How Founders Can Connect with SDSU’s Research and Innovation Engine featuring Hala Madanat

Who's the awesomest guest so far? Listen today. Welcome to The Connect Current, the flow of innovation in San Diego. We bring you the founders, investors, and leaders building the future across life science, tech, climate, defense, AI, and more. This is where San Diego's next chapter takes shape. Welcome to the Connect Current, the flow of innovation in San Diego. I'm your host, James Zanewicz, and this episode is being recorded at Kiln in Rancho Bernardo. If you need coworking space, check out Kiln, and we want to thank them for their support. Today, I'm super excited to be joined by Hala Madanat, the Vice President for Research and Innovation at San Diego State University. Hi. Hala guides San Diego State University's growing research and innovation enterprise, including the university's work across research partnerships, technology transfer, startup support, and regional economic development with cool things like Snapdragon and the whole innovation district around that. And this is the perfect Connect Current conversation because SDSU is playing a larger and larger role in San Diego's innovation economy, even though you have a storied history in that already, especially in areas like AI, national security, technology, workforce development, applied research, and so much more. But for founders, that matters because universities are not just places where research happens. They're sources of talent, technical expertise, facilities, partnerships, collaborations, and a myriad number of ideas that can help companies grow. Hala, welcome so much. I'm really excited to dig into how founders can better understand your innovation strengths at SDSU, how to think about partnerships with you more intentionally, and how San Diego can more effectively conduct research startups, capital, and real-world market needs and connect them all to each other. Welcome.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you.

All right, well, I know it's hard to believe, but some of the people listening may not know that SDSU is a major research university or fully understand how it fits into the innovation economy, perhaps even more. So how should they think about you as a resource or partner?

Yeah, that's a great question, and I agree with you, not everybody knows. So San Diego State is the oldest regional institution here, and It's done a lot of things, and everything it builds itself around is that regional economy. So the way I describe our research and what we do is it fits into 3 buckets. One, the bucket of how do you build on the region's strengths? So that means what is our local economy built on? National security, life sciences, tourism. And if you think about those areas, SDSU has strength in all of those. The second is translational. So really important to us us is how do we take the bench science— I say bench science even though it's everything. It's creative activities. It's scholarship. It's history projects. It's business projects. And how do you put them into real-world impact? So these could be startups that spin off to how do we change the way we curate in a museum. It doesn't matter. How do we translate that into real-world action? And the third, and probably one that makes our faculty most proud of the work that they do, is the community impact that they do. Mm-hmm. And so we work with our communities very strongly to transform San Diego to be the best version of itself. From an economic development, we bring in billions and billions of dollars to the regional economy. And that is really important as we think about being part of the larger employers in the region, developing the workforce of tomorrow. Those are really fundamentally the things that San Diego State really believes in itself.

And I love that you talked about, you know, history is an important thing because one of your graduate students is working with, with Trey and our team on the history of CONNECT so that we can learn from what did before. It was an incredible resource that you provided to connect, which we're super grateful for. But I want to turn it to you for a minute because your own background is rooted in public health, community health, and health disparities. How has that shaped how you think about research, innovation, and let's be honest, the responsibility that universities, whether they're public or private, and being a public even more so, have to create real-world impact?

I think that's what I think about every day of my life is how do we really become the campus that really continues to impact our region and translates everything to change San Diego for the better. From my background, I think what's most beneficial in my training has been the fact that the voices of the people matter in the way you do the work, whether you're a startup founder, right?

Uh-huh.

You can't just sit in your room and be like, I think this idea is awesome. You have to go and really get customer discovery, think about your market, ask the question. And those are the things we did in public health. We never created anything without thinking about the end user and the thinking about what is it about what we're developing that actually will hit a mark with them and make them change their behavior. And tobacco is a great example historically because tobacco wanted to just be like to people, excuse me, you shouldn't smoke. Smoking is bad for you. It's going to give you cancer. And that really did not translate into anything substantive. Actually, people continued to smoke. And so how do you take what we know in talking to a young audience and saying, you shouldn't smoke, what would make you not start or stop smoking knowing this information? So that's how I think about translating what I've done into a company or startup is thinking about innovation, not only being innovative in the settings we do the work, but also innovative in the way we engage our communities in giving us the answers to the solutions we're trying to develop.

Oh, I love actually meeting people where they are and learning what will affect their thoughts about things in order to understand kind of where potential lies. And I love that. So a lot of founders hear university research and, as you mentioned, think it's really early, it's too soon, it's too academic, too hard to access. We both know that's not true. I had decades inside academia collaborating outside. You've built an incredible career on that. And so from your perspective, how can university research or university innovation, quite honestly, create practical value For the startups who are either trying to build, trying to validate, or trying to commercialize a technology? Those are almost 3 different buckets. It's the rule of threes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are great questions. And is there research at universities that is very early and will take a while to translate? Absolutely. That does exist. We're not going to say all research is ready to go to market, right?

