Technology transfer is robust in Utah, with three major universities churning out startup companies annually. In fact, the state may be the entrepreneurial epicenter in the region. Entrepreneur ranked Salt Lake City No. 5 in its annual list of Best Cities for Entrepreneurs in 2003.
      Tech transfer heads at the University of Utah, Utah State University and Brigham Young University all came to their respective jobs from industry. They have a collaborative relationship and meet quarterly for lunch.
      Dr. Jayne Carney, head of technology transfer at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, says the university produces between three and eight startups a year. Many become part of the area's biotech and medical device clusters. Carney came to Utah about two years ago after working for Arch Chemicals.
      "We have an extremely entrepreneurial faculty and they are interested in being very involved in commercializing their inventions," Carney says. "It's also interesting how so many of our entrepreneurs become serial entrepreneurs. We're very fortunate our angel investors fund a company and move on to another to fund it."
      Dr. Ted Stanley has been director of research at the university for more than 20 years. In 1985, he started Anesta, a company based on technology he invented for delivery of medicine for cancer pain. That delivery system, Actiq, is now a $400-million annual product for Cephalon, which acquired Anesta in 2000. Stanley is now involved in another startup, Zars, which is developing technology to deliver pain medicine through the skin.
      Stanley is also mentoring young faculty in the process of technology transfer. Carney describes him as a good example of someone doing well while doing good.
      "The university has historically been pro this concept and very supporting of doing these kinds of things," Stanley says. "It's part of the can-do mentality here. Although there are not that many venture capitalists here, there are lots of people with lots of entrepreneurial ideas. I'm trying to stimulate young people in the medical departments who have creative ideas to do the same. I try to help them through the difficulties of never having done that before because I can see some of the pitfalls."
      The latest launch is Sentrx Surgicals, a medical device company that will specialize in adhesion-free healing of surgical wounds. Founder Richard Kuehn is one of those serial entrepreneurs Carney talks about. Kuehn was CEO of Salus Therapeutics, which he sold to Genta last fall. Salus also was based on technology licensed from the university.
      Kuehn, who says his new company will seek to commercialize a chemistry that can be applied to many post-surgical applications, is putting together a venture syndicate to raise $3 million in initial funding.
      "That will get us started and located and through some critical milestones," Kuehn says, adding that the company will probably find space at Research Park. Kuehn expects to recruit chemists from the Wasatch Front, but will likely cast a wider net for his management staff.
      Kuehn says that Utah hasn't quite reached the level of entrepreneurship seen in other areas.
      "It's not like being in Palo Alto where every third person you bump into has been through two or three companies," he says. "It's tougher here to find people who have that kind of vetting."
      Steve Kubisin, vice president, technology commercialization for Utah State University's Research Foundation, came to the university about two years ago following a long career in industry with companies such as Union Carbide, Alcoa and GE. His mission: to invigorate the university's economic development and commercialization efforts.
      About 50 companies had come out of the university over the last 25 years, but most are small cottage industry companies and aren't closely affiliated with the university. After two years, he says efforts are "gaining traction" and he expects the number of startups this year to be up 300 to 400 percent. All are based on the university's proprietary technology.
      "We are trying to better leverage the technology we have here, make sure it's protected via patents and use our stronger position to form larger companies that have further reach," Kubisen says.
      Technology in the works includes development of seeds with increased crop yields; a project that detoxifies animal waste to generate methane and create electricit; robotics and the twisteron, a development that modifies air flow over airplane wings to produce a reduction in induced drag without a reduction in lift. Kubisen also says a California group is interested in licensing USU technology for an application in consumer electronics. He says the technology helps overcome performance limitations.
      Brigham Young University, with 30,000 students, is the largest private university in the U.S. And despite the fact that its primary mission from the Mormon church is to educate rather than be a research frontrunner, the school is getting a lot of bang for the research buck. A 2002 study by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that BYU ranks number one in startups produced per dollar of funding.
      "The amount of research we do is relatively small, but what we do tends to be fairly productive," says Dr. Lynn Astle, director of BYU's technology transfer office. "We spin out three to four companies a year."
      While BYU was once known for its software design -- Novell and WordPerfect came out of the university in the late 1980s -- today the major focus is on engineering in a diverse group of sectors. There have been plenty of success stories in recent years, most notably Sonic Innovations, a developer of digital signal processing technology that allows hearing aids to be tuned to the hearing loss of an individual. The company is the fastest growing maker of hearing aids in history and was ranked number 117 of the 2003 Deloitte Technology Fast 500.
      The latest company is Procerus, a developer of an auto pilot system with potential applications for the military, firefighting, the border patrol, searches for lost people and traffic reports. The technology allows a computer to control the flight of an airplane with a 20-inch (51-cm.) wingspan, much smaller than any drones in current use.