Entrepreneurial professors might want to set their sights on Texas: Its vigorous technology transfer community is working hard to get Lone Star State innovation to market. The Texas Technology Transfer Association, a grassroots group formed by venture capitalists and university officials earlier this year, was scheduled to hold its first conference in Houston last week. Meanwhile, the Texas A&M technology business development office has been touting its most recent success: a marriage between university chemist Donald Sawyer and Colorado venture capital firm Captiva Capital. The firm has supplied Sawyer with $100,000 to scale-up his new electrochemical process that zaps toxic PCBs into harmless salt and baking soda. In return, Captiva receives partial ownership rights to any new information that results. Commercialization of the method, says Helen Dorsey, director of the development office, “potentially puts Texas in a leadership role for the clean-up of the whole country.’
Waste To Waste
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