Maryland Money Injection

One of Maryland's most consistent funding sources (three decades of moolah) has a new executive director and he wants to triple what it's doling out.

The University of Maryland's Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) has been quietly putting cash toward promising entrepreneurs for years. It brings together companies with product ideas that need more development with its own professors and researchers. The research is jointly funded by MIPS and the company for up to $100k for up to two years. Executive director Joe Naft (left), who took the reins last month, says ideally the $2M fund would grow to $6M and expand to include Johns Hopkins faculty. But the aerospace engineer, physicist, CAD/IT expert, and entrepreneur says MIPS funding is just now back to pre-recession levels after dipping down 30%. Joe is here with Mtech director Peter Sandborn and Mtech Ventures director Craig Dye. 

Some of the MIPS projects have taken root in Mtech's Biotechnology Research and Education Program, run by Ben Woodard. MIPS has worked with companies like Under Armour, HughesNet, Martek, and Medimmune. In the early days, the entrepreneurs seeking funding were 40% IT, 40% life sciences, and 20% other industries. Now life sciences makes up 60%. Joe says IT isn’t coming to MIPS as much since the cost to develop those products has gone down. One recent IT project was OmniSpeech, which worked with the university on software to reduce background noise on cell phones. (OmniSpeech: Making it harder to fake a bad cell signal to get out of a call since 2010.)

The university gets faculty and grad students engaged in real world R&D. Joe, a Nashville, Tenn., native, says MIPS products generate $87M in state tax revenue per year and $70M in county tax revenue. Any IP developed during the project goes through a licensing agreement with the university. Joe has been working at MIPS since its launch. He spent the early part of his career at Boeing in Seattle and then came to Maryland in '83 to study physics. Through his time with the university, he’s started a systems engineering firm with a professor, worked on CAD projects, and built a database system for managing MIPS projects and another for managing proposals.