Centers of Excellence
OVERVIEW The purpose of the Centers of Excellence Program is to accelerate the commercialization of promising technologies that have strategic value for Utah. The program provides grant funding for companies which license technology developed at Utah’s colleges and universities, to help accelerate the commercialization process. The process is a competitive annual selection process with grants of up to $100,000 in the first year of participation and, in a second year, up to the remainder of $500,000 total over two years of funding. The end goal of the COE Program is to help drive economic development and job creation. For the 2009-10 fiscal year, the Centers of Excellence Program had a budget of $2.5 million and received proposals from 28 companies which are licensees of a technology developed at one of Utah’s colleges or universities. Requested funding totaled over $5 million. Of the proposals received, 13 were in the category of Manufacturing, Materials, Energy and Environmental technologies, 12 were in the Life Sciences category, and 3 were from the Information Technology industry. The number of IT proposals was notably low, in past years the program received 12 or 13 IT proposals, or about 1/3 of total proposals. Of the total 28 proposals, 17 were new proposals to the program, and 11 were second year proposals, from Licensees which had received funding the prior year. Of the 28 proposals, 13 were awarded funding totalling $2.46 million. Of this funding approximately $2.158 million was awarded directly to the companies and $301,000 was contracted to a university to advance research in support of the company. This partnership helps smooth the transitions of these advanced technologies out of the lab and into industry. All Licensees are required to provide appropriate matching funds. Of the 13 teams awarded funding, all 13 properly executed their contracts. This was a very difficult year to raise matching funds due to the ongoing recessionary economy. Unlike in previous years, companies submitted multiple invoices during the year to claim portions of their matching funds, as they “dribbled” in. Only a few teams used investor funding (equity) as their match, most used either sub-licensing agreements or Federal SBIR or STTR funds to serve as their match for the COE funding. Although we expect all companies to receive their funding, as of the end of the fiscal year, there are still a number whose invoices are still pending final match. This year, matching funding was hardwon.
G o v e r n o r ’s O ff i c e o f E c o n o m i c D e v e l o p m e n t • A n n u a l R e p o r t 2 0 1 0 • w w w. b u s i n e s s . u t a h . g o v
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