The Office of the Provost has designated Brian Coblitz to be the brand-new executive director of George Washington University’s Innovation Commercialization Workplace (TCO).
TCO promotes and helps with the transfer of technology established at GW for the advantage of the university community and the public while leveraging GW resources by partnering with industry experts and entrepreneurs. Coblitz, who was formerly interim director of the office and handled licensing for GW’s life science technologies for 9 years, has been with TCO because 2012.
“What we do is take technologies from the laboratory to the world,” Coblitz said. “We want technology developed at GW to make an effect, and one way we can accomplish that is by supporting product advancement, securing patents and getting people engaged with this process extremely early.”
The TCO frequently works with researchers for years, a cooperation in between the workplace and the inventors to collaborate and keep driving towards product development and prototyping to ultimately partner with businesses to address society’s needs.
“The Innovation Commercialization Office has actually made excellent strides over the last several years in commercializing our researchers’ innovation and ensuring optimal impact of their innovations, and Brian’s management has actually been a major factor of that success,” said Provost Christopher Alan Bracey. “I look forward to seeing the office continue to grow and promote innovation and entrepreneurship at the university.”
According to Coblitz, the office provides a number of services and resources for faculty, consisting of developing techniques for securing intellectual property (IP) and managing external IP lawyers to submit patents and copyrights. The workplace connects GW innovators with skilled business owners and businesses, handles licensing of GW innovations to external partners and handles those long-lasting relationships. The workplace also recommends on arrangements with market partners who wish to offer direct financial backing to GW research study groups, a common manner in which licensing results in early effect for professors.
“We’re energized by the incredible research that professors from various schools here at GW are associated with and want to assist our scientists realize the complete potential for that work to benefit society,” Coblitz stated. “We realize ‘tech commercialization’ can be a very strange thing to some, and numerous professors may feel the commercialization path isn’t for them.
“We’re here to help dispel some of that secret and guide faculty through the process. In most cases, the work faculty did to prepare their research for publication is enough to sufficiently explain their innovation and enable our attorneys to prepare a patent application. We have an experienced group of licensing supervisors and administrators who aim to provide outstanding customer support for scientists and business.”
Record of success
The TCO is on track to have its most efficient fiscal year in history, Coblitz stated. The TCO group has actually finished 13 deals up until now, an increase over the past two when 9 were completed each year– previous records.
In fiscal year 2020, GW ranked 10th among U.S. universities for gross licensing income in research expenditures, a designation Coblitz called “a pretty unique achievement.” GW likewise ranked 22nd for gross licensing earnings, according to a licensing study from AUTM, the leading association in innovation transfer.
“These are the things that can really raise the name of George Washington University throughout the region and the world when individuals see products and concepts that came out of our laboratories,” Coblitz stated.
By dealing with the TCO, GW researchers have access to many resources to ensure their innovations have the best effect.
Effective ventures include TCO’s deal with Milken Institute School of Public Health professor Lorien Abroms to support Text2Quit, a texting service created to help users give up smoking cigarettes and supply them with motivation and tools to stay away from tobacco. Abroms’ copyright was licensed and has actually helped thousands of individuals quit smoking.
The workplace also worked with Akos Vertes, a professor of chemistry in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, to patent and certify the rights to his method for high throughput analysis of biomolecules in living tissue to Protea Biosciences. His collaborative university/industry group received more than $14 million in funding to develop a technique for quickly determining the root of biological and chemical dangers.
In 2021 it was revealed that GIAPREZA ™, a drug developed at the GW School of Medication and Health Sciences utilized to increase precariously low blood pressure in lethal situations, had been sublicensed to treat patients in Europe– expanding around the world access to the treatment. GW entered into a worldwide licensing agreement with La Jolla Pharmaceutical Business in 2014 for copyright rights for the drug.
