The university’s Office of Technology Transfer launched 21 spinouts while achieving a 10% rise in inventions disclosed and a record number of licences and options agreed.

University of Michigan’s Office of Technology Transfer generated 21 spinouts during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2018, nearly doubling the dozen it launched in 2016-17, the university announced yesterday. Michigan also recorded a 10% year-on-year rise in invention disclosures, registering 484 in fiscal 2018 compared to 444 the previous year. The number of new US patents reported by U-M Tech Transfer fell marginally from 172 to 169 in 2017, though licences and options for Michigan research hit a new high of 218, against 173 in the 2017 fiscal year. Kelly Sexton, associate vice-president for research, tech transfer and innovation partnerships at University of Michigan, said the office had enticed greater interest in licensing university technology and built up efforts to involve faculty in commercialisation. The university also highlighted guidance and resources made available to spinouts by its support hub, Tech Transfer Venture Center, which offers initial-stage funding as well as an accelerator program and networking opportunities. Spinouts launched by University of Michigan in the 2017-18 fiscal year include shuttle transport developer May Mobility, which raised $11.5m in February 2018 from seed investors including BMW i Ventures and Toyota AI Ventures, subsidiaries of carmakers BMW and Toyota. Others include Censys, which is developing a system for discovering and monitoring publicly-visible servers on the internet, and Fifth Eye, a critical care data analytics platform developer which raised $2.4m in an August 2018 seed round led by state government-backed agency Invest Michigan.

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