI: Srikanth Gopalan, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

Co-PI: Soumendra Basu, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University

3) Expressing Mammalian fat-storing genes to generate genetically-engineered plants for biofuel/ oil production

PI: Vishwajeet Puri, PhD., Department of Medicine, Section of Endicrinology, Diabetes, and Nutrition, Boston University School of Medicine

4) A Molecular Diagnostic for Thyroid Cancer using a novel miRNA/ Microfluidics Platform

PI: Maurizio Cattaneo, PhD.

Co-PI: Dr. Catherine Klapperich, Associate Professor, BME

Co-PI: Dr. Jennifer Rosen, Associate Professor, MED

The Office of Technology Development works with a committee of faculty, students, senior venture capitalists, industry representatives, foundations and entrepreneurs to review the feasibility and impact of the proposed project and select award recipients.  After receiving the awards, OTD will monitor awardees’ progress and provide strategic business support to help maximize the potential for follow-on funding from the appropriate developmental sources.

As a researcher in Uday Pal’s mechanical engineering lab, Boston University Alum (Ph.d Mechanical Engineering ‘10) Soobhankar Pati developed environmentally-friendly procedures to produce metals like magnesium, calcium and titanium.

Pati’s research shifted from metals to clean energy. He, along with other researchers, developed a single-step, carbon-neutral process that uses garbage such as plastic bottles to produce separate streams of pure hydrogen and synthetic gas. The extracted hydrogen is then used by fuel cells to get energy.  Pati hopes to increase the amount of waste the device can consume to 2 tons over the next few years.

How Pati's waste-to-hydrogen model works

(watch the video and read the original article from BU College of Engineering Magazine here)