The University of Florida technology commercialization enterprise has a new name – UF Innovate – to reflect its mission of moving discoveries from the laboratory to the market.
UF Innovate is the umbrella organization for four entities – Tech Licensing, Ventures, and two business incubators, The Hub and Sid Martin Biotech.
“UF Innovate is an organization that has existed for years but never been named,” said Jim O’Connell, assistant vice president for commercialization at UF and the director of Tech Licensing (formerly the Office of Technology Licensing).
“By naming UF’s commercialization efforts and purposefully uniting these four entities under the umbrella of UF Innovate, we’re better able to work as a team, intent on the purpose of moving research out of the labs and into people’s lives, developing entrepreneurs and startups, and enabling our researchers to see their work change the world for the better.”
UF Innovate’s quartet forms a comprehensive commercialization system that brings together five critical elements: intellectual property, technology-transfer expertise, facilities, talent and capital management. To inventors, this means UF Innovate cares for their intellectual property by seeking patent or other protection and by marketing it to find the perfect licensee that can further develop or use those inventions. To entrepreneurs and startup companies, UF Innovate provides facilities and programs to help them find or develop the talent and funding they need.
UF Innovate’s Tech Licensing and Ventures offices are located inside The Hub at 747 SW 2nd Avenue. Sid Martin Biotech is located at 12085 Research Drive in Alachua.
