Colorado State University Faculty More than Doubled Number of Inventions in Past Five Years, New CSU Ventures Report Says
Note to Reporters: A chart is available with the news release at http://www.news.colostate.edu.
Colorado State University faculty and researchers increased the number of inventions created on campus by 132 percent between 2007 and 2011 compared with the previous five years.
CSU Ventures, the entity charged with protecting and commercializing intellectual property on behalf of the university, reported that 515 new inventions were disclosed during that period. This increase puts CSU in the 99th percentile among institutions with more than $125 million in annual research funding. CSU reported more than $340 million in annual research funding in 2010-2011.
“We have tried to fulfill our mission of bringing CSU’s innovative research into the marketplace to benefit society,” said Todd Headley, president of CSU Ventures. “Since 1963, these disclosures have spurred the development of approximately 50 startups, created licensable research materials and technologies and generated additional research dollars for CSU.”
When a researcher has made a marketable discovery or advancement, CSU Ventures wants to hear about it.
In FY2011 alone, CSU faculty in 17 different departments submitted 119 invention disclosures to CSU Ventures. This resulted in 41 license agreements, both in-state and out-of-state, as well as six new startup companies.
In addition to inventions disclosed, CSU Ventures’ totals for patent applications, license agreements, and startup companies each more than doubled from the preceding five-year period. CSU Ventures reported that 165 new license agreements were signed between 2007 and 2011, up from 58 in the period between 2002 and 2006. Concurrently, revenue from license agreements grew from $4.42 million to $8.22 million.
CSU Ventures serves as a resource for protecting and commercializing the university’s intellectual property by connecting researchers with industry, engaging external entrepreneurs and investors, and offering assistance to faculty entrepreneurs interested in creating new companies. In May, CSU Ventures entered into a partnership with Innovation Center of the Rockies to accelerate the creation of new businesses based on CSU faculty research.
CSU Ventures has engaged with a variety of CSU startups and promising technologies including:
• VetDC, a CSU startup that licenses and develops underutilized human drugs and medical devices for use in companion animals, won the Colorado Bioscience Association’s BioWest Venture showcase – a competition highlighting the state’s most promising bioscience companies.
• BioPoly LLC, an orthopedic implant company and a subsidiary of Schwartz Biomedical Company, has licensed joint implant technology developed by Sue James, Mechanical Engineering department chair, and is developing products for use in sports medicine and orthopedics.
• Brian Geiss, assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology and Susan Keenan, associate professor and director of the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Northern Colorado, are developing a drug that can stop replication of West Nile, dengue and yellow fever viruses.
• Carbo Analytics, a CSU startup company, is commercializing lab-on-a-chip technology from the CSU Chemistry Department that simplifies and expedites the analysis of sugars with applications in the beer, wine and biofuel industries. The company won "Outstanding Venture 2012" at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory 25th Industry Growth Forum this fall.
• Envirofit International, a CSU startup and private, non-profit technology leader using sustainable, scalable business models to solve global health and environmental problems, has distributed more than 500,000 cleaner burning cookstoves around the world.
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