Two Jacobs School projects supported through the School’s von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement have been licensed to California companies.  The transactions represent a first milestone towards the Center’s goal of bridging the gap between university research and commercialization. 

New Concept in Molecular Diagnostics

In 2003, bioengineering professor Michael Heller and his student Ben Sullivan received von Liebig Center seed funding to commercialize a nanotechnology-based approach to genotyping that could significantly improve the speed and accuracy of diagnostic tests for such diseases as cancer and Staph infection.  The novel concept represents a new mechanism to detect and precisely identify trace amounts of target DNA without PCR amplification and sample preparation. 

Their work led to the start up of Los Angeles-based Pulsar Diagnostics, Inc., which has executed an exclusive worldwide license to the technology.  CEO Eric Donsky says:  “This proprietary platform potentially makes it possible to perform a range of diagnostic tests at the point-of-care, such as the physician’s office or the emergency room, which could lead to a dramatic improvement in the quality of patient care.” Donsky notes that most diagnostic tests are currently performed at reference labs, therefore delaying the time required to prescribe therapy.  Another application may be for rapid detection and identification of biological weapons in the field.    Pulsar is in the early stages of commercializing the technology, and is focused on validating the mechanism, prototyping diagnostic devices, and building a comprehensive intellectual property estate.  

 Circuit Simulator for Full-Chip Analysis

 Today's integrated circuits can contain up to 100 million elements packed onto nanometer-sized chips.  Simulating and verifying these elements are critical to chip designers, but the sheer density of the latest chips are stretching current simulation tools to their limits.   Jacobs School computer science and engineering professor C.K. Cheng recently developed a technology for a quick and accurate transistor level full-chip analysis. The technology is based on a different algebraic formulation as a solver engine. This approach avoids the high complexity and slow convergence of other tools on the market. 

von Liebig Center Technology Advisors Richard Joy and Tim Rueth approached San Jose-based Fastrack Design (www.fastrack-design.com), a company focused on improving ASIC design productivity.  Working with UCSD senior licensing officer David Gibbons, Fastrack recently acquired the exclusive license for this circuit simulation technology.

 "Simulation and verification is a major area that requires a lot of improvement to keep up with chip technology advancements", says Fastrack CEO Moazzem Hossain. "We believe the UCSD technology has potential to offer significant capacity and speed improvement over existing tools for circuit simulation".  Fastrack plans to offer value added services and tools solutions using this technology within the year.