{"id":10417,"date":"2017-12-01T07:50:52","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T12:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=10417"},"modified":"2018-03-25T09:38:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-25T13:38:52","slug":"tech-venturers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2017\/12\/tech-venturers\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Venturers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Param<\/a>
Clockwise, from top left: Param Shah, Jennifer Elisseeff, Hai-Quan Mao, and Kel Guerin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“This is Disneyland for scientists!” Brian Stansky is proclaiming, in his hard hat, in the glass-walled lobby of 1812 Ashland Avenue, just north of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.<\/p>\n

Stansky, a former Wall Street investment manager, is showing off the newly hewn work spaces, wet labs, canteens, and conference rooms in the 23,000-square-foot building that is part and pride of the university\u2019s recent commitment to translating basic laboratory research into real-world innovations, transformational inventions, and life-changing technologies.<\/p>\n

\"FastForward<\/a>
1812 Ashland Avenue<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The gleaming new center for the FastForward program<\/a> of Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures<\/a> is indeed a 21st-century theme park, where the fantasyland of a researcher\u2019s brainstorm can be translated into a tomorrowland of new products \u2026 if that brainstorm can thrive in the daunting frontier of venture capital and bare-knuckled competition.<\/p>\n

In the past five years, Johns Hopkins University has stepped up its game in technology transfer. In October, the newest incubator opened in nearby Remington, atop a hipster eatery and within walking distance of Homewood campus. A spacious student design warehouse, called FastForward U, is expected across the street from the Remington incubator in spring 2018<\/a>. With these and other ventures, Johns Hopkins engineers, clinicians, scientists, and students are being encouraged and expertly assisted with affordable space, services, mentorship, and funding opportunities as they strive to commercialize their discoveries in this new ecosystem. You could call their battle to thrive in the open marketplace the new War of 1812.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about dreamers,\u201d says Stansky, senior director of the FastForward entrepreneurship program. He is describing the accelerating startups and nascent businesses that are budding at the new location, which is part of a rapidly expanding spectrum of spaces in use and under construction across Baltimore, both on campus and off. \u201cIt\u2019s about long hours. It\u2019s frustrating. It\u2019s crazy at times. It\u2019s about finding out what you don\u2019t know\u2014trying new things, taking calculated risks. It\u2019s about, \u2018Who wants my product? What is it worth?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cEarly on,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s all about the science, the intellectual property. Later on, it\u2019s about team building. Our job is to help our scientists and engineers understand reality: Is there really a market for what you want to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A Solution Born of Cross-Talk<\/h4>\n
\"Hai-Quan<\/a>
Hai-Quan Mao, left, pictured in the lab with Russell Martin, PhD ’15, right, collaborated with Johns Hopkins clinicians to develop a novel regenerative material that can be used as a space-filler in a wound or surgical site. He and his team at LifeSprout LLC are planning ahead to spin off other products such as stem cell delivery and drug delivery composites.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“When I came to Hopkins as a young faculty member about 15 years ago, the engineering school was limiting the number of provisional applications that could be filed each year; only very few disclosures moved to the filing stage,\u201d recalls Materials Science and Engineering Professor Hai-Quan Mao<\/a>. \u201cBack then, success was primarily measured in how many papers you published and whether your peers recognized them as meaningful contributions,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody really cared if you had a patent filed or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those days are long gone. The Whiting School in 2013 opened the university’s first business accelerator in the basement of the Stieff Silver Building, which it purchased in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Johns Hopkins then hired entrepreneur and investor Christy Wyskiel as a senior adviser to President Ronald J. Daniels. By August 2013, Daniels and School of Medicine Dean Paul B. Rothman formed the faculty-led Committee on the Innovation Ecosystem that, in 2014, concluded that the university and medical school needed to strengthen their commitment to innovation by providing space, funding, and services. Johns Hopkins anted up with a pledge of $40 million in new innovation initiatives over five years.<\/p>\n

