Engineering Translational Technology Center
The Engineering Translational Technology Center (ETTC) is a technology incubator designed to speed the transfer of high-impact, innovative ideas to the marketplace to meet society’s needs.
Funding for ETTC is provided by private donations. Typically, government grants support the early stage of discovery, while fewer funds are available for the vital developmental period that precedes demonstrating proof of concept or financial viability to investors.
ETTC will support technology transfer in the following ways:
- Facilitate the development of startups, supporting tenure-track professors during a critical stage of idea development, in a familiar, secure environment, while remaining close to their research and teaching mission.
- Provide valuable learning experiences for students in transitional technology research.
- Actively encourage partnerships and collaborations with other groups on campus, like the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship administered by the Graduate School of Management.
- Serve as a conduit to campus and UC system-wide resources, government agencies, and the venture capital community.
- Guide researchers to university resources to ensure intellectual property is clearly defined.
Recent ETTC News
- ETTC is a Top Ten Incubator, Egghead Blog
- Campus tech incubator graduates first tenant
- Power-saving startup Ennetix graduates from engineering technology incubator
Current ETTC Tenants
Barobo, Inc.
Barobo, Inc. was founded in 2010 as a commercial spinoff of technology developed in the Integration Engineering Laboratory at the University of California Davis. Barobo, Inc. aims to make robotics more affordable, adaptable, reconfigurable, and reprogrammable for education, research, and industrial applications. Its flagship product, the Mobot, is a modular robot designed for transformative K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. With Babobo's SnapConnector technology multiple modules easily connect for various applications. Mobots are especially suitable to teaching and learning STEM subjects in classrooms with collaborative learning. Robots are the next shop class, inspiring them to pursue careers in science and engineering.
Inserogen
Inserogen is a biotech startup that plans to commercialize a quick, scalable, and cost-effective manufacturing platform that uses tobacco plants as "biofactories" of high value recombinant proteins, including life-saving therapeutics and vaccines. Inserogen was the first prize winner of the 2010 Big Bang! Business Plan Competition at UC Davis. Grants from NCIIA and the NSF Innovation Corps program have allowed entrepreneurial lead Lucas Arzola and faculty advisor Dr. Karen McDonald to develop a proof of concept and to explore the commercialization potential of this proprietary technology.
mRhythm
mRhythm focuses on the development of an array of cutting-edge flexible sensing applications for personal home health monitoring. The key sensing technology relies on the patent-pending piezoelectric acoustic sensing (PAS) and interfacial capacitive sensing (ICS) techniques, which enable ultrasensitive embedded sensing solutions with flexible and non-invasive human-electronic interface. In particularly, the PAS and ICS techniques allow patients to easily record their own heart and breath sounds/rates/patterns continuously at home and to wirelessly transmit those recordings to healthcare professionals.
Nano-Sharp, Inc.
Nano-Sharp is developing ceramic and semiconductor blades with custom 3D cutting edge-profiles and integrated micro-fluidic channels for shaving and surgery - a market worth more than US$30B worldwide. The technology exploits highly matured and inexpensive micro-fabrication technology developed by Silicon Valley industries to manufacture rustproof blades with controlled sharpness, sizes and orientation. Integrated micro-capillaries in these blades allow fluid flow for lubricant and drug delivery during the shaving process. Our proprietary technology enables new applications in professional, medical, and industrial blades; accommodates arbitrary increase in the blade count in razors; facilitate durable, smooth, sharp, and flexible angled blades that are not possible otherwise. Nano-Sharp is co-founded by Prof. M. Saif Islam and Dr. Logeeswaran V. Jayaraman of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Prof. David Horsley of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department.
Graduated ETTC Tenants
Dysonics
Dysonics was founded by Ralph Algazi of the ECE department, Robert Dalton Jr., ECE graduate and Richard Duda, a former research scientist at UC Davis. The company develops products for reproducing or for creating three-dimensional, immersive sound over headphones. The technology is based on UC Davis patents stemming from years of research at UC Davis. Dysonics will market its technology initially to mobile device users for a richer, more engaging listening experience and for immersive new audio-visual content. The company has received $750,000 in seed funding and will introduce its first product on the market by the end of 2012.
Ennetix, Inc.
Ennetix, Inc. (formerly PutahGreen Systems) is a clean-tech/networking company, founded from research run at UC Davis by Distinguished Professor Biswanath Mukherjee and is based on core IP owned by the Regents of the University of California. Ennetix has an exclusive license to exploit this technology and is focused on dramatically reducing the energy consumed by IT networks and connected systems across the world. Ennetix has been incubated in the Engineering Technology Translational Center at UC Davis. The company has recently hired Jonathan Symons as its CEO and closed its first round of Angel funding.
For more information about ETTC, contact
Bruce White, Executive Associate Dean
Engineering Translational Technology Center
Phone: 530-752-4270
Jim Olson, Business Specialist
Engineering Translational Technology Center
Robert A. Fox Executive-in-Residence, Winter 2013
Graduate School of Management
Phone: 530-752-9477