Founding Members
The Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron (ABIA) – an exceptional collaboration of Akron Children’s Hospital, Akron General Health System, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy, Summa Health System, The University of Akron and The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation – is focused on patient-centered innovation and commercialization at the intersection of biomaterials and medicine. The strategic alignment of public and private support, accompanied with Akron’s rich legacy in materials science, is working to pioneer the next generation of life-enhancing and life-saving innovation that will transform Akron into a model for biomedical discovery and enterprise and move the region toward a secure economic future by accelerating the creation of more than 2,000 jobs during the next decade.
The University of Akron Research Foundation (UARF) was founded to promote, encourage, and provide assistance to the research activities of university faculty, staff, and students. This not-for-profit organization provides a means by which discoveries, inventions, processes, and work products of The University of Akron (UA) employees can be transferred from the laboratory to benefit the public, the university, and its stakeholders. UARF aids technology-based economic development through its status as a separate corporation, which serves to support and commercialize university research. UARF’s strategic engagement – which ranges from marketing intellectual property and private sponsored research to starting a regional angel investment network, operating an innovation campus to provide office space for UA collaborators and hosting industry executives as advisors – exemplifies the potential universities have to affect change and create opportunity for the region. Learn More
Together these two organizations are the founding members of the ISIX project, aimed at increasing innovation and minimizing the time from idea to commercialization of new technologies by bringing together world-class scientists, physicians, engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs in the biomedical device/product and polymer science industries of Northeast Ohio.
