Wednesday, June 17, 2015

UC San Diego Researchers Launch Startup and Secure VC Investment

Congratulations to MANTA Instruments Inc. for recently securing seed funding investment from the Triton Technology Fund for their breakthrough technology to effectively characterize nanoparticles! Read the press release here.





With decades of fieldwork and experience studying nanoparticles in seawater, MANTA founders Dr. Dariusz Stramski, Dr. Kuba Tatakiewicz and Dr. Rick Reynolds of the Ocean Optics Research Lab at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) experienced firsthand the difficulty of getting good characterization data from nanoparticle samples. Even with the best technologies and scientific instruments on the market, methods were tedious and inaccurate results were often not usable for their scientific papers. Their experience inspired them to solve this core problem for measuring nanoparticle size and concentration. Stramski, Tatakiewicz and Reynolds developed their initial idea in 2010 and conducted research and development for 36 months at SIO. In 2014, the MANTA team connected with Rosibel Ochoa, Executive Director of the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center, and received mentorship from von Liebig mentor Rick Cooper. Cooper helped the team develop a business plan and financing strategy, and launch MANTA in September 2014.


Though only a little over a year old, the Triton Technology Fund has already funded four exciting new startup companies based on UC San Diego affiliated technology. Since its launch in April 2014, the Triton Technology Fund has drawn interest from UC San Diego undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and alumni, receiving over 64 diverse applications from 17 different UC San Diego departments – including the Rady School of Management, Economics, the School of Medicine and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography alongside several departments within the Jacobs School of Engineering.

The Triton Technology Fund was created to support UC San Diego students, faculty and affiliates by helping them accelerate the commercialization of their discoveries and technologies. The Fund’s goal is to leverage UC San Diego breakthroughs that will ultimately benefit society and is actively looking to fund software, communications, electronics, materials and medical devices and support those that have innovative business-to-business solutions. If you’ve got a concept that you’ve been working on, swing by the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center. They’ll point you in the right direction.

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