Since the first accelerator opened, startups based on Johns Hopkins technologies have raised more than $1.2 billion in follow-on funding. And over that same period, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures has facilitated the creation of 85 startups, generated $145.1 million in licensing revenue, and received 2,887 invention disclosures.<\/p>\n

One of the most promising of those new ventures, LifeSprout LLC, was founded by Mao and others in 2015 and is housed at FastForward 1812. It is based on research into human tissue growth using a biomimetic material developed by Mao.<\/p>\n

LifeSprout LLC was one of the first recipients of early-stage innovation funds provided by Johns Hopkins<\/a> \u201cto link basic scientists with clinical partners,\u201d says Mao, referring to several new initiatives including the Johns Hopkins Coulter Translational Partnership, Cohen Translational Engineering Fund, and Louis B. Thalheimer Fund for Translational Research. The Abell Foundation and TEDCO also pitched in funds, bringing the seed investment to $1 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe requirements,\u201d Mao explains, \u201care that your work has to be translation-focused, and it has to be able to survive in the business world. You can build a flying bicycle in theory in your lab, but if no one knows how to build it and use it in the real world, then what use is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

LifeSprout\u2019s product is a unique\u2014and patent-pending\u2014regenerative composite matrix of biodegradable nanofibers integrated in a natural sugar hydrogel. It can be used as space-fillers in a wound or at a surgical site.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe developed the first fully synthetic and off-the-shelf material that mimics the architecture and function of the natural matrix surrounding the cells in the soft tissue. We ask this biomimetic substance to hold the space and promote the surrounding tissue to grow in,\u201d Mao explains. The hydrogel and nanofibers then degrade harmlessly into the body, eliminating the need to insert\u2014and later remove\u2014plastic or silicone implants.<\/p>\n

The genesis for LifeSprout came when Johns Hopkins Medicine clinicians and company co-founders Justin Sacks and Sashank Reddy came to Mao, looking for soft tissue reconstruction solutions after surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old approach would have been that if I had an idea, I developed it in my lab and then went out to see if anybody could use it. At the same time, there would be people like Sacks and Reddy who were identifying unmet clinical needs. But it would be difficult for them to invent or design solutions. Now, the conversation is, \u2018If you make it, I will definitely use it, and here are the requirements.\u2019 This cross-talk is what makes Hopkins special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mao\u2019s founding team at LifeSprout was rounded out with Silicon Valley transplant Russell Martin, who graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor\u2019s in chemical engineering, and then came east to study under Mao, earning his PhD in materials science and engineering at Johns Hopkins in 2015. He had gotten his feet wet working for two West Coast startups. \u201cI was thinking I would go back to that California biotech startup world after graduate school\u2014that was the default path\u2014but the biomed scene at Hopkins was really a huge draw.\u201d Martin recently purchased a house in Baltimore.<\/p>\n

Because the LifeSprout matrix encourages host-tissue ingrowth including blood vessel infiltration, the team is planning ahead to spin off other products such as stem cell delivery and drug delivery composites.<\/p>\n

In this new ecosystem of discovery, disclosure, and capital investment, the pressures to produce something provably useful now\u2014to get it right the first time\u2014are vastly different from what they were just 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a scientist, I can take my time,\u201d says Mao. \u201cBut once people start giving you money, they\u2019re watching you by the hour. If there\u2019s no time for sleep, you don\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Past the Tipping Point<\/h4>\n
\"Hai-Quan<\/a>
Hai-Quan Mao has office space in the new 1812 Ashland Avenue building on the Johns Hopkins East Baltimore campus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nothing in Hai-Quan Mao\u2019s distinguished CV nurtured him to be a businessman. To prepare him and other new-age entrepreneurs at Johns Hopkins for an initial public offering \u2014should the demand for LifeSprout\u2019s discoveries prove strong enough\u2014the FastForward enterprise includes intensive mentoring and assistance<\/a> from experts such as Brian Stansky.<\/p>\n

