Slater invests $500,000 in Middletown robotics firm

The Slater Technology Fund last week announced it has committed $500,000 to Innovention Technologies LLC, a medical robotics startup founded in western Pennsylvania that recently moved its headquarters to Middletown.

Innovention was founded in 2005 as a collaboration between scientists and clinicians from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Since its inception, it has been operating within the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, a state-funded incubator for early-stage life sciences company.

David W. Wagner, a longtime resident of East Greenwich who now is working out of the Middletown office, joined Innovention last year as its CEO. He is glad to be back in the Ocean State, he said. “I’ve lived here for about 20 years.”

Wagner described New England as one of “about three medical device technology centers in the world,” along with Minnesota and Silicon Valley.

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“We have chosen to locate the company in a region whose talent pool in medical devices is truly world-class,” he said, “and we could not be more excited about the progress being made.”

Innovention is developing “highly articulated robotic probes [that] have unlimited degrees of freedom, are teleoperated and are able to steer a self-supported, non-linear path,” according to its Web site.

“Our current plan is to do our initial first-in-man trials in South America, probably in about the first quarter of 2008,” Wagner said in an interview. Trials in the United States and Europe are tentatively set to begin late next year, he said.

Asked about the company’s staffing, he replied: “We have about 10 people now, and we’ll be expanding to about 20 to 30 people in the next two to three years.

“Pittsburg FTEs [full-time equivalents] will be capped at about two to three,” Wagner added. “The rest of that growth will be in Rhode Island.”

“Attracting quality companies like Innovention to Rhode Island is an important part of our strategy for building the biotech sector here in Rhode Island,” said Richard G. Horan, managing director of the Slater Technology Fund. “We are pleased to support Innovention as it moves into the critical clinical-trial phase, and look forward to its continued success under David Wagner’s leadership.”

Wagner has more than 20 years’ experience in management at companies including strategic consulting firm Nova Group, where he was founder, chairman and CEO; Boston Scientific Corp., where he was vice president of strategic marketing; construction products maker Dryvit Systems, where he was president of the international division; and tech startup LDR Corp., where he was president and CEO. A graduate of Trinity College, he has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

“We are delighted to have the Slater Fund on board as an investor in Innovention,” Wagner said. “We expect their support will be extremely valuable, both in developing the team we are recruiting here in Rhode Island as well as in attracting venture capital financing.”

The company currently is “pretty far along in raising a $9 million round of venture capital,” he said. “We’ve been talking with some pretty major firms, and we’re expecting to close on that probably late summer.”

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