Roc the Panther prowled the sidelines as the anticipation grew inside the Petersen Events Center while the starting lineup was announced.
But the five all-stars who donned their Pitt caps after signing their commitment letters weren’t the most recent recruits to the Pitt basketball or volleyball teams. They were faculty, students, and clinicians eager to change the game in their respective fields by translating their research discoveries from the lab to the market, where they can make a difference in people’s lives.
Pat Bostick, Pitt’s senior associate athletic director for NIL business development and strategic partnerships, and Panther football radio analyst, welcomed the Pitt innovators to the second annual Startup Signing Day by comparing the preparation and resolve of elite athletes that he helps recruit to Pitt to the qualities of academic entrepreneurs.
“You all personify what is possible at Pitt when curiosity and determination unite to drive invention,” he said. “You have translated years of painstaking research — late nights in the lab, grant applications, peer reviews, setbacks, breakthroughs — and determined that the innovations you have created need to be in the world.”
Hosted by the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Startup Signing Day was created to celebrate academic innovators who make the bold step of forming a startup company based on their Pitt-developed innovations.
Pitt launched 15 startups in the last fiscal year. Representatives of five of those companies participated in the event, where they ceremonially signed their commitment letter to commercialize their innovations, akin to high school athletes around the country who commit to their university of choice on National Letter of Intent Day.
They included:
- Aneurisk, Inc. is focused on advancing aneurysm care through a single platform that combines advanced medical imaging and predictive modeling to help doctors better understand and predict risk.
- Malleous, LLC is developing a groundbreaking neurosurgical device that promises to enhance open brain surgery procedures by increasing safety, efficiency, and patient outcomes.
- Netramind Innovations, Inc. is building an AI-powered platform to analyze eye images and help doctors turn scans and photos of the eye into useful insights that support better diagnosis and patient care.
- Personalized Pain Treatment, LLC provides treatment options for chronic pain via a machine learning platform to predict patients’ unique responses to pain treatments.
- TAJA Health Technologies provides science-based digital tools that help people change habits and thinking patterns as part of mental health care. Their products are designed to work alongside treatments like medication or ketamine, taking advantage of short windows when the brain is more open to positive change.
Evan Facher, vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship and associate dean for commercial translation at the School of Medicine, pointed to a legacy of greatness at the intersection of science and sport within the half-square-mile of the Pitt campus in Oakland. He noted that at the same time Jonas Salk’s vaccine was eradicating polio, across campus at Forbes Field, the late Bill Mazeroski hit the most famous home run in history to defeat the New York Yankees in the World Series.
And while Dan Marino showed off the rocket right arm inside old Pitt Stadium, where the Petersen Center now stands, that would eventually land him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Thomas Starzl was pioneering the field of organ transplantation and immunotherapy just across the street.
“Standing on the shoulders of these giants and many others, the legacy of Pitt champions on the field and in the lab continues today. Pitt is one of only a handful of universities that can boast being top 10 in the nation in NIH Funding while also being a member of a Power 4 athletic conference,” he said.
Innovation Commercialization is Possible at Pitt
Professor of psychiatry Rebecca Price, whose technology has been licensed to form TAJA Health, had never considered entrepreneurship until she published her work that showed digital exercise techniques could augment rapid-acting drugs to provide extended relief for people suffering depression.
“My inbox got flooded from patients and their family members, all telling me they want and need something like this. I knew my life as a researcher needed to take a turn,” she said.
She went to the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship website, where she encountered a tagline about making an impact through commercialization that appealed to her, and she submitted an invention disclosure.
“I have had my hand held every step of the way and have been introduced to entrepreneurs and different companies external to Pitt,” she said. “I’m delighted to have connected with two entrepreneurs who signed with me to get this novel treatment out there into the world.”
If she hadn’t pushed herself to be entrepreneurial, she said she would be “talking to a lot of other academics in an echo chamber until we all got bored and moved on to the next research finding, and I would be clueless about how to make a real impact.”
Jay Chhablani, professor of ophthalmology and CEO of Netramind Innovations, agreed that if he hadn’t decided to enter the entrepreneurial arena, he would be “publishing more papers, presenting at more conferences, and getting awards.” But he added, “This is much better!”
Ben Leslie, a third-year medical student who developed his skills and mindset as an innovator at the Big Idea Center, Pitt’s hub for student innovation and entrepreneurship, said an advantage the Pitt innovators have is that the resources – education, mentoring, and funding — to get an innovation to the point of licensing and/or startup formation can be obtained within the university.
Nathan Liang, associate professor of surgery and CEO of Aneurisk, said the OIE has been most helpful in coaching his team to have an entrepreneurial mindset.
“You have to find a way to package your idea into something that’s useful for the clinician and the patient,” he said. “The OIE has provided almost all the resources and connections we need to move from the university to working with external partners.”
Bostick closed the event with encouragement for the Pitt innovators.
“Pitt believed in you when you were in the lab, and Pitt believes in you now that you’re in the business arena. We’ve got your back — just like we do for every Panther who puts on the blue and gold,” he said. “You’ve done the research. You’ve built the team. You’ve got the game plan.
Now it’s time to sign — and go change the world.”