Commercialization Recap: February
February came and went so quickly — even with Leap Day — but it turned out to be a great and productive month. I may have perceived it as ‘great’ due to the unusual warmth that hit Chicago… I mean, it was 60 degrees and I was in short sleeves! But, more importantly, we had some interesting ‘happenings’ on all commercialization fronts.
First, in partnership with The Entrepreneurs Center in Dayton, OH, our pilot commercialization courses kicked off at Wright State University (WSU) and the University of Dayton (UD).
The students ideated on DoD technologies, worked with marshmallows, formed teams and selected their federal lab technologies. Technologies came from multiple sources, including AFRL Directorates in Dayton, AFRL Information Directorate in Rome, NY, and Army Research Lab in Natick, MA. Each team will work with their technology and inventors during the semester, which will culminate in May with commercial market assessments and a business pitch.
You can view the WSU and UD programs on the ArchiTech Platform: here and here.
Another big development has been the formation of companies from last fall’s Technology Acceleration Pilot (TAP) program, run by TEC and the Wright Brothers Institute (WBI) in Dayton.
InfiniPure, founded by a TAP student team from WSU and UD, incorporated and will license the AFRL’s axial slit capillary technology for use in a variety of filtration applications. The company is set to compete at the upcoming UD business plan competition for a chance to win $25,000 in startup capital this Saturday, March 5th. We wish the team (Gavin, Kristy and Andrew) all the best!
We expect to see more AFRL technology-based companies coming down the pipe in the next few weeks!
We were also proud to play host to the Dayton TAP leadership team this past month at 1871, a world-reknown digital startup hub in Chicago.
A big part of the commercialization process at the AFRL is to search for high-potential technologies based on market ‘needs’, which can come from accelerators, investment groups, established companies and startups. We used much of our time together to meet with groups in Chicago that have ‘uncovered’ needs in a variety of spaces, including medtech, environmental sensing, agsciences, etc. These valuable inputs will help ‘pull’ technologies from the AFRL and potentially provide a strong commercialization outlet for these technologies.
We also demonstrated to the Dayton group a new toolkit for ArchiTech that will ‘mine-and-match’ federal technologies with these emerging market needs… more details to come in March! :)
Lastly, we met with folks at Bunker Labs, whose mission is:
to launch and accelerate veteran-owned businesses, channel the energy among veterans to become entrepreneurs and business owners, and create a new forum for high-performing veterans to meet and collaborate.
We look forward to watching Bunker Labs as they expand across the nation by helping veterans create new startup opportunities.
In summary, it was a fun and informative month with lots of commercialization activity.
Stay tuned for our March ‘preview’ where we will discuss upcoming ArchiTech software developments, our travel adventures to accelerators and investment groups in Silicon Valley, a pitch event at the Air Force Academy, Application Discovery events in Dayton and Colorado Springs, student team activities and much more!
