Comment from Denise Graves, university relations director, Michigan Economic Development Corporation – Entrepreneurship and Innovation

In exploring different strategies to commercialise technology, spur business activity and ignite the startup community, accelerating the transfer of new technologies from Michigan’s institutions of higher education has proven to be a source of untapped potential.
With top public research institutions and universities in the state – such as University of Michigan (UM), Michigan State University (MSU), Michigan Technological University (MTU) and Wayne State University – Michigan has incredible access to talent for ideas, innovation and research acumen to advance technology to the market.
To support the research projects of faculty members and top researchers, we have established programs to create a pipeline of derisked technologies to send to the market. Faculty members often have ideas surrounding high-tech innovations, but they do not have the access to funding or the business knowledge to create a viable product. This is where initiatives such as the Michigan Translational Research and Commercialisation (MTrac) program step in to provide technologies with funding, industry mentoring and business support services.
The MTrac program, managed by Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s entrepreneurship and innovation team, is housed at four universities as statewide innovation hubs focused on key industry sectors – transportation, life sciences, agriculture and advanced materials. By partnering our universities, we are creating a collaboration of industry and university innovation to advance business in Michigan. Universities have demonstrated support by providing matching funds and serving as collaboration hubs to share best practices in implementing early-stage commercialisation support functions.
The establishment of this active program network has provided an avenue for faculty and students to be a part of commercialising laboratory research. The state’s innovation hubs include:

  • AgBio at MSU.
  • Advanced transportation at UM.
  • Advanced applied materials at MTU.
  • Life sciences at UM.

Statewide innovation hubs can support researchers from any of Michigan’s 15 public universities with technologies in the industry of focus, helping to foster collaboration between researchers across campus and among other universities within Michigan. For instance, after developing a technology aimed at reducing airborne pathogens in livestock operations, Herek Clack of University of Michigan applied for and received funding for a prototype from the AgBio Innovation Hub at MSU.
The executive mission of MTrac is to help researchers advance high-tech discoveries, research and technologies into commercial markets. More than just funding, the external oversight committee within each MTrac innovation hub consists industry experts, leaders in technology transfer and members of the venture capital community. The committee supplies participants with real-world industry expertise, market and product viability, mentoring and a network of business development contacts.
In establishing the program, getting technologies out of the valley of death – from ideation to commercialisation – we found a major hurdle was researchers’ lack of business know-how and industry experience.
Our oversight committee and mentors within additional university programs, such as the Tech Transfer Talent Network (T3N), tackle this obstacle head-on by providing access to industry contacts and designated mentors to help researchers understand commercialisation milestones.
To date, MTrac has received 483 proposals, funded 180 projects, created 37 startups that generated 126 jobs, licensed 29 technologies, optioned 13 and received more than $134m in follow-on funding. Additionally, many spinouts from the MTrac program have already achieved substantial success, including Cibo Technologies, an agriculture software developer spun out of MSU; Genomenon, a UM spinout working on data visualisation software for genomics; and Fifth Eye, a critical care data analytics spinout of UM that recently raised $2.4m in seed funding.
Funded through Michigan’s economic stimulus plan, 21st Century Jobs Fund, MTrac offers key outcomes focused on developing startups in Michigan, licensing technology to industry, creating jobs and securing private investment. In fostering an active and engaging network amopng faculty and students at universities and industry experts, MTrac is diversifying the economy, fuelling growth, spurring innovation and developing entrepreneurial talent.
As we enter the sixth year of the MTrac program will be key to building on the success we have seen so far. It is through these relationships that Michigan will continue to lead in transportation and mobility innovations and capitalise on the state’s expertise in life sciences, agriculture and materials.