University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) combines natural beauty with immense intellectual vitality. UCSB is located in Santa Barbara, California approximately 100 miles North of Los Angeles. It is home to 5 Nobel Laureates and 12 national institutes and centers. Numerous faculty are elected members or fellows of the National Academy of Sciences (29) and the National Academy of Engineering (25). UCSB is one of only 62 institutions in the United States and Canada elected to membership in the Association of American Universities, placing it in the top 1.5 percent of all universities and colleges in the two countries. Most recently, 10 of 31, or one-third, of the UCSB doctoral programs reviewed by the National Research Council’s Assessment of Research Doctoral Programs have a range of rankings reaching into the top five in the country and nearly one-half have a range of rankings reaching into the top ten in the country. Science Watch ranked UCSB #2 in materials science, #2 in environment and #5 in Engineering in recent citation impact surveys covering 10-year periods. UCSB has over 600 active inventions, over half of which are the subject of an active licensing arrangement.

Featured Startups and Technologies

GRT, Inc.

Established in 1999, GRT, Inc. is a privately held company focused on the development of proprietary technology through which natural gas and renewable feedstocks can be converted to high value transportation fuels and chemicals. GRT has developed a highly flexible technology that converts methane and other components of natural gas to hydrocarbon transportation fuels (such as gasoline and middle distillate fuels) and petrochemicals that are indistinguishable from the same products obtained from crude oil. Consequently, the GRT products can serve as a drop-in replacement or blend stock for gasoline or jet fuel and is fully compatible with existing engines and the fuel distribution infrastructure. The process uses bromine to convert the relatively inactive feedstock to an active intermediate. The intermediate is selectively reacted over proprietary catalysts to form the desired products. The bromine used in the process is recovered and reused; GRT has shown that the same basic process can be applied to make a wide variety of high volume chemicals and liquid fuels, including olefins, aromatics, and high octane gasoline components.

Eucalyptus Systems

Eucalyptus Systems delivers private cloud software. This is infrastructure software that enables enterprises and government agencies to establish their own cloud computing environments. With Eucalyptus, customers make more efficient use of their computing capacity, thus increasing productivity and innovation, deploying new applications faster, and protecting sensitive data, while reducing capital expenditure.

SpectraFluidics

SpectraFluidics, Inc., has developed a novel chemical detection technology and platform which exceeds existing state-of-the-art sensitivity and specificity performance metrics by orders of magnitude. SpectraFluidics technology provides molecular-specific detection of explosives, illicit drugs, and other contraband at parts-per-trillion (ppt) concentration levels. The technology does not require sample preparation, reagents, swabbing, or other handling techniques which can otherwise impede detection capabilities in the field.

Sirigen, Inc.

Sirigen’s technology drives simple, low cost near-patient testing. Bright reporters provide highly sensitive and rapid results with either visual detection or low cost, low power hand held reader devices. Sirigen’s High Sensitivity Fluorescence is designed to significantly boost performance of existing assays, permitting analysis of more markers for the investigation and management of diseases like HIV and leukaemia.

CytomX Therapeutics, Inc.

CytomX Therapeutics is an early stage, privately funded biotechnology company. CytomX is developing Probodies, proteolytically-activated antibodies. Probodies, by their ability to site-direct the activity of antibodies, will result in improved therapeutics.

Contact Us

Office of Technology & Industry Alliances
University of California, Santa Barbara
342 Lagoon Road, MRC 2055
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-2055

Phone: (805) 893-5180

E-mail: englander@tia.ucsb.edu

Web: http://tia.ucsb.edu/