The Office of Technology Development is accelerating BU spin-offs by investing in infrastructure elements: the Kindle mentoring program, Ignition Grants for faculty and Launch Award convertible debt funding and Business Incubation.
In 2010 we funded 11 Ignition grants ($500K), two Launch Awards ($350K) and currently have 86 mentors and 49 mentee projects being mentored. We have 15 companies in the incubator (including Good Start Genetics who just raised $18M). Furthermore we are creating a co-working space in the incubator with 10 desks available for individual entrepreneurs.
We have spun-off 21 companies who have either raised funding or are about to raise funding (see table below). Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about any of these projects.
Flu season beware! In conjunction with the Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biology in Delaware and pharmaceutical company iBio, Inc., researchers and engineers at the Fraunhofer USA Center for Manufacturing Innovation at Boston University have developed an automated "factory" that creates vast quantities of vaccines from tobacco plants.
Robots harvesting the tobacco plants
Akin to an industrial or automated manufacturing process, robotically-tended machines plant seeds, tend to growing plants, add genetic specifications, and harvest the plants upon maturity. The weeks-long process is short compared to traditional methods of vaccine production which can take several months.
Boston University researcher Pierre Dupont shows off the tiny surgical robot he has been developing in collaboration with Children's Hospital Boston. This video shows a demo from TEDMED2010:
Greentech Enterprise: General Electric has come out with an experimental LED bulb that is part light fixture and part plane.
Developed in conjunction with professors at the University of Maryland, the LED bulb emits 1,500 lumens of light, about the same amount of light as a 100-watt halogen spotlight, but it requires only about one-third of the energy.
Researchers at Loughborough University in collaboration with the British Geological Survey have developed a sound sensor system that can accurately predict the likelihood of a landslide. The system works by measuring and analyzing the acoustic behavior of soil to determine when a landslide is about to happen so preventative measures can be taken.
The detection system consists of networks of sensors buried in hillsides and embankments at risk of collapse. The sensors act as underground microphones that record all acoustic activity of the soil created by movement under the surface. The movement of soil before a landslide creates increasing rates of noise. Noise rates are created by inter-particle friction and accordingly are proportional to rates of soil movement. Increased noise means a slop is closer to failure. Since each sensor transmits a signal to a central computer for analysis, once a high-enough noise rate is recorded, the system can send a warning via text message to authorities in the area. This early warning will allow them to evacuate the area earlier, close affected transportion routes, and possibly stabilize the soil.
Though this information has been known since the 1960s, this early-detection sound sensor system is the first system of its kind in the world to be able to capture and process the information in real time to provide an early warning. This system may have the ability to save thousands of lives in landslide-prone countries.
Read more about the discovery here
CAS Computer Science Professor Margrit Betke, frustrated at the lack of computer resources for the severely disabled, created Camera Mouse, software that uses a webcam to link pre-selected facial movements to cursor commands.
Check out the article and video (originally published in BU Today) below.
BU Today- Every day, our world grows more digital and more of our lives migrates to an electronic format. But Margrit Betke, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of computer science, believes the networked world isn't nearly as inclusive as it ought to be.
"The community of people with severe disabilities is not really well served by computer science," Betke says. "Many people impaired by diseases like multiple sclerosis or ALS cant type Google searches. They cant play video games, and they cant click on a friend's e-mail."
So, in collaboration with James Gips, a Boston College professor of computer science, and several of her students, Betke has spent the last eight years developing a camera mouse that greatly expands accessibility to the digital world. The camera mouse software uses a computer webcam to lock onto and track a chosen section of the users face — a nostril or the tip of an eyebrow, for example — and then links that persons head movement to a cursor on the screen. Move right and the cursor goes right. Move left and it reverses direction. Pause for several seconds over a link and it clicks.
Betke and her fellow researchers have adapted a camera mouse to work with several popular programs, such as Microsoft Word. They've also created custom software that allows computer users with disabilities to type e-mails, edit photographs, create music, and fight space aliens, among other activities.
