Supporting the Arizona bioscience industry

Community leaders have recognized the importance of attracting leading-edge research to Arizona to drive new economic development and create and retain a highly skilled workforce. Biodesign actively supports these efforts through its involvement with regional economic development organizations, including:

• Arizona BioIndustry Association (AZBio). Biodesign is a participating member of this trade association which promotes the development of a robust bioscience industry in Arizona.
• Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC). Biodesign provides active support to this organization on many fronts, including mentorship of its managers and assistance in its efforts to recruit new companies to Arizona. Successfully recruited bioscience companies include Covance, InNexus, Abraxis and Insys.
• Arizona Bioscience Roadmap. Biodesign participates in this strategic planning and coordination effort sponsored by the Flinn Foundation in collaboration with the Battelle Institute. Biodesign administrators and researchers serve on the steering committee and several of the research subcommittees to advance bioscience areas of strategic interest to Arizona.

Commercializing support: Skysong Innovations

Skysong Innovations transforms discoveries into valuable intellectual property, locates gap funding for promising technologies that aren’t ready to attract commercial partner interest, and determines the most appropriate commercialization strategy, such as licensing or launching a startup.

The Skysong Innovations executive team is composed of industry and university veterans with years of professional experience in technology evaluation, product development, technology marketing, capital formation, operations and management, IP protection, industry relationships, and licensing and commercialization. 

If you’re looking for a technology or invention to commercialize, the best way to explore our available inventions is through the Skysong Innovations technology search site which lists a wide array of technologies that you can search or browse by category.

Skysong Innovations’ technology licensing process is designed to offer a straightforward legal mechanism for companies to access ASU inventions and to facilitate ongoing partnerships for future product commercialization. Skysong Innovations shares in the development risk by requiring an initial license fee and a royalty that is received only after a product or process is being sold or otherwise used.

Fostering student ideas: Venture Devils

Venture Devils supports all ASU student, faculty, staff and community-based entrepreneurs with an affiliation to ASU. The program aims to catalyze the entrepreneurial success of founders by connecting them with Venture Mentors — experienced entrepreneurs and seasoned business executives who provide regular, ongoing support. This dedicated mentorship is designed to challenge, monitor and advance the venture development process.

Venture Devils is supported by ASU’s J. Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute. Program participants can receive help finding seed money and other funding opportunities as well as meeting and creation spaces. Venture Devils also offers access to its network of technology commercialization resources in order to rapidly disseminate ASU discoveries and inventions to the global marketplace.

Find an expert

We rely on donations from individuals and organizations to support our research efforts, particularly at the startup and “proof-of-concept” stages when other primary sources of funding like federal grants are less available. 

We want to help like-minded clinical, corporate and philanthropic partners quickly identify areas of interest for investment in Biodesign research and help translate discoveries into the marketplace.

To learn more about opportunities to identify and support Biodesign research, please contact Stephen Munk at [email protected].

In addition, the searchable database tool SciVal Experts is available to help locate ASU experts by name, keyword or subject area.