BOSTON – University of Massachusetts President Martin T. Meehan announced Thursday $200,000 in seed funding for new technologies to extend battery life, prevent bedsores and battle the causes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS, as well as five other projects, as part of the Technology Development Fund.
“These awards highlight faculty excellence and underscore the role of a public research university to advance knowledge and spur entrepreneurship and economic development,” he said in a statement.
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Eight UMass faculty research projects throughout the Bay State’s flagship research institution network will be awarded $25,000 Tech Development Fund grants, a funding source which is overseen by the Office of Technology Commercialization and Ventures at the president’s office in Boston.
Abigail Barrow, interim executive director of OTCV said the projects were selected from 45 applicants for their commercial viability and hopes they will lead to startup companies or licensing agreements.
These successful projects are as follows:
- Dr. Zuoshang Xu and Thoru Pederson, department of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology, UMass Medical School. The team has developed a method to detect a mutated gene that causes a majority of inherited cases of the severe neurodegenerative disease ALS via patient skin cell specimens and looks to adapt the method to inner cheek cell specimens.
- Robert Giles and Cecil Joseph, The Biomedical Terahertz Technology Center, Department of physics, UMass Lowell. The team will design and fabricate an optical grating to spatially disperse the spectrum of a terahertz pulse, the first step towards developing a single-shot terahertz spectrometer.
- John Klier and Shelly Peyton, department of chemical engineering, UMass Amherst. The UMass Amherst team of Yen Tran, Matt Rasmuson, Peyton and Klier is developing novel microgel additives to dramatically enhance coating performance and appearance and enable new types of water-based coating systems.
- David Kazmer, department of plastics engineering, UMass Lowell. Kazmer will evaluate the technical and commercial feasibility of a novel feed screw design for use in polymer processing that has the potential to improve the cost and quality of manufactured products.
- Alexey Tonyushkin, department of physics, UMass Boston. The team will prototype novel coils to be used in a new generation of magnetic particle scanners.
- Dr. Raymond Dunn and Dr. Kelli Hickle, division of plastic surgery, UMass Medical School; John McNeill, Yitzhak Mendelson and Xinming Huang, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The team is developing a wireless-enabled disposable sensor patch designed to prevent pressure ulcers, also known as bedsores, to be worn on at-risk locations on the body.
- Patrick Cappillino and Ertan Agar, department of chemistry and biochemistry, UMass Dartmouth, department of mechanical engineering, UMass Lowell. The team is developing high-stability, bio-inspired non-aqueous redox flow battery electrolytes with high cell-voltage, high current density and low capacity-fade, with plans to commercialize the flow battery electrolytes.
- Deepak Ganesan, department of computer science, UMass Amherst. The project outlines a novel radio technology that allows small battery-powered devices to take advantage of battery power in larger devices nearby for communication, with the potential to significantly extend battery life for wearable devices.
More than $2.5 million has been invested by UMass in faculty research and development projects since 2004. That initial investment has lead to $15 million in additional investments resulting in commercial licenses, patents and startup companies being established in Massachusetts.
OTCV Tech Development Fund grants are generated through income earned from successful commercial licensing agreements on previous faculty research, such as Felsuma LLC in Somerville, Cyta Therapeutics in Lowell and Corsair Innovations in Dartmouth, as well as a grant from the president’s office.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a PBN staff writer.
