Postdoctoral Researcher Receives UB Entrepreneurship Award for Founding Nanobiotix

UB will honor some of Western New York’s most inventive minds and companies at the annual UB Inventors and Entrepreneurs Reception, which will take place from 4-6 p.m. March 25 in UB’s Clinical and Translational Research Center, 875 Ellicott St., Buffalo.

Award recipients will include UB faculty inventors who created technologies like a skills trainer for robotic surgery, or who discovered and developed health care breakthroughs like a peptide from spider venom that could one day help children with muscular dystrophy live longer.

Of particular note, former UB postdoctoral researcher Laurent Levy will receive the UB Entrepreneurship Award for founding Nanobiotix, a Paris, France-based nanomedicine company that licenses UB technology and raised more than $18 million in an initial public offering (IPO) last fall.

In a separate event on March 26, Levy will speak to students in UB’s Entrepreneurship Academy about the founding of Nanobiotix. See related story.

The annual Inventors and Entrepreneurs Reception recognizes thinkers and entrepreneurs who are helping to build Western New York’s high-tech economy. Click here for the program, including a list of honorees. Those recognized will include:

• 10 teams of UB researchers named on U.S. patents issued in 2012.
• Nine teams of visionary innovators who developed technologies UB licensed to industrial partners in 2012.
• Companies that joined or graduated from UB’s business incubator program in 2012.
• SUNY Distinguished Professor Vladimir Mitin, Department of Electrical Engineering, who will receive the UB Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, given each year to faculty members who found startups. Mitin is founder of OptoElectronics Nanodevices, which develops and commercializes novel optoelectronic nanomaterials to enhance the efficiency of devices such as solar cells and photodetectors.

Speaking at the reception will be President Satish K. Tripathi; Provost Charles F. Zukoski; Vice Provost Robert J. Genco, who oversees UB’s Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach; and Alexander N. Cartwright, vice president for research and economic development.

Source: http://www.buffalo.edu/