Wayne State to create commercialization center within Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics; expand innovative student-run advertising agency at TechTown
DETROIT-A new consortium of Michigan's 15 state universities known as the Michigan Initiative for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (MIIE) announced the first round of awards in a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort to help rebuild the state's economy on a foundation of diversified, knowledge-based industries.
The goal of the MIIE is to revitalize and reshape the state's economy. It will draw on Michigan's philanthropic resources to help launch new startup companies and industries, strengthen ties between small business, industry and academia, and ultimately speeding the commercialization of university research while promoting a culture of entrepreneurial risk-taking.
The MIIE will yield as many as 200 new Michigan start-ups over the next decade. The first step toward that goal includes 20 entrepreneurship grants totaling $1.3 million. The consortium will raise and distribute $75 million over the next seven years, mainly through donations from some of the more than 2,200 philanthropic foundations across the state.
Jeffrey Loeb, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Neurology, member of the Wayne State University/DMC Comprehensive Epilepsy Program, and associate director of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics in WSU's School of Medicine and resident of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., was awarded $100,000 for his proposal, ""CMMG Commercialization Center."
Dr. Loeb aims to create the CMMG Commercialization Center within Wayne State University's Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics (CMMG). It will address one of the greatest obstacles faced by academic researchers as they seek to commercialize new technologies. CMMG has a mix of basic and physician scientists with translational research as one of its major charters, and has a track record of developing emerging technologies that will help understand and treat human disease with great commercial potential. This initiative will allow CMMG to develop a new commercialization education program for faculty, students and staff of CMMG; assemble a team of experts for a technology advisory board to screen potential new technologies, develop proof of concepts as well as business development plans; and set up and identify seed funds to perform the indicated licensing and/or spinning out of a new company from the university and CMMG.
"There is a lot of ground breaking research in CMMG with great commercial potential," commented Mr. Randal Charlton, executive director of TechTown at WSU. "This grant will allow CMMG to go beyond their research, and drive new technologies in a new direction that will have commercial benefits," added Charlton.
Richard Beltramini, interim associate dean of WSU's School of Business and resident of Troy, Mich., was awarded $50,000 to expand an innovative student-run advertising agency at WSU's TechTown to work with new business start-ups in Michigan.
"The student-run marketing communications agency represented a way to provide my students "real world" experience, while supporting the needs of TechTown's small businesses," said Dr. Beltramini. "So, I identified four members of our student chapter of the American Advertising Federation with solid skills and a strong work ethic, and working with Randal Charlton and Michael Wright, WSU's associate vice president of Marketing & Communications, we identified several companies in need of marketing communications support."
To date, four students have worked all summer to develop specific advertising recommendations for one TechTown client, and are now in the process of adding their support to a second TechTown small business. The funding will allow expansion of both the number of students involved and additional business clients going into the fall term.
"This initiative is a great opportunity for building on the important work of the Michigan Universities Commercialization Initiative," commented Fred Reinhart, associate vice president for Research and Technology Commercialization at WSU. "MIIE is a unique program in the country. I don't know of any other state in the United States that is involving all of their public universities in an economic development initiative such as this one," Reinhart added.
Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world.