Everyone -- this is the full text of the SJ Biz Journal article that none of you could read because it was behind a pay wall.<br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><h1>UCSC wants to keep business talent and ideas in Santa Cruz with startup lab</h1>
<h4>
Premium content from
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
- by David Goll </h4>
<p>Date: Friday, April 29, 2011, 3:00am PDT</p><p>The University of California system is known
worldwide for its innovative research. In 2009, the university system
received more than $121 million in revenue for licensing university
research. But of the nine UCs in the system, UC Santa Cruz has benefited
little.</p>
<p>UCSC wants to change that by complementing a new academic program
with a startup lab that will generate new companies and patents with
market potential. Among its goals are generating revenue for the
university and spawning startup companies for Santa Cruz.</p>
<p>The university aims to have the program online in the next year, said
Dan Heller, executive director for the UCSC Center for
Entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>In 2009, UCSC’s revenue from licensing research was a meager
$320,000, compared to the heavyweights — UC San Francisco at $33
million, UCLA at $29 million and UC San Diego at $27 million. UCSC was
the second lowest in the UC system, just beating out UC Merced.</p>
<p>The expanded UCSC program is being fostered by a combination of more
than $400,000 in federal, local and private funds, including $74,000
Heller received this spring. It includes contributions from the city of
Santa Cruz Economic Development and Redevelopment Agency, which sees the
program as an incubator for high-tech companies and a job creator.</p>
<p>“This is a coordinated and sustained effort to create a culture of
entrepreneurship at the university,” said Peter Koht, the city’s
economic development coordinator. “We have leveraged public and private
funds with minimal impact to the university’s budget.”</p>
<p>Heller said his program — part of the Baskin School of Engineering —
would place an emphasis on commercializing research in the areas where
UCSC excels. That includes informatics — a broad academic field studying
human-computer interaction, information science, information
technology, algorithms and social science — and computer gaming. UCSC is
the only UC in the system that offers a bachelor’s degree in game
design.</p>
<p>This would set the university apart from what he called the “gold
standard” of programs, the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/profiles/company/us/ca/stanford/stanford_university/3287720/" target="_blank">Stanford University</a>’s Graduate School of Business. That program generated $64 million in licensing income for Stanford in 2009.</p>
<p>“Stanford is the four-lane highway of entrepreneurship,” Heller said.
“It’s an established institution in close proximity to Sand Hill Road
(venture capitalists). It has the infrastructure in place. We have to
look at what makes sense for Santa Cruz.”</p>
<p>Heller said it’s too early to estimate how much such a program could generate in licensing fees for the university.</p>
<p>Rather than creating a program built around a business school — which
doesn’t exist at UCSC — Heller said the program will consider finding
commercial applications in a variety of disciplines at the university.</p>
<p>Cliff Warren, a Santa Cruz consultant who conducted the initial study
into the program creation, urged an emphasis on subject areas where the
university excels: gaming and bioinformatics, a category of informatics
that focuses on the application of statistics and computer science to
the field of molecular biology.</p>
<p>From a local economic development standpoint, Warren said the small
city of Santa Cruz can expect small- and medium-sized companies to grow
out of the incubator. That means 15 to 50 employees.</p>
<p>But civic officials have a goal of “relocalizing” 10 percent of the
area’s workforce, according to Caleb Baskin, managing partner of the
Baskin & Grant LLP law firm. According to the Santa Cruz County
Workforce Investment Board, 36,000 Santa Cruz County commuters leave the
county daily, including 27,000 to Santa Clara County.</p>
<p>“We want a formalized tech-transfer program to keep the bright and
talented students at the university right here in Santa Cruz, creating
vibrant business,” said Baskin, co-founder of NextSpace Coworking and
Innovation Inc., which now operates business incubators in Santa Cruz,
San Francisco and Culver City. “The entrepreneurs get to stay in Santa
Cruz, the city retains the talent and fewer people have to drive over
Highway 17 to Silicon Valley.”</p>
<p>Steve Benz, finishing his Ph.D. in bioinformatics at UCSC, is a model
for what Heller would like to multiply many times over. Benz and fellow
students Zack Sanborn and Charlie Vaske formed Five3 Genomics LLC
earlier this year. Their company provides genome analysis, or software
that helps investigate a person’s genetic makeup for the advancement of
personalized medicine in cancer treatment. Benz said he would like to
see the fledgling program accelerate the process he went through to form
his company.</p>
<p>“It took us seven months to get our license, which is a long time to
wait around,” Benz said. “There is a lot to be gained by the research
being conducted by the university. This new program should help make
things happen.”</p>
<hr>
<blockquote>David Goll can be reached at <a href="tel:408.299.1853" value="+14082991853" target="_blank">408.299.1853</a> or <a href="mailto:dgoll@bizjournals.com" target="_blank">dgoll@bizjournals.com</a>.</blockquote>
<br></div><font color="#888888">-- <br><div style="text-align: right;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,sans-serif;">Dan Heller</span><br><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Executive Director</span><br>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,sans-serif; color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">UCSC Center for Entrepreneurship</span><br></div><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms,sans-serif;"></span></div><img src="http://www.danheller.com/tmp/C4E-logo-small.jpg"><br>
</font></div><br><br>