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Olympus Announces 2009 Winners of Olympus Innovation Awards

Program Recognizes Innovative Educators from Ohio State University, Bainbridge Graduate Institute and University of California–Davis

CENTER VALLEY, Pa., (March 23, 2009) - Olympus, a precision technology leader creating innovative opto-digital solutions in healthcare, life science and consumer electronics products, today announced the 2009 winners in the Olympus Innovation Award Program: Michael Camp, Ph.D., academic director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business; Gifford Pinchot III, president emeritus, and Jill Bamburg, dean emeritus, Bainbridge Graduate Institute; and Andrew Hargadon, associate professor, Graduate School of Management, University of California–Davis. The national program, executed by Olympus in partnership with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), recognizes individuals who have fostered or demonstrated innovative thinking in education. The winners received their awards at NCIIA’s 13th Annual Meeting last week in Alexandria, Va.

The Olympus Innovation Awards Program, now in its fifth year, represents Olympus’ ongoing commitment to technological innovation and education. The Program includes three awards: The Olympus Innovation Award, the Olympus Lifetime of Educational Innovation Award and the Olympus Emerging Educational Leader Award.

“We are pleased to celebrate our fifth consecutive year as a partner with NCIIA and sponsor of the Olympus Innovation Awards Program,” said F. Mark Gumz, president and chief executive officer, Olympus Corporation of the Americas. “As an industry and business innovation thought leader, Olympus is proud to recognize the excellence in academia responsible for educating the next generation of business leaders in the competitive global marketplace.”

“Our partnership with Olympus continues to grow and for the past five years, we have recognized a wealth of talented candidates that exemplify excellence and innovation in higher education,” said Phil Weilerstein, executive director, NCIIA, based in Hadley, Mass. “The fact that we are able to reward these individuals during a challenging economic climate speaks volumes for the passion and dedication Olympus and NCIIA have for those educators stimulating and inspiring innovative thinking in students.”

Michael Camp, designer of the Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (TEC) Academy and the TEC Institute, won the 2009 Olympus Innovation Award for his work at Ohio State University, where he trains business and science students in technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. The Olympus Innovation Award recognizes a faculty member who fosters an environment of innovative thinking among students through inventive teaching methods, projects and case studies. The TEC Institute is the outreach/community development arm of the program and gives OSU students access to various technologies resulting in business concepts emerging from the more than $1.4 billion in R&D spending in central Ohio alone.

Andrew Hargadon, associate professor, Graduate School of Management, University of California–Davisand a former design engineer for IDEO Product Development and Apple Computer, captured the Olympus Emerging Educational Leader Award. This award recognizes an individual who has inspired innovative thinking in students in a discrete area and whom the judges believe has the potential to make even greater contributions to the field in the future. He was recognized for his strong curriculum and notable success in moving technologies from the lab to the marketplace. The UC Davis MBA program has been ranked among the top 50 in the U.S. for 13 consecutive years by U.S. News & World Report, and has annual research funding of more than $585 million. Hargadon’s further recognition stems from his outstanding research and teaching efforts at the undergraduate (as Director of the Technology Management Program) and graduate level (MBA courses in organizational behavior and technology management).

Gifford Pinchot and Jill Bamburg, co-founders of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, were jointly granted the Olympus Lifetime of Educational Innovation Award for their significant impact on the university and local region. Their development of programs has motivated students and colleagues to think innovatively and their curriculum infuses sustainability and social justice principles throughout traditional MBA disciplines that focus on the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. BGI’s curriculum has been adopted by several other graduate schools, and is considered a leader among sustainable business programs. The Olympus Lifetime of Educational Innovation Award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated a sustained contribution throughout their careers to stimulating and inspiring innovative thinking in students in their own universities and throughout academia.

About Olympus

Olympus is a precision technology leader, creating innovative opto-digital solutions in healthcare, life science and consumer electronics products. Olympus works collaboratively with its customers and its affiliates worldwide to leverage R&D investment in precision technology and manufacturing processes across diverse business lines. These include:

· Gastrointestinal endoscopes, accessories, and minimally invasive surgical products;

Advanced clinical and research microscopes;
Lab automation systems, chemistry-immuno and blood bank analyzers and reagents;
Digital cameras and voice recorders.

Olympus serves healthcare and commercial laboratory markets with integrated product solutions and financial, educational and consulting services that help customers to efficiently, reliably and more easily achieve exceptional results. Olympus develops breakthrough technologies with revolutionary product design and functionality for the consumer and professional photography markets, and also is the leader in gastrointestinal endoscopy and clinical and educational microscopes. For more information, visit www.olympusamerica.com.

