LOS ANGELES, April 10, 2008 — The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Loma Linda University a three-year Partnership for Innovation (PFI) grant of $593,978 to lead a consortium in developing an innovative model for marketing research discoveries from Southern California universities. Barry L. Taylor, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and former Vice President for Research Affairs, will lead the project with Rohit Shukla, CEO and founder of Larta Institute, the lead private partner in this award. Commenting on the award, Taylor said, "Loma Linda University will work closely with Larta Institute to develop a Larta concept that will enable universities to jointly market their discoveries by bundling related technologies from different universities."
Larta Institute (http://www.larta.org), a non-profit commercialization assistance corporation, pioneered the concept involved in the application to NSF. Speaking about the award, Shukla said, "While it is hard work to bundle technologies developed by multiple institutions, the approach is the right one for the world we live in." Larta founded Network T2 ), in which the technology transfer offices from regional universities and research institutions work collaboratively to overcome challenges to technology commercialization.
The title of the awarded project is "Inter-University Technology Bundling Project (IUTBP)." It builds on a pilot program called Virtual Bundling Agent developed by Larta between 2005 and 2007, in which related intellectual property from Network T2 members was pooled into bundles and then presented to the private sector. The pilot was supported by an award from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The overall goal of IUTBP is to increase successfully transferred innovation coming from NT2 institutions by overcoming competitive issues, creating virtual bundles of compatible intellectual property from multiple NT2 sources and facilitating the transfer of those bundles to the marketplace.
The regional academic and research institutions participating in the program include Cal Poly Pomona, California Institute of Technology, California State University-San Bernardino, California State University-Fullerton, California State University-Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, City of Hope, Claremont College's Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Science, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, Pepperdine University, University of California-Irvine, University of California-Los Angeles, University of California-Riverside, University of California-San Diego, San Diego State University, University of California-Santa Barbara, University of California-Santa Cruz and University of Southern California.
For more information about the NSF PFI Award, please contact Carol Grande, Director of Intellectual Property & Contacts, Loma Linda University, at 909-558-7184.
For more information about Larta Institute, its programs and the Virtual Bundling Agent, please contact Constanza Pachon, Chief Operating Officer, at Email or 213-538-1451.
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