GW offered a portion of its royalty rights to GIAPREZA ™ in 2019, allowing the university to reinvest substantial funds into strategic concerns in academics, research study and development, including the Innovation Maturation Awards. With the GIAPREZA royalties, TCO developed the awards as part of this continuous effort to offer early-stage assistance for professors pursuing innovations with promising industrial capacity and social impact. This spring, 4 approximately $50,000 awards have been provided to GW faculty to support unlicensed, GW-owned innovations promising business capacity and societal effect.
This year’s awardees are Zurab Nadareishvili from the GW Medical Professors Associates and Rohan Fernandes from SMHS for a vaccine for stroke avoidance; John Hawdon from SMHS for a system to test treatments versus drug resistant canine hookworms; Saniya LeBlanc from the School of Engineering and Applied Science for laser additive manufacturing of a thermoelectric energy conversion system; and Mark Reeves from CCAS, Rahul Simha from SEAS and Chen Zeng from CCAS for Air-Q: indoor air quality picking up and mitigation.
“The Innovation Maturation Awards have been a really effective program up until now,” Coblitz said. “That’s something we’re going to be able to continue for a variety of years thanks to the funding from the money making.”
Recipients of the Innovation Maturation Award, consist of teachers Mona Zaghloul and Jeanne A. Jordan, who established a miniature gadget that might allow public health specialists to immediately diagnose and track COVID-19 infection utilizing cellular phone. After receiving the award, they licensed their technology and got in a sponsored research study arrangement with the licensee to support further development.
Opportunities ahead
The TCO is preparing to release a brand-new funding program, the GW TCO SBIR Matching Fund, which will provide up to $100,000 per award for internal GW research and help start-ups collaborate with GW researchers to develop innovations certified from GW. The first awards will be available in 2023, Coblitz said. When once again, funds for the awards will come from the money making of a part of the GIAPREZA ™ United States royalties.
“The mix of the Innovation Maturation Awards with the SBIR Matching Fund will provide finances to assist with validation and prototyping of GW innovations at many stages along the product development process,” Coblitz said. “The objective is to preserve and improve on our performance history of being a very easy workplace with which to work together for both innovators and companies.”
The TCO will supply additional details on applicant requirements at a later date.
Over the past decade, the TCO has actually dealt with numerous GW faculty to bring research study innovations to the market and create brand-new connections. The workplace preserves a database including the large variety of technologies readily available for licensing, and business are able to subscribe for updates. TCO likewise supports the GW Commercialization Advising Network (GW CAN), linking entrepreneurs, developers and financiers to exchange aid, assistance, recommendations and resources.
GW creators will have the chance to display their concepts and vie for $40,000 in rewards at the TCO Innovation Competition on April 6. The event offers a forum for idea sharing amongst GW researchers, entrepreneurs and members of the endeavor neighborhood, as well as the chance to present innovations to a panel of judges consisting of knowledgeable entrepreneurs, investors and market specialists. In previous years, finalists have gone on to accredit and advertise their innovations after providing at this event.
TCO is thrilled to showcase this year’s Development Competitors finalists, Coblitz said. For the life science track, TCO will include discussions from the labs of teachers Michael Keidar on a plasma discharge tube gadget for dealing with brain growths and Lijie Grace Zhang on a 3D bioprinted heart patch. For the physical science and engineering track, TCO will include discussions from the laboratories of professors Guru Venkataramani on a hardware-based cyber deception style to eliminate malware and Adelina Voutchkova on inexpensive sustainable jet fuel.
Significantly, graduate students are co-inventors of all 4 finalists. Graduate student involvement in the commercialization process supplies valuable experience that can help them land jobs post-graduation or introduce a startup company, Coblitz said. The occasion’s keynote speaker, Benjamin Holmes, created medical devices as a student scientist in Zhang’s laboratory. He became CEO and co-founder of Nanochon, which is establishing that gadget into a product.
The occasion, held in Science and Engineering Hall’s Lehman Auditorium, is open to the GW community.
Members of the GW research study neighborhood thinking about talking about potential next actions of advertising your innovation must call the TCO to learn more.