Stansky spent nearly 30 years at T. Rowe Price and as managing director at Integral Capital Partners. He knows that a successful startup needs more than whiteboards and coffee bars.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople focus on the space, but it isn\u2019t just space,\u201d Stansky says. \u201cWhat kills startups is not that their technology doesn\u2019t work but that you\u2019re making stuff that no one wants to buy.\u201d To remedy this, FastForward has 15 mentors-in-residence\u2014business leaders who confidentially advise fledgling JHTV entrepreneurs on balance sheets, profit-and-loss, personnel management, going public, and meeting a payroll.<\/p>\n

\u201cJHU does not invest in the startups,\u201d Stansky notes. \u201cWe provide early-stage grants for prototyping, early study, proof-of-concept, and so on. Also, FastForward has a person dedicated to building relationships with investors and connecting our startups with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not enough to say you have a plan,\u201d says Stansky. \u201cThe really important thing is the team you build around you. I\u2019ll always take a \u2018B\u2019 idea if it has \u2018A\u2019 management.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed Schlesinger<\/a>, Benjamin T. Rome Dean of the Whiting School, is an enthusiastic proponent of this push toward commercialization of engineering research. \u201cIn the not-too-distant past, you graduated with your degree and you went to work for one of a few big companies,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the world has changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Johns Hopkins Engineering<\/a>, we are working to create an environment that is conducive to the broad range of careers our students are pursuing, including entrepreneurial activities. We also are working to give our faculty the economic resources and support they need to be successful in this area. I think we are past the tipping point now, and I am going to continue to push this forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Would You Like to Start a Company?”<\/h4>\n
\"City<\/a>
City Garage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beside Interstate 95, a cavernous warehouse, once the maintenance center for Baltimore City buses, is now City Garage<\/a>, a techie idea factory turning out everything from skateboards to glass chandeliers. It is operated in partnership with Plank Industries (i.e. Under Armour\u2019s Kevin Plank) and Sagamore Development.<\/p>\n

In the center of the building is a burgeoning community of robots\u2014not the ambulatory humanoids of fiction, but sturdy metal arms that can cut, clamp, squeeze, and manhandle a tool or a product without actually being a man.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve created technology that makes it drastically easier for manufacturers to deploy robots to the factory floor,\u201d says Kel Guerin MS \u201912, PhD \u201915, co-founder and chief technology officer of READY Robotics Corp.<\/a>, the Hopkins-nurtured startup that leases space here. \u201cWhile robots are fairly ubiquitous at places like Ford and General Motors, there are many manufacturing companies that have yet to adopt them. Our initial question was: How do we make it faster and simpler for a factory to leverage robotic automation?\u201d<\/p>\n

Guerin\u2019s answer, first formulated when he was a Johns Hopkins PhD student and postdoc studying computer science under Greg Hager<\/a>, executive director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare<\/a>, was to design what he calls \u201ca Swiss Army knife for robots.\u201d It is a combination of hardware and software that makes it fast and straightforward to kit out a mechanical arm with grippers, cameras, and other peripherals\u2014and more importantly to furnish clients with a patented user interface that allows even a novice to program a robot in minutes.<\/p>\n

Today, the company\u2019s product is called the TaskMate: a mobile stand that combines READY\u2019s proprietary hardware with a third-party collaborative robot arm and a selection of grippers. The system can operate any number of tools, including mills, lathes, and injection molding systems. It is portable and adaptable enough to meet the shorter production cycles of smaller companies.<\/p>\n