ABOUT NCIIA

The NCIIA was established in 1995 with support from The Lemelson Foundation. Its mission is to foster invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship in higher education - components of the higher education curriculum that are vital to the nation's economic future. The NCIIA accomplishes its goals by supporting curricula and programs that encourage the development and the work of E-Teams - multidisciplinary teams of students, faculty, and industry mentors working together to take an idea for a technological innovation and bring it through prototype development to commercialization. The "E" stands for excellence and entrepreneurship.

Editor’s Note: For more information on the Olympus Innovation Awards Program, as well as photos from the awards ceremony, please see the backgrounder at www.olympuspresspass.com, contact the NCIIA at info@nciia.org, or visit www.nciia.org.

Media Contacts

Elizabeth Sullivan, Olympus, (484) 896-5005, elizabeth.sullivan@olympus.com

Meredith Klein, GolinHarris, (212) 373-6022, mklein@golinharris.com

Dave Orsman, NCIIA, (413) 587-2172, dorsman@nciia.org

TUESDAY • JULY 29, 2008

The Daily Reporter

COLUMBUS’ ONLY DAILY BUSINESS AND LEGAL NEWSPAPER -ESTABLISHED 1896

Company born from OSU business
class about ready to market product

By RICK ADAMCZAK
Daily Reporter Staff Writer

A Powell-based company spawned
from an Ohio State University business
class four years ago is now
preparing to have its medical device
product hit the market.

Vertebration Inc., formed by OSU
Fisher College of Business master’s in
business administration classmates
Rick Karr and Henry Fabian Jr., a back
surgeon, makes a spinal implant for
the lower back.

The device is designed to make
spinal fusion in the lumbar region
less invasive, via a procedure that
was approved by the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration last year.

“We’re very close to moving it to
market right now,” said Karr, who
serves as the company’s president
and chief operating officer and also
has his undergraduate degree from
OSU.

He said the company will start
training surgeons on the procedure
later this year and the training will
continue into early 2009.

“It’s a typical process that most
companies go through,” Karr said.

The device itself, the XYcor
implant, will be available on a limited
basis by the end of the year.

The concept for the product came
from a business plan by Karr and
Fabian that won Fisher College’s
Deloitte Business Plan Competition
in 2004 and the Fortune Small
Business MBA Showdown Business
Plan Competition later that year.

“We felt there was a valid market
for it and the (Fisher competition)
showed that we should see a good
opportunity,” Karr said.

He said there haven’t been any
major challenges in the development
of the company so far other than the
time and energy spent in developing
the device.

“The biggest bump has been the
product development and engineering.
The lead time ... getting the
instrumentation engineered,” Karr
said.

The company received a lot of positive
feedback when talking to surgeons
at a spine conference in New
Mexico last year, he said.

The XYcor implant has several
advantages over existing methods,
including the fact that it can be
implemented from the back of the
torso. According to Karr, most similar
procedures today are initiated
through the front of a patient’s midsection.
By making an incision in the
back, the XYcor procedure is less
invasive and requires less surgical
work. It also requires a smaller hole
to insert the implant.

The procedure also, in most cases,
results in more than twice the graft
material that is available in current
anterior and posterior implants.

“More graft can get in there and
you potentially will get a better
results. Most surgeons will tell you
the more graft, the better,” Karr said.

The time to perform a fusion procedure
likely will be reduced from
three hours to two-and-a-half hours.

Also, the Vertebration procedure will
not require a facectomy, which is the
removal of bone in the facet joint and
is part of most existing procedures.

Karr said the company chose
Central Ohio for its operations
because of his and Fabian’s ties to
Ohio State.

“It was a natural progression to
keep the business here in
Columbus,” said Karr, who before
helping to start Vertebration worked
for eight years at Microsoft Corp. as
an account manager. He also previously
worked for NCR Corp. and as
director of business development for
Affiliated Resource Group in Dublin.

So far, more than $1.2 million has
been invested in the creation of the
company and more will be spent to
get the product to market, but that is
a relatively low pricetag compared to
those of larger companies creating a
similar product, in part because the
larger companies have more overhead
costs.

The company also has two engineers
and contracts with a Columbus
company for some of its instrumentation
work, and a Florida firm for the
implant manufacturing and other
instrumentation work.

Karr said there are some other
companies looking to develop new
procedures to make such operations
less invasive.

“There are a lot of ideas on the
board about how to fit the ship in the
bottle. That’s always been a huge
question in back surgery,” he said.

The XYcor device, Karr said, is similar
to how a pair of scissors opens
and closes. The device is slipped into
the approximately inch-long hole,
then opens up like a pair of scissors.

The procedure is used to repair
herniated or degenerative vertebrae
and disc injuries.

“When the vertebrae collapses,
height needs to be restored,” Karr
said.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE DAILY REPORTER.

