A recent E-Team success story comes from Huntington, West Virginia. Vandalia Research, Inc., founded by two Marshall University undergraduates and funded in part by NCIIA, is in the process of successfully commercializing technology for the mass production of DNA sequences. Team leader Derek Gregg on how they got through their initial seed round:
“We got all of our funding from local investors in Huntington. We worked on a business plan with a Marshall alum for about nine months, then took the plan to a community forum of about fifty angel investors. We were able to secure all of our funding in that one three-hour meeting! We were shooting for 500k in funding, actually, and ended up oversubscribing substantially.”
“The first round money is going to be used primarily for renovations and equipment purchases to get the manufacturing facility up and running. We also hired our first full-time employee, a lab technician who will also head up the research end. We’ve started discussions with some local regional venture capital firms for our next round of funding. As far as long-term goals go, our business model is to use our technology to do custom, in-house DNA manufacturing for anyone who needs it.”
Advanced E-Team grants provide student teams with the support they need to bring an innovative product or technology from idea to prototype, and eventually to market. Successful E-Team grant proposals demonstrate an idea’s technical feasibility, social value, and potential for commercialization. Advanced E-Team grants range in size from $1,000 to $20,000; the grant period is twelve to eighteen months. Annual application deadlines are in December and May.
We favor Advanced E-Team grant proposals that:
- Show a strong likelihood of developing innovations with realistic, well-documented technological and commercial promise
- Lead to the development of a product or technology designed for affordability, that directly benefits human health or the environment, or that follows a sustainable, socially motivated business model
- Demonstrate knowledge of the market and evidence of consumer interest
- Involve a balanced, multidisciplinary E-Team, including students, faculty, and advisors from technical, business, and humanities disciplines
- Reflect the diversity of the home institution, and actively engage faculty and students from groups traditionally underrepresented in invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including women and minorities
- Create opportunities for high-quality group learning experiences
- Create viable collaborative opportunities for participants from both academe and industry
- Incorporate a plan and a budget that are reasonable, achievable, and sustainable
- Demonstrate strong team commitment and faculty and institutional support
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