Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

It’s always interesting to me to see the kind of technology being developed at local universities, which ends up channeled into (usually) obscure defense and government projects, but which could potentially be spectacular commercial applications.

For example, I ran into a small USC spinoff a few months ago, Sentinal AVE, which develops software which can take live video webcam images, and overlay them into systems like Google Earth/Microsoft Live. As much fun as you can have with consumer oriented, mapping systems, imagine if you could take a live webcam feed –and there are literally millions of these — and overlay them in real time onto a 3D map. Sentinel has a demo which shows web cameras from the USC campus overlaid, in real time, on a 3D (pan/tilt/scroll) map of the campus. Sentinel is currently focusing in on perimeter security systems areas, but I’m surprised that a Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo doesn’t jump on this kind of technology to gain an edge on their competitors in the competitive online mapping space.

Very few companies seem to successfully get from the academic mindset (think research grants/DARPA/large government contracts) into the wider commercial market. Companies which have made or are making that transition here include Language Weaver (another USC spinoff), Fastsoft (Caltech), and Alelo (USC), among others. There’s a huge latent potential in many impressive projects, across the all of the schools here, which are great from the technology standpoint but often fail to make it to commercialization.

Some efforts which are aiming at helping increase the commercial usage of the research in the region–for example, Bob Nidever’s UC in SoCal site, which includes recent info on university related technology licensing and technology transfer, and the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation.

There’s interesting news out of one of the local high tech organizations serving the area today. Entretech, an economic development effort closely tied to Caltech, has added board members out of USC and UCLA. Krisztina Holly, who is Vice Provost and Executive Director of the new USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, and Kathryn Atchison, Vice Provost of Intellectual Property and Industry Relations, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at UCLA, have both joined the board of the group.

The move is interesting because, traditionally there has not been a lot of collaboration between local universities in the region to focus on bolstering the technology industry and outreach to the local technology community. Universities, while they are often identified as being a key part of making any area a center of technology startup activity, rarely reach out to industry, and even if they do infrequently collaborate with other local schools.

The three-way collaboration between USC, UCLA, and Caltech is part of a push by Entretech to extend beyond its original roots in the Pasadena/San Gabriel Valley area and into the Greater Los Angeles area.

Prior coverage:

• Interview with Stephanie Yanchinski, Pasadena Entretec
• Interview with Krisztina Holly, USC Stevens Institute
• Awards Season: Entretech Names Finalists

I spent the morning at the University of Southern California Celebration of Innovation, the launch of the USC Stevens Institute, a new effort by the school to advance research and innovation–and hopefully bring that innovation to market. For those who aren’t familiar with the USC Stevens Institute, the new effort is the result of a $22M gift from Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Mark Stevens to the school.

It was a standing room only crowd, and interestingly packed with not just who you might expect–technology transfer and University researchers–but a broad scope of venture capitalists from out of the area, press and media, and executives. It’s interesting how efforts of world class universities like USC get the attention not only of folks like those who read this blog–the venture capitalists, service providers, and angel investors active in Southern California–but also of others who are interested in tapping into the potential of a research university like USC.

Aside from the heavy turnout of Tech Coast Angels, I ran into a number of venture capitalists from Sand Hill Road, one from New York, and also spent a few minutes chatting with Bob Metcalfe, founder of 3Com and co-inventor of Ethernet (and now also a VC at Polaris Capital, an East Coast VC firm).

One of the key pieces of developing a healthy technology ecosystem, in any area, is how efficiently world class universities like USC, UCLA, Caltech, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC San Diego and the other many very fine universities and colleges in the area convert the research–and students–into viable, growing startups. Efforts like the USC Stevens institute can act as a catalyst, to not only help technology spin out of the universities, but also make it attractive to start and grow technology firms in the region.

My interview with Mark Stevens of Sequoia will run later this week.

We’re lucky in Southern California to have quite a few prominent universities and research institutions, where good technology gets spun out into great firms. Among the startups I’ve spoken to here recently, which were first academic projects are:

Alelo is developing tactical language training systems–based on a video game platform and language recognition– being used by the U.S. military to teach troops both language and culture before being deployed, and is based on research out of the University of Southern California.

Fastsoft, which was spun out of Caltech, has developed technology that accelerates Internet traffic through enhancements to the TCP/IP protocol. The technology has set the Internet Speed Record several years in a row.

AutoESL Design Technologies is designing electronic system level design automation software, which allows hardware designers to write C, C++, or SystemC code and have it automatically generate RT level circuit designs, which promises to reduce the amount of work required to design chips, and is out of UCLA.

Other spinout activity here include Quanlight (yellow-amber-red LEDs, UC San Diego), Language Weaver (automated language translation, out of USC) , and Inlustra (Gallium Nitride GaN semiconductor substrates, UC Santa Barbara).

There’s quite a number of organizations looking to increase the number and effectiveness of spinouts here, including the USC Stevens Institute, the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property & Industry Sponsored Research, the Caltech Office of Technology Transfer, and Orange County’s OCTANe, San Diego’s CONNECT–just to name a few.
A good resource is the Doing Business with UC in Southern California blog which covers technology licensing out of UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Riverside.