Carolina KickStart’s Rose to Speak Nationally on Tech Transfer

Don Rose, Ph.D., executive director of Carolina KickStart, will serve on a panel discussion about the future of technology transfer and university-based commercialization at MedCity CONVERGE, a national conference on health care convergence and innovation, July 10, in Philadelphia. The one-day conference, hosted by MedCityNews.com, is for health care executives, entrepreneurs and investors to debate and discuss key issues in modern health care. It will also showcase selected start-up companies and share best practices among hospital systems and leading medical and information technology companies.

Carolina KickStart is a program of the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute, home of UNC’s NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards, which accelerates movement of biomedical discoveries into patient therapies and devices by helping university-affiliated scientists commercialize them.

“Often the most direct – or only – path to getting a discovery in the hands of providers, and, ultimately, patients, is through the process of bringing it to market,” said Rose. “We endeavor to support start-up companies with education, logistical help and sometimes seed funding that spurs them to the next level.”

In April, Carolina KickStart co-hosted the Emerging Company Showcase, which introduced 14 UNC start-up companies to potential investors and managers. Read a recent interview with Rose about the commercialization process at MedCityNews.com.