The first cohort of TechNovum will feature five-to-eight inventors from the institute whose concepts have been sanctioned by its tech transfer office’s 12-week validation process.
University of Texas Health Science (UT Health) at San Antonio is to open the inaugural cohort of its TechNovum accelerator for faculty inventors hoping to out-license or spin out their innovations, according to Xconomy.
TechNovum will initially accept five-to-eight inventors for a program scheduled to run from June until October 2019, providing training in areas such as market validation and business planning, leading up to a two-day pitching event with investors.
The accelerator will be operated by UT Health San Antonio’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), which will select inventors who have successfully completed the standard 12-week validation process it applies to all internal innovation disclosures.
OTC expects TechNovum to support a diverse range of inventions owing to its early-stage remit, in contrast to other accelerators which target business concepts further advanced in development.
TechNovum will be guided by co-directors John Fritz, an associate director at OTC, and Sean Thomson, who works for the office as a senior technology licensing specialist.
Mentors from the business community will be recruited to impart advice on life sciences- orientated challenges such as quality control, regulatory considerations and negotiating partnerships.
John Fritz said a key objective for the accelerator will be to structure the business, marketing and entrepreneurial support that OTC had previously offered inventors on an ad-hoc basis.
Sean Thompson added the initiative would give OTC the opportunity to realise greater practical value from research conducted at the university.
Thompson said: “There are some people who might get bothered about this focus on commercialisation.
“Basic research is absolutely necessary, but research by itself, alone, has never saved anyone’s life. It is the use of what you learn from that basic research and the application of that that is really most important.”