\"Kel<\/a>
Kel Guerin, right, and his team at READY Robotics Corp., including Ben Gibbs A&S ’05, left, are developing TaskMate, “a Swiss Army knife for robots,” in space they lease at City Garage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Guerin was well on the way to developing the viability of TaskMate before he left campus to found READY Robotics in 2016. Already, the company has attracted nearly $4 million in venture capital from New York, with a workforce at City Garage that grew from four to 14 in less than a year and that could well expand to 30 before the spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopkins as an institution cultivated our ability to think about this as a commercially viable venture,\u201d says Guerin. \u201cOnce I got my PhD, it\u2019s not like Hopkins said, \u2018Have a nice day.\u2019 Their approach was to say \u2018Hey, Kel, you\u2019ve got these great ideas: Would you like to start a company?\u2019\u201d Johns Hopkins even encouraged Guerin to consider the City Garage space because it would best suit the company\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n

Ben Gibbs, A&S \u201905, an economics grad, spent the last several years working at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures before joining READY Robotics, where he is now CEO. \u201cMany years ago, it was not nearly as easy for researchers to commercialize discoveries,\u201d Gibbs says. \u201cBut today, if you have a good idea, there are any number of resources available to you in the Hopkins ecosystem, from educational courses on entrepreneurship to translational funds and office space at JHTV\u2019s FastForward startup incubators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of graduates migrating en masse to the corporate workforce, or to other high-tech hubs such as Boston or Silicon Valley, promising startups such as READY Robotics are becoming the workforce, observes Gibbs.<\/p>\n

Guerin himself turned down several offers with top tech companies to help jumpstart Baltimore\u2019s high-tech scene with READY Robotics. \u201cWe\u2019re very close to declaring success,\u201d he says. \u201cThe trick now is to keep all our ducks in a row to be able to grow really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An Ecosystem of Innovation<\/h4>\n
\"Jennifer<\/a>
Jennifer Elisseeff, left, who is pushing the boundaries of soft tissue reconstruction through Aegeria Soft Tissue LLC, says, “Industry collaboration makes me a better researcher.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like Hai-Quan Mao, Jennifer Elisseeff<\/a> remembers a time before the university\u2019s encouragement of commercialization. \u201cIt has been a night and day shift,\u201d says Elisseeff, director of the Johns Hopkins Translational Tissue Engineering Center<\/a>. \u201cI started my first company in 2004 and when I think about it now, the number of people telling me not to do it was absurd. They said things like, \u2018Well, maybe you want to leave the university and go to California to start a company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than flee westward, Elisseeff elected to remain in Baltimore and help create what she calls \u201cthe new ecosystem of innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a little basement lab in the Stieff Building and that became the incubator,\u201d she remembers. \u201cIt was nothing like today, when there are so many resources to commercialize your technology, to help you translate from bench to bedside.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, the Stieff Building (former home to Stieff Silver) retains its original, 1930s vintage clock on the pediment above the entrance. But the interiorof the venerable factory has been completely transformed into another state-of-the-art suite of labs and conference rooms for tomorrow\u2019s infant Teslas and Microsofts. And Elisseeff is not only a renowned clinical researcher (she holds the Morton Goldberg Chair at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute), she also is the interim CEO of Aegeria Soft Tissue LLC.<\/p>\n

Aegeria, named for the Roman nymph of regeneration, is the corporate venture that markets the Elisseeff team\u2019s latest advance in soft-tissue reconstruction\u2014a sterile regenerative material invented by Elisseeff in her Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Laboratory that mimics and replaces the adipose cells that are removed during surgery or lost through traumatic injury.<\/p>\n

Elisseeff, whose daughter serves in the U.S. Army, partnered with the military for the first-phase trials of her advances in soft-tissue replacement. This work grew out of research that Elisseeff and her colleagues conducted with Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, which involved co-developing a new wrinkle filler.<\/p>\n

