Yale to rework how it helps turn ideas into companies

NEW HAVEN — Yale University is launching a new initiative to reshape the way the Ivy League school helps professors and students turn their research into commercial ventures.

Josh Geballe, who until midFebruary had worked in Gov. Ned Lamont's administration as the state's chief operating officer, will manage the new initiative, Yale Ventures.

Geballe, who has a bachelor's degree and a master's in business administration from Yale, left his job in state government to become a senior associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation at his alma mater.

“This is a way for Yale to bring together a group of previously disconnected initiatives,” Geballe said. “It's really about the university wanting to increase the impact it has on the challenges facing the world. The university is investing in additional staff and programs to help the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the greater New Haven region.”

Details of how many new jobs the school's new initiative will create, as well as the level of increased investment that will result from the launch of Yale Ventures, have not been released. Much of that information will be announced in May during the 2022 Yale Innovation Summit, according to Geballe.

Several new positions in the Yale Ventures organization are already posted, he said.

“New Haven is booming with exciting startups, imagined and led by talented people on the cutting edge of medicine, science and engineering, who are eager to see their work result in new products and services that make a large-scale impact,” Geballe said. “Yale Ventures intends to play a key role in making New Haven a globally recognized hub of innovation, and this is the ideal time to undergo this exciting transformation.”

Prior to Yale Ventures, the school's Office of Cooperative Research oversaw the commercialization of research done by professors and students, he said. That office will now be part of Yale Ventures, according to Geballe.

Yale Ventures will be organized into four primary units:

Intellectual Property and Licensing Services

Innovation Training and Startups Corporate Partnerships Innovation Community

Each of these units will be supported with new university investments, according to Geballe.

The Intellectual Property and Licensing Services unit will work with faculty, staff and students to facilitate technology transfer efforts, from disclosure to patenting and licensing of new Yale inventions. The unit will be led by the existing business development and operations teams that had previously been part of the Office of Cooperative Research.

The Innovation Training and Startups unit will support faculty and students through established programs such as the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation, which bridges the gap between innovative, earlystage life science research and successful development of high-impact biomedical products and the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking.

Yale officials announced the Tsai Center's launch in February 2021 that will conduct research focused on the science of human cognition and create 100 additional jobs over time.

The Corporate Partnerships group will focus on strengthening relationships with corporations in support of Yale research as well as increasing access to resources from private partners.

The Innovation Community team will build the overall entrepreneurial ecosystem across the university and Greater New Haven.

”As entrepreneurial ecosystem grows, one of the things we're going to be doing is providing more connections between these different groups both within the city of New Haven and the Greater New Haven region,” Geballe said. “We want people to feel they can put down roots in this area and we're looking to create on-ramps to do that. And as these companies grow, they create opportunities that are not just for people with advanced degrees or specialized skills.”

Mike Harris, director of the New Haven Innovation Collaborative, said the Yale Ventures initiative is “taking a step beyond” the bioscience research and commercialization efforts that the university has traditionally focused on.

“They are not going to be slowing their efforts in area of biotech,” Harris said of Yale. “But now they are stepping into the areas of data science and green energy. These are new areas that Yale has major strengths in.”

Depending on the measurement criteria, New Haven is among the fastest-growing cities in the country in terms of venture capital investment, he said.

“With this Yale Ventures platform, we're likely to see more venture capital coming in,” Harris said.

Yale University Provost Scott Strobel said, “creativity and collaboration are hallmarks of our research enterprise at Yale.”

“Yale Ventures marks an opportunity for us to fully harness their potential,” Strobel said.

Even before the launch of Yale Ventures, the university has had a history of success in the innovation and entrepreneurship space.

Last year alone, there were 11 startups spun out of Yale that raised $53.3 million in new venture financing, according to university officials. Over the past five years, a record five initial pubic offerings occurred for Yale spinouts, Arvinas, BioHaven, Inozyme, NextCure and IsoPlexis.

University alumni who began developing their venture ideas as students have also done well for themselves.

One such example was the $190 million that was raised at a $2 billion valuation last September by Spring Health, an online platform focused on delivering mental health services . It made 29-year-old co-founder April Koh the youngest woman to ever run a startup valued over $1 billion.