A small number of Brown professors engage in what can be a lucrative extra-curricular activity - entrepreneurship. These professors leave behind their offices, classrooms and laboratories to head into the marketplace, research in tow.
One such entrepreneur is Anne DeGroot, adjunct associate professor of medicine and president and chief executive officer of EpiVax Inc. DeGroot founded the Providence-based company in 1998. It now has 15 employees and recent profits of $2 million.
The company makes extensive use of immunoinformatics, a highly specialized field that uses algorithms to predict bodily responses to various treatments. EpiVax uses the tools of immunoinformatics to do analysis and research for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including Amgen, Genentech, Eli Lilly and others, DeGroot said.
The startup platform "was the obvious answer, because there was no company that had the expertise in this field," DeGroot said. "There was nobody we could sell the company to because there was no one who understood what we were doing."
In addition to improving products for other companies, EpiVax creates its own vaccines and protein therapeutics. These products aim to treat viruses, diseases and chronic conditions including cancer, AIDS, smallpox, the West Nile virus, rheumatoid arthritis, tuberculosis and tularemia, according to DeGroot.
Since DeGroot founded EpiVax eight years ago, the company has received more than $10 million in research money. Vaccines for potential bio-terror agents, in particular, have attracted substantial funding. For example, the company acquired almost $2 million for smallpox and tularemia vaccines alone, according to the company's Web site.
EpiVax's profits - about $2 million last year - look set to increase, DeGroot said. "We've been doubling income every year."
Though DeGroot teaches BI 160: "Development of Vaccines to Infectious Diseases" to undergraduates in the spring, she spends about 80 percent of her time at EpiVax.
Startups based on other professors' research have had more modest growth, and few professors serve as CEOs of these ventures, as DeGroot does.
Acoustic Magic Inc., located in Sudbury, Mass., was founded based on technology developed by Harvey Silverman, professor of engineering, and his colleagues. Acoustic Magic sells the Voice Tracker, a specialized recording device that, among other things, creates a "listening beam" that focuses on the speaker and filters out background noise, according to Silverman.
The company is currently trying to reduce the number of microphones and add an "echo-canceller," Silverman said.
He added that buyers use the product for speech recognition, data entry and teleconferencing technologies. Silverman estimated the company sells several hundred Voice Tracker products, priced from $249 to $289 on the company's Web site, per month.
But Silverman doesn't coordinate sales or maintain the Web site. "I have nothing at all to do with the company," he said, adding that he limits his participation to an occasional phone call to the company's chief executive.
The patent on Silverman's technology was initially licensed to Polycom Inc., a leading manufacturer of teleconferencing and videoconferencing equipment. Polycom later terminated its relationship with Silverman, and about four years ago Silverman accepted an offer for the license from Robert Feingold, Acoustic Magic's current CEO.
"He's turned the company into a one-man show," Silverman said. "I don't particularly think it's the best thing to do, but that's what he wants to do."
Unlike EpiVax and Acoustic Magic, some startups, like North Kingstown, R.I.-based Sound View Systems Inc., are still in the beginning stages of development. Sound View was founded in 2004 by Professor of Physics Leon Cooper, Nathan Intrator, associate professor of research for the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems, and Nicola Neretti, associate professor of brain and neural science for research.
Sound View has less than 10 employees, but the number varies and many of the employees work part-time, Cooper said. Cooper typically consults the company for a couple hours each week.
The company uses algorithms to improve underwater images generated by sonar. Sonar signals are recorded from a given underwater location and send their footage to Sound View to be developed into sharper images, according to Cooper.
"The images are as good as video images in many cases, and they're taken in places where you can't take video images," Cooper said.
Sound View's clients include companies performing underwater inspections of oil rigs and underwater pipelines. The U.S. Navy also has bought from the company, Intrator said.
The company is currently trying to format software that will allow clients to improve their sonar images independently, but it has faced some "difficulty ... in raising the money," Cooper said. "You need venture capital or angel (investor) money, but that's hard to come by these days."
Intrator noted that there are significant barriers to moving from laboratory research to product development.
"The technology is strong and the market is strong, but the task of connecting between technology and the market is not trivial," he said. Intrator said there was a 50-percent chance that the company will be around 10 years from now.
Intrator and Cooper both noted the technology's fledgling status as a major factor in the decision to market through a startup company. "There are some things that you can license immediately but in most cases it takes further development. I don't think we could have successfully or profitably sold (the technology) to a company when we started," Cooper said.
Edith Mathiowitz, professor of medicine, gave similar reasons for founding her startup, Spherics Inc. "If (established companies) had approached me, I would have considered it but they haven't," she said.
Spherics began operations in 2000 and is located in Mansfield, Mass.
Mathiowitz said Spherics' future prospects look "very promising." The company generates much of its business by repackaging existing drugs to increase adherence to the gastrointestinal tract. This advancement can dramatically improve a drug's therapeutic effects, according to Mathiowitz.
"Right now the company is focusing on (central nervous system disorders) but I believe there is potential for a number of other applications," Mathiowitz said.
Mathiowitz originally developed some of Spheric's technology in her laboratory, but she did not wish to leave the University and work for a company. She currently consults for Spherics on a weekly basis.
Though engaging in a startup company may take professors like Mathiowitz away from College Hill at times, she said balancing her teaching commitment and the new company is not difficult.
"At the beginning you have to do all the research at the University, so this is quite easy," Mathiowitz said. "When you start a company you definitely spend much more time at the company."
