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INVO Newsletter
Summer 2020
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From Our Executive Director
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Since our Winter issue, the University, like many others, has faced and still faces massive issues, bringing students safely back to campus, activating research, and adapting to working remotely. Teams are working on multiple scenarios with many ever-changing and unpredictable constraints. But one thing is certain: A desire to continue to provide the best education, research, and value to society. These turbulent times have been met with the generation of extraordinary creativity and innovation across the campus.
In this newsletter, you will see that the Northwestern community has continued to collaborate and engage globally. Faculty energy, a sense of purpose and drive for innovation have escalated to new heights. Fundraising for startups has not slowed down but has exceeded last year's levels already. Zoom has accelerated the "flattening of the world," helping to level investor interactions in the Midwest with the East and West Coasts. And, most importantly, faculty and students came together, directing their talents and resources to respond to the COVID crisis.
With well wishes,
Associate Provost for Innovation and New Ventures
Associate Vice President for Research
Executive Director, INVO
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National Recognition of Our Inventors
Prof. Will Dichtel
( Weinberg) was named a National Laureate in Chemistry by the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Read More
Profs. Emily Weiss ( Weinberg) and Julius Lucks ( McCormick) were also named finalists, distinguishing them as exceptional young scientists by the NY Academy of Sciences. Read More
Prof. John Rogers ( McCormick) was awarded the prestigious Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award by the Clinical Research Forum for "his high degree of innovation and creativity, advances in science and impact upon human disease."
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Media Recognition of Northwestern Innovations
SwiftScale Biologics (Michael Jewett, McCormick) is a synthetic biology startup founded last year that aims to rapidly mass manufacture antibodies that could be deployed to treat COVID-19 patients. Wired Article
Prof. Vinayak Dravid (McCormick) has developed a highly porous smart sponge that can selectively soak up oil spills in water. Forbes Article
Prof. Julius Lucks (McCormick) is developing a rapid on-site coronavirus test using cell-free biosensors. Chicago Tribune Article
At the start of the pandemic, Prof. Matthew Grayson (McCormick) led a multi-disciplinary team of faculty and student researchers to design a new nasal swab cheaply, quickly and efficiently in light of a nasal swab shortage problem. This technology is available as a ready to sign license. LA Times Article
With the potential future of self-driving cars in mind, Prof. Michael Rubenstein (McCormick) has developed an algorithm by which swarm robots avoid collisions using sensors that communicate and enable each robot to make their own decisions. CBS2 News
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INVO Newsletter Archives
INVO newsletters capture key innovation and entrepreneurial activities at Northwestern. Featured news includes: faculty startup announcements, Northwestern University patenting and licensing activities, funding opportunities for inventors and entrepreneurs, and INVO events and programming focused on commercialization and entrepreneurship.
The INVO newsletter reaches the Northwestern University community, prospective licensees, investors, and others interested in groundbreaking research with commercialization potential. Access previous newsletter in our archives here.
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INVO & Social Media
TWITTER
Follow us on Twitter (@INVOatNU) where we tweet news related
to INVO, Northwestern technologies and startups, and local entrepreneurial activities.
LINKEDIN
Connect with INVO through our group on LinkedIn. INVO will utilize this group to highlight news on Northwestern technologies that are either available for licensing or being commercialized by a startup.
YOUTUBE
Check out our new Innovation and New Ventures @Northwestern channel on YouTube for direct access to our videos.
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Faculty Startup Milestones
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Rhaeos (John Rogers, McCormick) received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for FlowSense Noninvasive Thermal Sensor for patients with hydrocephalus. Press Release
SwiftScale Biologics (Michael Jewett, McCormick) achieved a key milestone in achieving a faster manufacturing process of a COVID-19 neutralizing antibody candidate at clinical scale. Press Release
Exicure (Chad Mirkin, Weinberg) announced the dosing of the first patient enrolled in the Phase 1b/2 clincial trial of cavrotolimod (AST-008). Press Release
NanoAl (David Dunand and David Seidman, McCormick), acquired by Braidy Industries in 2018, won an innovation award for its 3D printer aluminum powder. Read more
Vanqua Bio (Dimitri Krainc, Feinberg), a biotech startup focused on developing therapies for neurological disease, signed a lease at Sterling Bay's Lincoln Park location. Read more
STARTUP NOMINATIONS AND AWARDS
Sibel Health (John Rogers, McCormick and Steve Xu, Feinberg) won the The 2020 Spinoff Prize, a Nature Research Award that was established by Nature Research in partnership with Merck to showcase and celebrate global excellence in the commercialization of research through the creation of spinoff companies. Sibel has developed an affordable, wireless sensor system to monitor premature babies in the neonatal ICU and has already deployed devices in Ghana, India, Kenya and Zambia. The prize money will be used to donate more monitoring devices to Zambia. Read more
Temprian Therapeutics (Caroline LePoole, Feinberg) was also named one of 12 finalists for The Spinoff Prize, which drew applications globally. Read more Temprian was also named a finalist at the MedCity INVEST conference. Read more
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Northwestern Startup Fundraising
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Alumni Startup News
Rheaply, founded by Northwestern alum Garry Cooper (FSM/WCAS PhD '14), is working with Northwestern startup ERx, the Emergency Resource Exchange (Kris Hammond, McCormick) to optimize the connection of healthcare providers to COVID-19 medical supplies. Read more
SwipeSense, a Chicago startup cofounded by two Northwestern alums, Mert Iseri (McC '11) and Yuri Malina (WCAS '11), set out to improve hand hygiene in the hospital. Since the pandemic, they have extended their tracking system to include staff movement by adding sensors to employees' badges to enable better contact tracing. Read More
The Garage alum Vishaal Mali (McC '20) sought to fill the N95 mask gap with KN95 masks early into the pandemic. Read more
Bharat Rao (McC'20 and WCAS'20) teamed with MIT alum to form SocraTeach, a tutoring platform for high school and college students which helps connect students for paid peer-to-peer tutoring.
