Equity Conversations Between PIs and Graduate Students
Negotiating an Equity Split with Your PI It can be the most fraught of conversations. A graduate student working on research that shows commercial promise seeks a sit-down with his or her principal investigator (PI) about starting a company. How does that grad student or post-doc broach the topic of a university spin-out – and, […]
The Story of NanoView Biosciences, a BU Spin-out
NanoView Biosciences, a venture-backed startup purchased in 2022 by a California-based life science company, was entirely a creation of BU.
You Have an Idea for Impact. What’s Next?
Q&A with Rana K. Gupta, Former Director of Faculty Entrepreneurship Rana K. Gupta formerly served as director of faculty entrepreneurship at Boston University. You are the [former] Director of Faculty Entrepreneurship, but I’ve heard you say that you don’t like to use the word entrepreneurship. Why is that? I know from working with researchers for […]
From Lab to Fab: How Analog Devices is Experimenting with a New Family of Products at BU
The Boston University Photonics Center is home to some of the finest on-campus business incubation facilities in the United States, including BU’s Business Innovation Center. BY GARY RIVLIN Mohamed Azize, a biomedical engineer and a senior manager at Analog Devices, the giant chip maker, had an idea for a new biomedical sensor that would improve […]
The Window is Never Closing on Customer Need
Rana K. Gupta formerly served as director of faculty entrepreneurship at Boston University, co-reporting to Technology Development and Innovate@BU. He helped BU researchers bring technology and other research breakthroughs to the marketplace to increase their impact. He also managed BU’s Ignition Award program, which offers faculty commercialization funding. Situation #1: When I first became a CEO in 2006, the Board […]
From the Lab to Your Life
The BU Ignition Awards help fast-track the commercialization of promising new research, from a tiny ring that stops chronic pain to soft robotic grippers that can pick up delicate objects.
The Journey to Impact: A Passion for Helping AKI Patients
An interview with Steven C. Borkan, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at BU, and Attending Physician at Boston Medical Center. The following discussion with Dr. Steven C. Broken took place at our BU Innovator of the Year Award event — where he explained his focus on treating acute kidney injury, his ideas on invention vs. […]
The Journey to Impact: Watch Your Language
Are you working on an idea to impact a customer, audience, or market? (Since we have policy people in the audience whose “market” is the government, let’s define “market” as the audience you wish to adopt your idea.) Whether you plan to start a company, license to a third party, or collaborate with the government […]
The Innovator’s Quarterly: Advice from Experts for Aspiring Academic Innovators
April 2022 | News from BU Industry Engagement and Technology Development Spotlight Photonics Pioneer Named BU Innovator of the Year Professor Selim Ünlü, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ENG), has pioneered devices and technologies that find security flaws in the construction of computer chips and detect viral pathogens in medical samples. Ünlü holds 18 patents and […]
The Journey to Impact: Faculty Entrepreneurship Case Study, Passport Systems
Following is a brief case study on Passport Systems, an MIT spinout which had to shut its doors in 2020 after a nearly 20 years’ effort and $100M invested. I wrote this case study with the assistance of Dr. Gordon Baty, a former colleague who was Chairman and Co-Founder of Passport, with the hope that […]