FISHER NEWS

NanoMed wins Deloitte Business Plan Competition

A team of Ohio State students developing a device used to genetically modify cells and enable the rapid prototyping of new gene therapies took first place honors in the 2008 Deloitte Business Plan Competition hosted by the Center for Entrepreneurship.

The team, NanoMed, included Mihaela Jekic, a biomedical engineering PhD student, Bruce Caldwell, a student in the MBA for Working Professionals program, Eric Cochran, a physics PhD student, and Aaron Sander, a graduate physics student. They presented a business plan for the Zip-Disk Gene Delivery System, a device that could potentially help researchers create cures for cancer, autoimmune diseases and other debilitating disorders.

Last month the team was one of three finalists at the 2008 Materials Research Society (MRS) Entrepreneurship Challenge, one of the nation’s most prestigious technology business start-up competitions.

The Zip-Disc Gene Delivery System, developed by bioengineering researchers at Ohio State, will be initially marketed to cell research laboratories to enable rapid prototyping of cells. The technology dramatically reduces the waiting period to produce test results from three months to three days. Researchers have also experienced a 95 percent survival rate in the delivered cells, up from 50 percent.

“The judges were impressed by the strong background of this team and its plan to bring this technology to the marketplace,” said S. Michael Camp, academic director of the Center for Entrepreneurship. “This is a great concept derived from an exciting technology from Ohio State and the primary opportunity will be determined by how quickly they can grow and become the standard in the market.”

Another component of the technology, which is still under development, injects a disposable cartridge of 10,000 cells into a patient’s body for therapeutic purposes.

Finishing second in the competition was XMRI, a medical device development company that presented a business plan for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) compatible treadmills for use in exercise stress cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. ThermoBuffer, a company developing new technology that addresses temperature control in containers for food and liquids, finished in third place.

Elliott Endsley of American Recyclers earned the Top Young Entrepreneur Award for the best effort by an undergraduate student or team. American Recyclers is developing a system to reduce the strain on landfills by salvaging recyclable materials from garbage and then grinding and disposing the remaining waste.

The top three finishers and the top undergraduate entrepreneur will share more than $145,000 in start-up funds and services. This year’s competition attracted 72 entries.

Traycer Diagnostic Systems wins 2007 business plan competition
Published: 2007-05-21
A team of Ohio State graduate students developing a new approach to detect breast cancer took top honors at the 2007 Deloitte Business Plan Competition hosted by the Center for Entrepreneurship.
Traycer Diagnostic Systems (TDS) consisting of physics doctoral student H. Lee Mosbacker, mechanical engineering graduate student Arindam Ghatak and MBA student Jeff D. Martin won their second case competition of the year. MBA student Erwin Grabisna, Lawrence Burr Zimmerman, a chemical engineering doctoral candidate and Columbus entrepreneur Brad Beasecker served as the team’s advisors throughout the competition. (Brad Beasecker has been named CEO of TDS)
Last month they won the 2007 Materials Research Society (MRS) Entrepreneurship Challenge, (see below) one of the nation’s most prestigious technology business start-up competitions.

The team presented a business plan for new medical imaging technology, Traycer Diagnostic Systems. The system, still under research and development, would eventually have the capability of detecting cancer without painful compression that accompanies mammography.
The system proposed would utilize an array sensor for medical imaging based on a spintronic functional polymer, developed by Arthur Epstein, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics and the Department of Chemistry. Epstein’s technology was patented through the Office of Research’s Technology, Licensing and Commercialization (TLC) team and was made available by the office to the Center for Entrepreneurship.
“The judges liked that the team was able to deliver a great solution for state-of-the-art technology in breast cancer detection, which required them to maneuver through many technical hurdles,”said Michael Camp academic director of the Center for Entrepreneurship.
“The judges recognized a strong IP platform, a strong developing partnership with Ohio State’s Technology Licensing and Commercialization Office, strong technical and entrepreneurial leadership and huge market potential to save lives and cut cancer treatment insurance claims,” he said. “Most exciting is the difference this disruptive technology can make in saving lives.”

Second-place finisher, Global Dimensions is aiming to help U.S.-based companies to participate and succeed in foreign trade shows. RPack's business plan proposed selling insulated carriers made with high-performance micro-fiber material to military personnel and outdoor enthusiasts. A non-profit group, Single Mothers Independently Living Everyday (S.M.I.L.E.), earned the Top Young Entrepreneur Award for the best effort by an undergraduate student or team. Robert Nicholson, an undergraduate business major, founded S.M.I.L.E to provide services to single parents to reduce financial burdens and improve their quality of life.
The top three finalists will share more than $147,000 in start-up funds and services. This year’s competition attracted 60 entries.