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Translational Activity
N.XT Fund Update
Established in 2015, the $10 MM N.XT Fund is designed to promote early stage university technologies to the next stages of commercialization. Previous N.XT Funding has provided venture investments to Rhaeos (2019), Azul3D (2019), Bold Diagnostics (2019), EnMed MicroAnalytics (2018), Yobee (2018), Preora Diagnostics (2017) and Third Coast Therapeutics (2017), as well as seed investments to ALS Therapy (2016) and Volexion (2016).
 Stemloop (Julius Lucks and Mike Jewett, McCormick) develops rapid, easy-to-use, point-of-need diagnostics that address existing technology gaps. Stemloop uses cell-free biotechnology to enable on-site detection of pathogens, toxins, and chemical contaminants. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Stemloop is developing a test kit for the rapid, on-site detection of SARS-CoV-2.
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INVO Numbers
FY20 INVO Metrics
(to date)
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233
Invention Disclosures
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560
Patent Applications
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201
Issued Patents
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7
Exclusive Licenses
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71
Non-Exclusive Licenses
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INVO's COVID-19 Innovation Page
Since the start of the pandemic, Northwestern's innovators and entrepreneurs have been vigorously responding to COVID-19 with their expertise, resources, and energy. On the INVO COVID-19 Innovation Pipeline page, we have tried to capture the inventions and startups which are at different stages of development but nonetheless share the same passion to solve this global challenge. Selections generally fall under the following categories: Therapeutics; Diagnostics; Hospital Optimization/ Logistics; Remote Monitoring; and Manufacturing. In addition, we aim to capture COVID-19 Northwestern News and Funding opportunities for our innovators on this page as well.
Of particular note, Northwestern became one of five national point of care centers for the COVID RADx initiative, receiving a $7.5M grant from the NIH. Read more
Further, the following faculty members were recipients of RAPID grants from the NSF:
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Illinois Ignite 2020 *VIRTUAL THIS YEAR*
September 24, 2020
This showcase of technologies and startups emerging from prominent research universities in Illinois will focus on breakthroughs in healthcare, computing, and advanced manufacturing. Participating Northwestern researchers and startups include Jian Cao, Kevin Lynch, Joshua Leonard, Caroline LePoole, Michael Jewett, Fabian Bustamante, Azul3D, and Dimension Inx, Pre-recorded presentations will be available on-demand to registrants for two weeks. Partnering sessions may be arranged through Illinois Ignite. Registrants include investors and senior medtech industry executives from across the world. More information. Register here.
Simpson Querrey Center for Epigenetics IP Workshops
September 2020
INVO will host two seminars focused on a variety of topics from IP protection to commercialization. Sessions will cover best practices with respect to working with INVO and referred to case studies to highlight patent and licensing strategies.
Commercialization Workshop for Computer Science Faculty
September 2020
INVO will host a department seminar, featuring Jump Capital investors Sach Chitnis and Saurabh Sharma, who will share insight into investor due diligence on software opportunities and discuss case studies.
Past Event Highlights
A pitch competition and symposium, hosted by Osage University Partners and Washington University, designed to address the disparity of women academic inventors in forming university startups. In June 2020, Prof. Alexis Demonbreun (Feinberg) presented her work on genetic modifiers of muscle disease as therapeutic targets.
INVO continued to host IP workshops covering a variety of topics from IP protection to commercialization. This roadshow started last fall with the Department of Synthetic Biology, followed by the Computer Science Department and the International Institute of Nanotechnology (IIN).
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Other INVO News
NEW ONLINE INVENTOR PORTAL FOR DISCLOSURES
On June 1, 2020, INVO introduced its new online portal for disclosures, which has been designed to offer key enhancements and intuitive features to help Northwestern faculty and staff in the general process of disclosing new inventions, copyright, software, and research tools to the university. The new Inventor Portal will be accessible via our "Policies and Forms" webpage and will ultimately replace our Word document forms. Frequently Asked Questions regarding the use of the Portal may be found here. Please direct questions to [email protected].
INVO now offers Online Click Licenses to facilitate non-exclusive licensing of Northwestern intellectual property. Currently, copyrighted materials (e.g., surveys, questionnaires, etc.) are available. INVO will expand its online license offerings to other categories of intellectual property, such as research tools and software. If you are a Northwestern faculty member and interested in learning more, please contact INVO. For Northwestern click license offerings, visit here.
INVO Practicum is accepting applications for its October 2020 cohort. The Practicum is an 8-month unpaid INVO internship that offers graduate students, post-docs and research professors the opportunity to step outside the lab and gain experience in intellectual property and market analysis of technologies. Past interns have stayed in academic research or have transitioned into positions in technology transfer, IP law, and consulting firms. If you're interested in applying to a future cohort, visit this link. Applications due by September 4, 2020.
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About Us
The Innovation and New Ventures Office inspires and nurtures a culture of innovation, bridging Northwestern research with its practical use for public benefit.
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