UC Davis breaks its own spin-out records for the 2013 to 2014 financial year.
University of California, Davis (UC Davis) has finished the 2013 to 2014 financial year on a high note. A total of 14 new businesses have been created within those 12 months, up from eight the year before and the most yet within any one financial year for the institution.
The success is also a personal one for Linda Katehi, who took over as chancellor in 2009 and made increased entrepreneurship a key goal at the university. The celebration comes with caveats, however, as many of the startups from UC Davis choose to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area to be nearer the knowledge and investor pool of Silicon Valley.
The university is working hard at keeping businesses in the area, however, and in August 2014 announced awards of $50,000 each to four researchers. The awards will be used to push ahead with the commercialisation of their technologies.
UC Davis is the largest campus in physical size within the University of California system, and third largest in enrollment behind UCLA and UC Berkeley.
One of the startups is Reprovantage, which is aiming to diagnose and treat subfertility, a condition affecting men that makes them less fertile. The genetic mutation causing the condition was discovered at the university.
David Earp, chairman at Reprovantage, commented on the university’s goal to increase commercialisation. He said: “The leadership is really trying to go in that direction. They are really trying to accelerate the rate of formation of companies.”