Well, thank goodness for that because without that, you don't get to the next stage, right?

Exactly, exactly. And that was the point, right? It's a continuum of things that we need. But I think the places where universities are really good for founders is finding places to test and collaborate with ecosystems that are built on understanding how to do the next steps. So the way I describe it is we have this amazing— our ZIP Launchpad incubator that was really built initially for our student population to come in and think about those ideas that were early on, and we would handhold them and think about all the things that a founder has to think about. And as ZIP has evolved and the work that we do, while we continue to do this for the students, we think about the regional economy and taking a technology and idea out of one of our partner research institutions, whether it's Scripps or others, and say, how do we help a scientist who doesn't know how to move it forward and handhold them through that process? So universities have experience with that. They've done it multiple times with their students, multiple times with their faculty. How can we support others in the community to do that? The prototyping, the testing your technologies, we have labs that have the capacities. You have a great idea. You can come in and prototype with us. You can then put it to the test with our other labs. So we connect founders with our researchers who might be interested in what founders do and help them actually test it in a variety of ways, whether you're testing it for impact or whether you're testing it for student interest, it doesn't matter. We have a full ecosystem. Think of universities. I mean, you're talking about at SDSU, 50,000 people between students, faculty, and staff. It's its own ecosystem. And that's not including our 500,000 living alumni, right, that we can reach out into. So when you come to a university, you don't just get our talent, our innovators, our staff. You get a whole lot of people that we have.

It's a network.

that we can connect you to, and we have connected founders to be able to get them off the ground.

So, if I'm a founder out in the community and I either see alignment or, you know, more often than not, I've worked with, say, they work with Marshall on our team and he's like, oh, you're doing something in national security. Do you know what's going on at SDSU? Let me connect you. What's the best way for them to enter the front door at SDSU to work with you?

Yeah, I think several people on my team, but I would start with our innovation team. So, whether this is Kathy through the Zip Launchpad or Tommy's through our Tech Transfer Office. We're happy to give you names and emails as part of the podcast. You can put them at the bottom in notes or Alex. All of my team is there to do those introductions to faculty. They're very entrenched in the work that our faculty and can do the work either directly with our entrepreneurship activities or with our faculty and students that are looking for the work. And I think the number one thing we keep hearing is, access to talent as well. And we have plenty of students graduating. We have 13,000 graduating next week that are looking for jobs. So certainly not a— not little access.

So anyone on your team, and I love that you turned to talent because that's where I want to go next. For early-stage companies, often talent's the hardest thing for them to find and afford. How should they think about your students, researchers, and graduates as part of the region's innovation workforce?

It's so fascinating that the whole topic of talent keeps coming up as if people don't exist in San Diego.

Like it's new, right? Yeah, right.

And it's actually sometimes frustrating when you sit at a university and you're like, we're producing 13,000 new graduates every year. What do you mean you're looking for talent, right? And that spans our undergrad, master's, and doctoral level, and 60% of them stay in San Diego. So, it's not like They're going all over the place.

And the ones who left usually want to come back after they've gone somewhere with winter.

Yes. And actually, 82% are in the States, so they're not that far, right? Right? Like, they're here. And so, the question is, what are we failing to do to connect our founders and others with what exists in the region? I would direct them directly to our career services that do an incredible job trying to connect, but also, if they come to my team again, We can identify students if they have a niche thing. We've done it before for founders where we're like, we're really interested in a student who's experienced or a graduate who has experience in this, and we can find them for them, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So you find them their founders. Now you're looking deeper into potential partnerships. So when a founder maybe has hired a student, now they're growing, they want to do more with you. When they approach a university like San Diego State University, what makes for a strong partnership or I guess, in a different twist, what should they have clear in their head before they try and collaborate with faculty researchers or university programs?

The first one I would say is trust. You have to walk into the room and believe that both sides are here to do the right thing and work together for an outcome. The second is, if you walk in at any university and think collaboration means owning everything, that's not going to work for you. You're not going to win that one, and you're not going to build a real partnership. So, I think if you take those two as a forefront of that collaboration and then start to build on what is it that you need and how can the university help you find those things, I think you can work together for outcomes. So, for us, for companies that we help that are not ours, we're not looking for equity. That's not what we do. We don't take equity from our partners.

Right.

What we're looking for is genuinely collaborating with our faculty and students and giving them this credit. And hiring our students. That's the number one thing that we do as a university is produce amazing talent.

It's the hardest thing produced is the brain trust, not just the patents and other things. Yeah.

