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By Tom Witkowski
Journal Staff
July 4, 2003 CAMBRIDGE — Just since October, the Deshpande
Center for Technological Innovation has helped two grant recipients
begin early-stage testing of their technologies, brought another
team close to finding outside financing and saw recipients finish
strongly in MIT’s annual $50,000 business plan competition.
And the center is only starting to gain momentum.
The Deshpande Center, charged by Sycamore Networks Inc. founder
Desh Deshpande with using a $20 million gift to fund innovation
and encourage entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, is now mulling its third round of grant proposals. The
center has distributed 16 grants thus far, and early recipients
of $50,000 and $250,000 grants have reached significant milestones.
With some initial successes under its belt, the center received
an “overwhelming” 45 preproposals in this latest round,
said Krisztina
Holly, director of the center. The increasing interest is a sign
of the
center’s success, as well as the interest in strengthening
the tie between technology in academia and the marketplace, center
officials said. “There is, obviously we now know, some pent-up
demand among faculty. They are interested in this,” said Holly.
At times, technological innovation at MIT does not necessarily happen
With real marketplace applications in mind. Research funded by the
National Science Foundation, as much of the work at MIT is, may
not make it to the commercial market, say experts. The Deshpande
Center’s goal is to provide that connection between innovation
and marketability.
“It’s a terrific way for the faculty to get focused
and see a little bit more of the real world application of what
they’re doing,” said venture capitalist Stan Reiss,
a principal at Matrix Partners of Waltham, who has judged proposals
coming into the center. “By the time we look at them, they’re
a little closer to being a business and a little farther from being
a science project.”
Recent success among the successes of the center thus far, a group
formed around using 3-D camera technology for medical imaging finished
second in MIT’s $50,000 business plan competition for their
Brontes Technologies entry. Another group, working on a traffic
slowdown warning system for highway use, also was a finalist in
the business plan competition. A team working on tissue engineering
used Deshpande Center funding to reduce the risk of using the technology
on patients. And a fourth team, developing a joint brace for people
with neuromuscular disorders or injuries, has seen some success
with two patients.
“In the past year, we’ve taken this project from an
idea to a company,” said Kailas Narendran, a recent MIT graduate
who is working with Professor Woodie Flowers on the joint brace.
The team received a $50,000 grant from the center and the money
was used to buy materials, build the brace, and now to pay Narendran
a salary. “Last fall, we were students getting paid by doing
other research and this was our night job,” he said.
John McBean, another MIT student, is also working on that team.
“We’re pretty excited about the possibility the technology
holds at this point. We’ve had what we consider very encouraging
initial results in two patients,” Narendran said. The brace
has helped people with spinal cord injuries move parts of their
bodies that had been paralyzed. When Desh Deshpande and his wife,
Jaishree, gave a $20 million gift to MIT in January 2001, the center
was founded to help such innovative and potentially disruptive ideas
go beyond the “what if” stage. On average, about 25
newly funded startups come out of the university annually, according
to center figures. But the center’s mission is to focus on
innovations and faculty research that has not traditionally been
thought of as ripe for commercialization.
“It’s to bridge that last gap between research and starting
a company,” said Bob Metcalfe, a general partner at Polaris
Venture Partners who has Worked with the center.
The center has given out $1.5 million in grants so far. Applicants
abound “We’ve got a couple of technologies that have
gotten almost to the point of commercialization,” Holly said.
“Faculty is coming up with ideas all the time. Part of what
we’re trying to do is bring market relevance to those ideas.”
The 45 applicants for the next round of grants far exceed Holly’s
expectations, she said. Some of the proposals are later versions
of ideas that had been brought to the center previously, but sent
back for more work. Other proposals are from the same people who
have applied before, but For different ideas, Holly said.
The recipients of the next round will be announced in October.
Reprinted with the permission of the Boston Business Journal
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