Entrepreneurship has been a focus of the Rady School of Management for years with programs such as StartR, mystartupXX and the Venture Fund. Now, Rady is improving its entrepreneurial opportunities even further with a new entrepreneurship series and five new companies being added to the IGE Technology Accelerator.
Entrepreneurship Series
The UC San Diego Office of Innovation and Commercialization teamed up with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), a premier law firm, to bring an 18-month Entrepreneurship Seminar series to UC San Diego and the Mesa.
“This monthly series is focused on educating innovators and entrepreneurs on the various aspects of technology commercialization, company formation, and funding,” explains the series event page. The series is open to staff, students and community members as a free event.
IGE Technology Accelerator
The IGE (Institute for the Global Entrepreneur) Technology Accelerator was developed in collaboration between the Jacobs School of Engineering and the Rady School of Management. It provides each team up to $50,000 in financial support over the course of a year and helps teams validate both their technologies and business models. Chosen teams have the opportunity to field test their prototypes with strategic partners while also receiving entrepreneurship training, mentoring and access to state-of-the-art facilities.
Recently, the first five teams for the initial cohort were chosen. They are:
- Team Lead, Rajan Kumar: stretchable, form-fitting batteries for wearable applications.
- Team Lead, Ashok Kodigala: a specialized laser for LIDAR applications.
- Team Lead, Lorenzo Rossini: Veocor, a personalized tool to assess the risk of blood clot formation and strokes.
- Team Lead, Sanjeet Hegde: specialized coatings for standard instruments that medical professionals use with MRIs.
- Team Lead, Karcher Morris: a medical instrument for cardiologists to protect the esophagus during heart surgery.
“At the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur, we are focused on unlocking the potential of the numerous innovations we generate at UC San Diego,” said Sujit Dey, Director of the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur and a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering. “There are many research projects on campus that have tremendous market potential, but successful commercialization requires strategy, planning, organization, and support. We are excited to be providing our first group of talented and promising teams in the technology accelerator with these resources.”