USM Board of Regents Honors Three Winners of Inaugural Entrepreneur of the Year Award
Adelphi,
Md. (May 14, 2013) -- As part of a signature
goal of the University System of Maryland (USM) Strategic Plan 2020 to increase
technology commercialization efforts, the USM Board of Regents honored three
faculty members today with the inaugural USM
Board of Regents Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
The
ceremony, held in the new John and Frances Angelos Law Center at the University
of Baltimore (UB), honored Neil Goldsman and Martin Peckerar, professors in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of
Maryland, College Park (UMCP), and Scott Strome, a professor and chair of the
Department of Otorhinolaryngology in the University of Maryland School of
Medicine.
"We
are delighted to recognize these three outstanding entrepreneurs. Their
innovative work, and the establishment of this annual event, reflects so well
on the opportunities before us as the USM makes technology commercialization a priority
throughout our institutions," Gary L. Attman, chair of the Board of Regents
Committee on Economic Development and Technology Commercialization. "We want
the world to know that the USM is open for business."
The entrepreneurial success of these researchers is
reflected in the support of UM Ventures, a joint effort among the technology
transfer offices at the UMCP and University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB)
campuses to stimulate discovery and drive commercialization efforts and new
business venture development.
Goldsman
and Peckerar, a professor and professor emeritus, respectively, worked with
their fellow researchers to develop the technology that drove the formation of
FlexEl, LLC. They developed an improved, thin-film battery prototype to
respond to the need for more power-efficient electronic devices in a variety of
applications. The millimeter-thick, high-density, rechargeable batteries offer
the highest energy storage density of any thin-film battery in the world.
Remotely rechargeable, the batteries gather energy from environmental sources,
such as solar energy, vibrations and radio waves. They can even recharge by
simply pointing a cell phone at them.
The batteries are flexible, meaning they can conform to nearly any shape and
act as part of an electronic device's packaging. They attach to microchips,
sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, and small electronic
components. The batteries are comprised entirely of environmentally friendly
materials. The new batteries will make possible a number of stronger, smaller
products, including wireless sensor networks, active RFID, wearable electronics
and medical devices.
The research team is a past winner of the UMCP Business
Plan Competition, earning $20,000 as winner of the information technology
category. Team members included research associate Zeynep Dilli and Josekuttan
Manikathuparambil, a graduate student in the UMCP master's program in
telecommunications.
Strome, a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Harvard
University Medical School, came to the University of Maryland School of
Medicine from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. Strome is a founding
scientist and co-founder of Gliknik, Inc., located in the UMB BioPark. Founded
in 2007, Gliknik is a biopharmaceutical company creating new therapies for
patients with cancer and immune disorders. Gliknik's expertise is based on
adaptations to the immune system to fight disease.
Strome is developing several technologies, invented at UMB,
including therapeutic vaccines that potentially represent a simple, safe, and
inexpensive approach to prolong the lives of cancer patients by training the
immune system against the malignancies. Gliknik has raised $15 million in
equity and $3 million in non-dilutive capital. Gliknik collaborates closely
with the UMB Office of Research and Development and the new UM Ventures
When the Board of Regents approved the USM Strategic Plan
2020, the plan cited as one priority ensuring Maryland's competitiveness in the
new economy. Among the key goals for this priority is the creation of 325 new
companies in a 10-year span. The USM is well on track toward this goal.
Several sponsors made possible the inaugural Board of
Regents Entrepreneur of the Year Award reception and ceremony. Those sponsors
include Whiting Turner, BioHealth Innovation, Maryland Department of Business
and Economic Development, the Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO), and
Corporate Office Properties Trust. Other critical sponsors are directly
connected to the USM itself: the UMB Biopark; the University of Maryland
Baltimore Foundation, Inc. ; and the University of Maryland College Park
Foundation.
Video Presentation on Neil Goldsman and Martin Peckerar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqzDdN1TWRs
Video Presentation on Scott Strome:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjHVFwqJfYc
Contact: Mike Lurie
Phone: 301.445.2719
Email: mlurie@usmd.edu
