Innovation Institute Investments

Continued from front page

Center for Neuroprosthetics at WPI
WORCESTER – In April, the John Adams Innovation Institute awarded $150,000 to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute to undertake strategic planning and business development activities to develop a Center for Neuroprosthetics, focused on emerging opportunities in the field of neurodevices.

Neurodevices are a rapidly growing segment of the medical device industry; a recent market assessment estimated 2005 sales to be about $3.4 billion, with a year-to-year growth rate of 21 percent. Within neuroprosthetics, key applications include: cochlear implants, retinal implants and motor prosthetics: the latter category will be the immediate focus of the new WPI Center.

Through the development of new neuroprosthetic devices, the WPI Center is seeking to contribute to substantial improvements in the quality of life of many of the estimated 1.9 million amputees in the United States. Between 1988 and 1996, there were an average of about 133,000 hospital discharges for amputation each year, with 82 percent of the amputations resulting from vascular disease, according to the National Limb Loss Information Center.

The U.S. military has a strong interest in neuroprosthetics, driven by amputations resulting from explosive devices and other war-related injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq. Because of the visibility of these injuries, the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) and the Department of Defense are focusing heavily on research in this area.

The primary outcome of the proposed Center is to increase innovation capacity in the medical device cluster through an academic-based research institute. In addition to research and development outputs, the Center will seek to contribute to meeting emerging workforce needs in the medical device cluster, particularly in biomaterials, neural science and engineering, biomechanics, robotics, and applications of nanotechnology.
 
Collaboration with academic partners, including the University of Massachusetts Medical School, as well as industry, will enhance the relevance and quality of the R&D conducted by the Center, enhancing opportunities for commercialization. 

Resulting technologies and spinout companies will, in turn, provide existing companies operating in Massachusetts with opportunities to move into emerging areas of neurodevices, enhancing their growth potential.  These include:

• Smith and Nephew PLC – orthopedics, wound management and endoscopy;
• Stryker Corp. – orthopedics and medical technology specialties;  and
• Boston Scientific Corp. – medical devices focused on less-invasive medicine.

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Marine Science & Technology Network
FALL RIVER – In April, the John Adams Innovation Institute awarded $44,303 to the
SouthCoast Development Partnership to undertake strategic planning activities to expand and strengthen the Marine and Oceanographic Technology Network. The project’s overarching goal is to organize the Massachusetts marine science and technology industry cluster around a clearly defined mission, informing the strategies and investments of a wide range of economic actors.

The project will help to develop a “voice for industry” and a business climate that is conducive to the sustained growth of early-stage marine science and technology companies.

The context for this investment is the recent $97.7 million federal research award to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to develop 24/7 sea laboratories as part of an ocean observation system. The award leveraged a $10 million investment from the Innovation Institute. A second, larger federal research initiative by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association represents further potential investment of up to $200 million a year.

These research initiatives will lead to the creation of new products that solve challenges and problems in the ocean environment and meet the existing and the emerging demand for innovation in the global markets.

The strengthened Marine and Oceanographic Technology Network will serve as an industry voice and help to identify business opportunities for firms to become engaged as suppliers of products and services, collaborative R&D partners, or developers of information.

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Clean Energy Fellowship Program
BOSTON – In April, the John Adams Innovation Institute awarded $97,000 to the New England Clean Energy Council to develop a pilot program of Clean Energy Fellowships to help rapidly transition experienced entrepreneurs into the region’s clean energy sector.

The goal is to accelerate the deployment of knowledgeable entrepreneurs into the clean energy sector who are capable of moving start-up and early-stage companies into faster growing and larger markets.

Participants in this executive development program will acquire knowledge of technology trends, market drivers, industry forces, models for sector financing and regulatory drivers in the clean energy sector.

The New England Clean Energy Council, which was formed in 2007, represents a diverse set of stakeholders, including industry associations, venture capital firms. utilities, universities, law firms, large commercial end-users and 30 CEOs of the region’s leading clean energy companies. 

The new fellowship program will be run twice a year, with 10-15 high-level, experienced Massachusetts entrepreneurs. It will feature three activities – classroom sessions, site visits and capstone projects. Business-planning projects will be drawn, in part, from two regional competitions – Ignite Clean Energy run by MIT’s Enterprise Forum, and the Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize funded by the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

The clean energy sector in Massachusetts is expected to grow at an annual rate of 20 percent, according to an August 2007 survey.

“There is a frightening amount of Massachusetts capital that flows out of our borders for lack of appropriate ventures here at home,” said Nick d’Arbeloff, the Council’s co-executive director. “The fellowship program will go a long way toward ensuring that there is a very large farm team of young clean energy ventures created here in Massachusetts that can absorb that capital and keep it within the Commonwealth.”