Changes

Several faculty members at UC Davis are a part of the Davis Entrepreneurship Network (DEN for short) - a network formed to promote innovation and entrepreneurship at UC Davis. As a cross-campus collaboration of UC Davis entities (and a network largely unknown to undergraduates), DEN serves as one of the primary channels of communication for faculty members interested in entrepreneurship. The Blum Center for Developing Economies, the Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education, the Center for Science and Innovation Studies, CITRIS and the Banato Institute, the Clinical and Translational Science Center, the Energy Efficiency Center, the Innovation Institute for Food and Health, the Mike and Renee Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the Program for International Energy Technologies are all connected to DEN. Several makerspaces are available as well to help both students and faculty members looking to experiment with their ideas; among these are the Beta-Lab, BME TEAM Lab, and the MASTeR LabModLab. Finally, faculty members have been increasingly encouraged to interface with both students and other faculty members who are interested in supporting or creating entrepreneurial ventures and startups. Several competitions and funding programs exist to support this goal - among these include the Big Bang! Business Competition, the Blum Center for Developing Economies Grants, the CITRIS Tech for Social Good, Hack Davis, Science Translation and Innovative Research (STAIR) Grants, the PLASMA Accelerator, and Data, Informations & Application Launch (DIAL) Grants. The UC Davis Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as well as UC Entrepreneurship Academy (both discussed below) also serve as highly valuable resources for faculty members looking to reach outside of their academic bubbles and pursue entrepreneurial projects while still remaining grounded in the UC Davis sphere.

One of UC Davis’ primary missions is to benefit the public through research and education initiatives. While technology transfer can be accomplished in a variety of ways, the most notable entity on campus that deals with the technology transfer process is InnovationAccess, a branch of the Office of Research that provides a broad spectrum of services geared towards preserving valuable IP and disseminating it for public benefit. Providing services that connect relevant research to the marketplace, InnovationAccess turns its focus primarily towards protecting and commercializing intellectual property while simultaneously fostering entrepreneurship within the UC Davis community. It’s primary responsibility is to handle various types of contractual arrangements in order to properly and efficiently transfer IP to commercial enterprises (as well as other universities or non-profit institutions).