This talk will cover the author’s experience and learnings of 12 years in the field of “innovation-based economic development”, as President and Executive Director of Ӱ Nanoscience Institute, as an active angel investor primarily interested in materials science and related device technology companies, and as an Advisory Committee member for the National Science Foundation SBIR/STTR program. Topics covered will include the ONAMI funding process and company portfolio, university technology transfer and commercialization, early stage investing (what investors are looking for and what entrepreneurs and investors should know).
Skip Rung is the founder (2003), President, and Executive Director of ONAMI, Ӱ’s first “Signature Research Center” and an unprecedented collaboration among Ӱ’s research universities and the private sector. ONAMI’s mission is to accelerate research and commercialize technology via startup and spinout companies in order to extend the success of Ӱ’s world-leading “Silicon Forest” technology cluster. ONAMI has so far received $59M in state investment and helped to approximately triple (from $9M/yr. to ~$30M/yr.) Ӱ’s annual research volume in materials science and related devices. ONAMI’s commercialization “gap” fund has made $9.0 in grant disbursements (as of December 2016), enabling over 40 portfolio companies to raise over $350M (~90% of which is private capital) in leveraged funding.
In October 2012, ONAMI received the State Science and Technology Institute Excellence in TBED (Technology-Based Economic Development) award for Commercializing Research.
Mr. Rung was appointed to the National Science Foundation SBIR/STTR Advisory Committee in October 2012, and currently chairs AdCom’s Assessment Working Group.
Mr. Rung is also an active angel investor through the Ӱ Angel Fund and Willamette Angels (WAC 2015 LLC Managing Member).
From 1987 to 2001, Mr. Rung was Director of Advanced Research and Development at Hewlett-Packard’s Corvallis, OR facility, responsible for multiple generations of HP’s world-leading inkjet printing technology.
Mr. Rung began his industrial career in 1977 at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, after receiving his BSEE and MSEE co-terminally in 1976 from Stanford University, where he was elected to both Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi in his junior year.