News Release

Contact: Patricia Allen, Nick Houser

(allen.965@osu.edu) (houser.85@osu.edu)

OhioStatestudents win coveted international technology business competition

COLUMBUS, Ohio (April 24, 2007)--A team of Ohio State graduate students offering a new approach to medical imaging for detecting breast cancer that would replace painful biopsies and the stress-inducing mammography won one of the nation’s most prestigious technology business start-up competitions, the 2007 Materials Research Society (MRS) Entrepreneurship Challenge.

Physics students Michael Hetzer and H. Lee Mosbacker; Fisher College of Business MBA student Erwin Grabisna and Lawrence Burr Zimmerman, a chemical engineering doctoral candidate, brought back the laser-etched crystal trophy and $3,000 grand prize award to Columbus. The team was mentored by Michael Camp, academic director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Fisher.

The MRS Entrepreneurship Challenge is an international competition that pairs students and professional materials scientists and engineers with business school students to develop concepts for materials-based start-up companies. The final round of competition was held at the 2007 MRS Spring Meetingin San Francisco on April 10.

“This competition was highly competitive and it offered a great opportunity to showcase the entrepreneurial and scientific expertise at OSU,” Mosbacker said. “The networking alone was extremely valuable as we met investors, scientists, educators and entrepreneurs from around the world. We hope that our efforts will solidify future collaborations at OSU and help promote commercialization in central Ohio.”

The team presented a business plan for new medical imaging technology, Advanced Digital Imaging System. The system, still under research and development, would eventually have the capability of detecting cancer without painful compression that accompanies mammography, according to the team. The business case forecasts that the new technology could increase revenue streams for hospitals and clinics and reduce billions of dollars in biopsy costs and treatment for late stage cancer treatment for patients.

The technology utilizes an array sensor for medical imaging based on a spintronic functional polymer. It was developed by Arthur Epstein, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics and the Department of Chemistry. Epstein’s technology was patented through the Office of Research’s Technology, Licensing and Commercialization (TLC) team and was made available by the office to the Center for Entrepreneurship. The Technology Entrepreneurship Commercialization Academy also provided support to the students.

“This was an extraordinary win for Ohio State and an example of students leveraging research expertise and resources across Ohio State to develop a project that impressed international and national scientists and business executives,” Camp said.

The graduate students joined forces in Fisher’s Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Academy, a graduate specialization program under the direction of Camp and the Center for Entrepreneurship.

There were two rounds in the competition that began with 18 teams last fall. Ohio State’s team was one of three universities selected for the final round based on their pitch presentations for materials-based technologies. Their presentations were evaluated by venture capitalists selected by the Society. Ohio State competed in the final round against teams from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Rutgers University.

“This is an excellent team of students and entrepreneurs who identified a technology and came up with an exciting new paradigm and identified a business application that was in reach of realization,” Epstein said. “They chatted with me directly to understand the technology on a deeper level. They met with people at the Technology Licensing and Commercialization group and found out what would be the potential market.”

The team has also advanced to the final round of the 2007 Deloitte Business Plan Competition, co-sponsored by Fisher College of Business,to be held on May 11.

About the Materials Research Society

The Materials Research Society is a not-for-profit scientific association founded in 1973 to promote interdisciplinary goal-oriented research on materials of technological importance. Membership in the Society consists of more than 14,100 scientists from industry, government, academia and research laboratories in the United States and nearly 50 other countries. For further information about the Materials Research, its products and services, contact Anita Miller at the Materials Research Society, 506 Keystone Drive, Warrendale, PA 15086; phone 724-779-3004 ext. 551; fax 724-779-8313; or E-mail at amiller@mrs.org. For the most up-to-date information, visit the MRS Web site at www.mrs.org.

About the Technology Licensing and Commercialization Team

Technology Licensing and Commercialization is the university unit charged with fostering a campus-wide entrepreneurial culture; catalyzing faculty, staff, and student inventions; maximizing the value of OSU developments; and accelerating the transition of these developments into new products, services and jobs. They cultivate, negotiate, license and manage all commercialization-focused initiatives for the University. In addition, this team sponsors, or partners with others, to sponsor student projects with potential for significant economic development or commercialization results.

About The Center for Entrepreneurship

The Center for Entrepreneurship at the Fisher College of Business is an official academic center of The Ohio State University. Launched in November 2001, the Center supports academic research and education in entrepreneurship. In addition, the Center facilitates entrepreneurial learning and experiences that will impact a global economy and stimulates economic growth by assisting new company formation and graduating students

About Fisher College of Business

Ranked by U.S. News and World Report among the top 25 business schools in the country, The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business offers full-time, part-time and executive MBA, Master of Accounting Master of Labor and Human Resources and Master of Business Logistics Engineering programs. The college of business was started in 1916, and was named the Fisher College of Business in 1993, in honor of Max M. Fisher, a noted philanthropist, industrialist and alumnus of the college.