\u201cCombining that partnership with our lab research on stem cells and what types of environments they need to develop tissue,\u201d she says, \u201cwe designed an acellular adipose technology that combined basic science. In fact, our collaboration with Kythera led to my interests in the immune system and our current pursuit of regenerative
\nimmunotherapies … There is always a question of, When do we transition a technology out of the lab?\u201d How do you hand it off and hand it off smartly?<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about the passing of the baton in a relay race\u2014at a certain point, both the runner who is passing the baton and the runner who is receiving it are both in motion. It\u2019s the time when they both are running together that is key\u2014or else the baton is dropped.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndustry collaboration makes me a better researcher,\u201d she says. \u201cAs a biomedical engineer, we\u2019re looking for things that can impact human health. Maybe I\u2019m idealistic, but I think that if you focus on doing the best science possible and providing solutions for clinical challenges, success will eventually happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A Tough Tolerance for “No’s”<\/h4>\n
\"Blakeslee<\/a>
The Blakeslee Building in Mount Vernon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second floor of the repurposed Blakeslee Building on Charles Street in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood has been a bare-walled hatchery of world-changing ideas, equipped with a supply of Keurig cups, one small dog, and half a dozen dreamers. Here, things are moving so fast that the corporate name on the doorbell already is obsolete.<\/p>\n

This is the headquarters of a startup called FactoryFour<\/a>, formerly Fusiform, initially a Johns Hopkins engineering student\u2019s \u201cwacky, wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night idea\u201d that mobility devices and prosthetic appliances should be so easy to manufacture and re-manufacture, even in remote areas, that they could virtually \u201cgrow\u201d along with the patients who wear them.<\/p>\n

The senior undergrad putting nearly all of his energy into what he calls \u201can opportunity to disrupt everything in manufacturing,\u201d is Param Shah, 21, an engineer\u2019s son from Irvine, California. Five years ago, during a high-school service trip to the Himalayas, Shah witnessed the plight of young people with disabilities<\/a> whose precious leg braces and replacement limbs already were too small by the time they arrived\u2014if they arrived at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core problem was that every device was made by hand, the orders came in by fax, the software was archaic, and none of the parts of the manufacturing and distribution system talked to each other,\u201d Shah recalls. In response, Shah and his co-founder, biomedical engineering grad Alex Mathews \u201917 began to tinker with the
\nconcept that\u2014in an age of wireless communication, cheap data, and 3-D printing\u2014even the Himalayas could be conquered in real time.<\/p>\n

\"Param<\/a>
Param Shah, left, with Matt Lemer, MSE ’17, right. The FactoryFour team (including as many as 20 Johns Hopkins undergrads and alums), works out of a townhouse in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood. They are creating software that could streamline and modernize the way all manufacturing is done.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It took them less than eight months to design and build a prototype leg brace. The process, Shah says, \u201cwas 70 percent guts and 30 percent Google, a high tolerance for risk and an even tougher tolerance for \u2018No\u2019s.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And this breakthrough was followed by a potentially even more important idea: FactoryFour coders, including upward of 20 Johns Hopkins undergrads and alums, are busy writing software in the startup\u2019s Mount Vernon digs that could streamline and modernize the way all manufacturing is done, in every country.<\/p>\n

\u201cDigital manufacturing is the future, but nearly every manufacturer still suffers from manual processes that don\u2019t let them take advantage of new technology,\u201d Shah says. \u201cWe want to create the Internet of Manufacturing, making it easy to connect every component of the manufacturing process with software so that manufacturers can keep up with the digital revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine a bigger dream than that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a firm belief that when I see a company come along because they only see an opportunity to make money, they almost always fail,\u201d Shah says. \u201cBut if there is a person behind it who has a [true] \u2018this is real\u2019 moment \u2014and if that moment comes from pure passion\u2014that company will succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can rely on the quality of education that Hopkins provides to gather us the talent that we need for our company,\u201d Shah says, looking toward the future, balancing the prospects of success with the risks of failure. \u201cIf I go down at this time, I have my family to support me, and I have my school to support me. There\u2019s not a better time in my life to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Started a startup? Share your startup stories with other Whiting School alumni. Click here to submit your story<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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