The Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering is driving students and faculty to turn inventions into ventures…
“As many as half of our student teams file a provisional patent application by the end of the semester,” Rains says. “At the same time, getting all the way to market is hard because of government regulation. It takes years and a lot of money and hard work.”
It helps that the faculty leading Coulter’s Capstone are themselves entrepreneurs. Stubbs had five startups spanning a venerable career, two of which he sold. Rains developed products for two medical device giants before joining his alma mater in 2012 to direct Capstone.
But he hasn’t parked his entrepreneurial ambition. In 2016, Rains founded Jackson Medical around a product he had engineered, a safety cap for surgical light cables. The cap, now marketed as GloShield, prevents carelessly placed lights in an operating room from setting materials on fire. GloShield was introduced to the market last summer.
Margulies says startups like Jackson Medical reflect the enterprising drive of more than a few Coulter faculty.
“There’s a difference between translation and entrepreneurship,” she says. “Many of our faculty actually take the baton from the laboratory into the prototype stage and then on to the launch of a company. They see this as the best way to make a difference in the lives of others.”