In spring 2007, after a failed attempt to build a company around the new technology, Betke and Gips decided to give camera mouse away online. These days, about 2,500 people download it every month. The researchers get frequent e-mails from people as far away as Australia and Uzbekistan, thanking them and asking for technical assistance.
"With software, there's always an issue of maintenance," says Betke. Requests to fix a software bug or make camera mouse compatible with the latest operating system always get highest priority. A request for a camera mouse version of Flight Simulator, on the other hand, becomes a candidate for a class project. Betke's students also work as volunteers in places like the Boston Home, a nursing care center for adults with neurodegenerative diseases, whose residents have used camera mouse.
What's next? Betke hopes to make camera mouse more adaptable to the wide range of mobility limitations, arranging navigation buttons to match a persons most controlled range of motion, for example, or accommodating the slow diminishment of a user's skills.
"It's a challenge that is facing all human-computer interface research," says Betke. "We can adapt our own system with user profiles and all that, but to actually have the computer figure it out for us and help us along is a very different story."
On September 1, the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, announced its list of 2011 Technology Pioneers.
The award was started by the WEF in 2000 and recognizes start-up companies that have "the potential to inspire significant change in business and society."
"The World Economic Forum is proud to recognize an outstanding group of innovative companies as Technology Pioneers for 2011. Their technologies and business models will have a durable and valuable effect in several industries and society as a whole. We look forward to their unique contributions to the mission of the Forum: improving the state of the world," said Andre Schneider, Managing Director and COO of the World Economic Forum.
The rising global importance for energy efficiency was reflected as a record thirteen clean-tech companies were recognized this year. Israeli start-up Takadu created a software program to monitor water distribution networks and help utility companies detect potential leaks or equipment failures and sequentially alert employees of the problems through email or SMS messaging.
The only place to look to when it comes to technology is the future. It's exciting to learn about truly innovative technologies that may one day become household names. If history is any indication, these pioneers have a fighting shot: Google, Facebook, Paypal and Twitter are former winners...
Digital Lumens, a Boston-based start-up, was named a 2011 Technology Pioneer. Digital Lumens creates LED-based lighting systems that use sensors and controls to reduce customer energy use up to 90%.
For more information about the 2011 Technology Pioneers follow@techpioneers on Twitter or read theWEF blog.
Boston University professor Raj Mohanty founded Sand9, a company focused on developing high-precision micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technology, in 2007.
The start-up, which spent its early years in OTD's Technology Incubator, recently revealed the development of MEMS oscillator structures that match the performance of high-end temperature-compensated quartz crystal (TXCO) oscillators. This breakthrough will allow MEMS to compete with TXCO in the mass market for wireless 3/4G cellphones, global positioning systems, and WiFi.
Find out more information about Sand9 on their website or by contacting Sean Lee at OTD (seanlee@bu.edu)
Boston University Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry Mark W. Grinstaff was named the first recipient of Boston University's Innovator of the Year Award. He was presented with the award by Boston University President Robert Brown at Tech, Drugs & Rock ‘n Roll on July 27th.
Grinstaff accepting the IOTY award from President Brown
The Innovator of the Year (IOTY) Award was created to recognize a faculty member who translates his or her world-class research into inventions and innovations that benefit humankind.
“(Grinstaff’s) accomplishments in the past year include 15 peer-reviewed papers published, two invention disclosures, a patent filing, and more than $1 million invested in Flex Biomedical,” Brown told the crowd as he presented the award.
And that's just the past year. Grinstaff has published over 60 manuscripts and co-founded three companies: Hyperbranch Medical Technology, Acuity Bio and Flex Biomedical, which started out housed in OTD's Technology Incubator.
Congratulations Mark!
Find out more information about the IOTY Award here
In our Featured Technology section we'll highlight innovative technologies and new developments happening around the university-
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)
Greentech Enterprise: General Electric has come out with an experimental LED bulb that is part light fixture and part plane.
