TECHNOLOGY
State grant aims to help UB build clean-energy businesses
A $1.5 million grant from the state agency in charge of energy research will help the University at Buffalo establish a program to help students, inventors and others to turn clean energy ideas into profitable businesses.
The grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, one of four to be awarded for similar programs across the state, was announced as part of the American Solar Energy Society’s annual conference at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center.
The business incubator project, called Directed Energy, will be part of UB’s Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach, known as STOR, and managed by STOR executive Martin Casstevens.
“Clean energy will be a critical part of the resurgence of Western New York’s economy,” said NYSERDA President Frank Murray. “In garages and workshops and university laboratories, New Yorkers are working to meet our energy requirements in ways that improve our environment and make our economy more robust.”
Casstevens said that people who are able to come up with new and potentially profitable energy-making or energy-saving devices are not always the same people who have the skills to patent, manufacture, market and distribute those inventions. That will be where Directed Energy comes in, linking inventors with people at UB and elsewhere who fill their knowledge gaps.
Casstevens said too many otherwise promising enterprises fail to make it through “the Valley of Death” — the start-up period when a company has little in the way of resources to find acceptance in the marketplace.
The plan is for the center to be self-sustaining, Casstevens said, as successful start-ups that received aid from Directed Energy to pay royalties or other profits into the system to help the next group of clean energy entrepreneurs.
Alfred State College of Technology will be a partner in UB’s Directed Energy program. The Rochester Institute of Technology, New York University and the Syracuse Technology Garden incubator program will also receive $1.5 million each from NYSERDA to launch similar efforts in their communities.
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