Stevens Environmental Entrepreneurship Program

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Stevens Environmental

Entrepreneurship Program

Stevens Institute of Technology / Polytechnic Institute of NYU

PI: Lex McCusker Co PI’s: Kurt Becker, Christos Christodoulatos, Thomas Lechler

NSF Award #IIP-

0840623

3 Year Award Start Date: 16 March 2007

Key Attributes of our

Innovation Ecosystem:

E 2 Lab Website – www.stevens.edu/entrepreneurship/e2lab

Thomas Lechler, Lex McCusker, Christos Christodoulatos

Questioning & Curiosity:

The main thrust of our project is bringing market intelligence to campus to guide and influence the research of faculty toward attacking problems of interest to industry and government. We have worked to expose faculty to a somewhat different set of questions than those that are being asked by colleagues in academia.

Brief Project Overview:

The Environmental Entrepreneurship Lab (E 2 Lab) is a project to transform the structure, policies, processes and culture of a research-intensive university to dramatically improve the rate of transfer of new technologies into marketplace ventures. The effort is focused on elevating business awareness among faculty and students and introducing entrepreneurial behavior by implementing several innovative educational initiatives aimed at enabling the integration of technological and market knowledge into the academic culture.

Top Challenges:

1. Motivating faculty to participate in entrepreneurial activities.

2. Underestimated the effort to create networks that are able to give effective feedback to research faculty.

3. Workshops were spaced too closely to allow for sufficient progress between successive workshops.

Risk Taking:

Redirecting research towards applications is a huge risk for researchers. What if the application never comes to fruition?

Working towards patenting and commercialization as opposed to publishing, is also a risk, especially for young faculty. We are working to modify our promotion and tenure policy and process to allow faculty who have created valuable intellectual property to get proper recognition for that accomplishment in their applications for promotion and tenure.

Program Activities:

E 2 Lab Events

Workshops

05/20/2008 Drinking Water Quality Workshop

09/23/2008 Stormwater Quality Management Workshop

01/15/2009 Green Roof Design Workshop

06/02/2009 Alternative Energy Workshop

09/29/2009 Water Quality Workshop

Conferences

12/07/2009 Energy Technology Conference

03/22/2010 Sensing Technology Conference

Stevens Entrepreneurs Network Events

04/01/2010 - The Role of Attorneys

05/06/2010 - Writing Effective Business Plans

Academics

Stevens Institute of Technology

Entrepreneurship Minor

Ph.D. Seminar,

Innovation & Entrepreneurship Doctoral Fellowship

NYU-Poly

Inno/Vention student idea competition

Office of Academic Entrepreneurship

Research & Entrepreneurship Newsletter Jan 2010

Internal Policies

Pre-IP Process

Case Study: X-Rid

Incentive Program for Generating IP

IP Training Seminars

AE Survey

– Stevens

Research & Entrepreneurship Day (Annually)

Student Elevator Pitch Competition

Start-up Company Presentations

Partners:

Openness:

We have been changing the internal processes for

Intellectual Property at Stevens Institute of Technology. The faculty incentive system has financial incentives at every stage in the IP process. Incentives in the first phase, Pre-IP consist of funding for research assistants for up to 3 months, to investigate concepts and prepare prototypes. In the second phase, Secure IP , inventions disclosed to the patent committee, as well as received patents, are rewarded with a monetary sum as well as with recognition awards. To date over 80 people have received an incentive check for submitting disclosures and patent applications.

Collaboration Across Fields:

SEED (Stevens Entrepreneur & Enterprise Development)

Program. The Office of Enterprise Development and

Licensing is having undergraduate students from both the

Schaefer School of Engineering and Science and the Howe

School of Technology Management cooperatively develop a new startup company over an 18-month period. The SEED program has established two new businesses where students, under the direction of a professional CEO and the

Senior Design Advisor, are taking university-created technology through the startup phase and into commercialization. Students are responsible for everything from market research and business plan development to completing a commercializable product. In addition, they are directly involved in raising capital to fund the startup.

Placing Partners in “New

Environments” & “Playgrounds”:

Top Contributions:

1. The E 2 Lab has organized several events to help educate and encourage market-focused research in both faculty and students. To date we have had 5 workshops and 2 conferences, with over 32 faculty members from 5 different universities presenting. These workshops are a key element of our new prototype for the Pre-IP Process. As a result of these workshops and our follow-up interviews with presenting faculty researchers, many new market focused research projects have been established with specific application areas. We typically follow up with all presenters from Stevens at the workshops, and approximately 1 per workshop goes on to establish a new research project based on feedback from the

We ask our researchers to present their early stage research at our workshops and conferences. The researchers then receive feedback from industry and from investors that understand the market. We are creating opportunities for our research faculty to get out of the ivory tower and get direct exposure to the needs of the marketplace.

Leading/Inspiring for Surprising

workshop and from meeting with the E2 Lab. or

Unexpected Results:

2. A Case-Study: X-RID – treatment process to remove explosives (TNT, RDX, HMX, and other energetic materials)

• May 20, 2008 - Broad research in bimetal nano-particles was presented at the workshop

•Result: Stevens ARDEC/Picatinny Arsenal joint project enabled the researchers to focus the research to a specific

Dr. Henry Du was looking into sensor technologies and he presented his research at our Stormwater Management

Workshop in Sept 2008. He found that he could measure

technology with an application area.

• October 2008 - a provisional patent application was filed (#61/106,641)

• May 2009 Business case analysis performed by an undergraduate business student, Daniel Riggle.

•Result: $20 million market for this project, and a recommendation that this technology should move to the next stage.

• September 2009 a preliminary application to New Jersey Corporation for Advanced Technology (NJCAT) for independent parts per trillion with his new technique for detecting contaminates. In the breakout sessions at the workshop, the industry participants told the researcher that the problem is not the precision of measurement but how to detect something in real-time (as opposed to bringing it back to the lab for testing, etc.). In particular, on the NJ coast line, in the summer, a big problem is detecting the e.coli bacteria in the technology verification was submitted

• October 19, 2009 - A non-provisional joint patent application (No. 12/581,480) was filed on in conjunction with Picatinny water to make sure the water is safe for swimmers. The E2 Arsenal.

Lab project funded a research assistant to look into this

3. Establishment of the Office of Academic Entrepreneurship to foster and exploit technology-driven innovations that are specific application over the summer and fall of 2009. either adopted by the industry or serve as basis for creating new ventures, using the E 2 - Lab as a prototype. Dr.

Professor Du has redirected his research into real-time

Christodoulatos (Co-PI) was recently named the Associate Provost for Academic Entrepreneurship (AE) in the new office, and sensor technologies with market applications.

Dr. Lechler (Co-PI) was named as the Director of AE Programs. PFI

National Science Foundation Partnerships For Innovation

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