VentureLab Showcases Faculty Innovations Moving Toward Commercialization

VentureLab showcased 10 faculty-developed technologies at varying stages in the technology transfer process, opened laboratories for tours and gave brief presentations in the GCATT auditorium. Attendees had the opportunity to spend time with individual Georgia Tech faculty members and VentureLab staff to discuss the technology prospects in detail.

Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough spoke to attendees, noting that while Georgia Tech is breaking ground in technology transfer activities, economic devleopment is not a new mission for the university. The state created Georgia Tech in 1885 to help move the South's economy from an agrarian to an industrial one, so economic development has always been on par with Georgia Tech's education, research and service missions, he said.

"Today our mission is only different in that we are in an age of information and services," Clough explained. "We serve the original intent of our economic development mission in a different way."

Building upon extensive federally funded research in science and engineering, Georgia Tech faculty and students are creating innovative technologies with commercial potential. "We have many great new ideas boiling away at Georgia Tech, and many of them will make their way into the commercial arena," Clough said.

Georgia Tech is committed to supporting entrepreneurial activities by faculty and students to make this goal a reality, Provost Jean-Lou Chameau told the group. He pointed to Georgia Tech's creation of VentureLab last fall and the university's operation of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a technology business incubator. Also, the university's commitment was recognized earlier this year in "Innovation U.," a report from the Southern Growth Policies Board, which cited Georgia Tech as the most advanced with regard to universities' roles in a knowledge economy, Chameau said.

Since its formation a year ago, VentureLab has evaluated 90 research innovations involving more than 100 faculty. A dozen of those innovations were identified as having commercial potential. Of those with commercial interest, four have so far been the basis for formation of new companies. Two of them, Qcept Technologies and Radatec, Inc., have already been admitted to the ATDC.