On Monday, UB announced another anonymous donation – just four months after an anonymous medical school alumnus donated a record-breaking $40 million to the university. This new $1 million donation comes from an anonymous faculty member, and will be used to set up the Bruce Holm Memorial Catalyst Fund.
The fund is named after Bruce Holm, a UB senior vice provost who died in February 2011. The goal of the new foundation will be to bridge the gap between academic research and the private capital required to commercialize certain medical technologies.
In 2004, Holm became the executive director of the UB New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. He served as a UB faculty member in the School of Medical and Biomedical Sciences since 1989 and was a UB Distinguished Professor for two years before falling ill to kidney cancer.
President Satish K. Tripathi even described Holm as "the exemplification of researcher, educator, collaborator, and entrepreneur," according to a statement in UB News.
The scientific research projects of UB students and faculty are funded and administered through UB's Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR). Robert Genco, senior vice provost for STOR, announced that the Bruce Holm Memorial Catalyst fund would be included in UB's STOR program.
Genco explained that STOR works to bridge research done in labs with applied commercial development; this makes solutions to the "most pressing" challenges of the 21st-century more available, according to Genco. He added that the Holm Fund will be critical in supporting studies needed to advance inventions to commercialization.
"We will send out the request for applications for grants," Genco said. "The next step is the committee of experts to review them and grade them. The top grades will be funded, we will monitor progress on a quarterly basis, and report the results to an advisory council on a regular basis."
The Holm Fund will work through a dollar-for-dollar match program, according to Genco. The initial donation by the anonymous faculty member is currently set at $250,000, but the donor has agreed to match every dollar made between $10,000 and $1 million – leading to a potential $2 million donation determined by the single benefactor.
Genco estimates the $1 million goal will be reached in approximately two years. Such an endowment will work toward research in the same fields in which Holm himself was accomplished.
In 2004, Holm, along with UB colleague Edmund Egan, received the UB Faculty Entrepreneur Award for their development of Infasurf, a medicine administered to premature infants who are at high risk for Respiratory Distress Syndrome. The medical and professional success of the Infasurf is similar to the goals envisioned for the new Holm Fund.
Prototype development and design treatments for patients will be the main objective of the Holm Fund. The donation comes at a time when UB is seeking to broaden its strength and support for its medical school and research capabilities.
As part of the UB 2020 plan, the Medical and Biomedical facilities will move entirely downtown by 2018. In accordance with UB 2020 estimates, Western New York could see approximately 1,700 new jobs created by the schools investment in research activities. Approximately 10 companies involved in scientific and medical research are expected to start up directly from UB 2020 program.
The fund will also help generate revenue for any start-up companies it supports. Genco and the rest of the STOR staff are grateful to the anonymous faculty member and hope to see the gift help translate faculty inventions into tangible products.
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