And so for us, what excites us and the thing we do with our student companies that we also tell our partner companies is we would love for you to come back and give back to the campus, whether you're a mentor, whether you do support a startup when you make it, right, on our campus. What we want you to do is come back and pledge to come back and give back to our students and our community.

Yeah, and it can be time, talent, or And of course, we all always love the treasure, but time and talent sometimes is always more valuable because it has a much greater impact than just money alone.

I mean, the amount of mentors who've worked with our companies because we worked with them somewhere else, and they came back and supported our students. You ask our student, that's probably the most valuable thing we give them is the right mentor that really can help them through their journey.

Are there any common mistakes you've seen companies make when they approach you that are just kind of like a—

Unclear about the ask. They don't know what they want. They're like, oh, can we collaborate? And I'm like, sure, we're happy to collaborate, but what is it that you need from us? Is it the student? Is it that your prototype needs assistance in fixing? Is it that you need to do customer discovery? What can the university— so coming, like you're pitching for anything else, like come in with a really clear idea of what you need from a university. I think universities are very open door for that, but they need—

Mm-hmm.

They don't want to waste their time on people who don't know what they want.

Well, the thing I love about your team is that doesn't mean they have to know, here's what you can do for me, but it's, here's where I'm trying to go. Yes. And your team will help them figure out the pieces that you can provide to help them get there. As long as they know what they're trying to achieve, where they're headed, you can help them figure out how you can help them.

Absolutely.

And that's amazing. And not every university can do that. And so I think what you built is really intentional in that regard.

Definitely.

All right. So let's turn to our national security presence that we have in San Diego. We have a really strong national security presence. We have Incredible burgeoning AI and technology sectors, especially as AI intersects with so much else. You're building a lot in that as a major research institution in this area, looking at these spaces. How can SDSU help founders working in national security dual use or mission-driven technology better connect to our region's strengths?

That's an amazing question because I spend a lot of my time thinking about that too.

Trey wrote it, so he gets all the credit. I just get to show up and be the show pony. Love it.

We all do that with our teams, so thank you, Trey. Okay. For your audience, it's probably nothing that's new, but, you know, 22% of our economy, our GDP in San Diego is national security focused. We have all elements to ensure that we should be primed for doing the right work, whether it's end users, whether it's talent, whether it is our location for maritime work, you name it, we have everything to become the hub of all things national security. What I think right now our focus is for San Diego is to specifically think about where do we want to fit into that puzzle.

Mm-hmm.

So for us, the maritime aspect is very intriguing. We recently signed an agreement with Samsung Heavy Industries to launch an R&D center focused on maritime work. We're working closely with our partners at the community college district to launch accelerated pathways. For degree-seeking students. We're working with them and also on the technical jobs that the university's not going to produce— welding, painting, you name it. Those are still needed in our region, and we don't have regional training programs. So the way you think about San Diego State in that space is that we're everything from a continuum of we start with training and thinking about those jobs early on, high school, to a community college, to university, to trade jobs, not just 4-year degrees. And how do you not only get the workforce, but you get the mindset of design thinking, of entrepreneurship in those students early on as part of driving our innovation economy. And then, how do you find the companies that are currently located in San Diego, those startups who have dual-use potential that don't know they have dual-use potential? And how do you help them bridge that gap between the two worlds? And how do you provide them the resources and access to the things they need? to know that they can bridge that. I think there's so much more work that we can all be doing as a region to really leverage that. For us as a campus, we are also— 1 in 8 of our students are military affiliated. We have the largest Veterans Center in the country. And for us—

I learn something new every podcast. I did not know that.

And so for us, it's really fundamentally important to leverage those assets of the region and who we are as a legacy institution to do right by the region.

Where do you think San Diego— and this could probably apply anywhere, but I especially want to ask about our ecosystem, which is more collaborative than many. Yeah. In my 9 months here, I've experienced that, and it's truly incredible. Where do you think that we still need stronger bridges between universities, startups, national security partners, and capital? How can we make it easier and better for people? Do you see opportunities?

Huge. I'll start with the fact that I think Our system, while collaborative, is still fragmented for the most part. A lot of people are doing similar things in parallel. And so, I think one of the things we've been trying to figure out, and SDSU doesn't have to be the center of that, it can be working with Connect or others, is if somebody starts, how do we have access to everything they need and who is plugging them into the things that exist? We have incubators, we have accelerators, We have prototyping. We could do better on VCs, I will say, but we—

We're working on it.

Yes, yes, we are working on it and we're doing better on that. We do attract the capital despite not having headquarters of VCs. So I'm not saying access to capital is per se difficult. I'm just saying they're not housed.

It's just not next door.

Yes, it's not housed here and we have to do a little more work than other cities. But I think what it is, is we don't have a map. If you come into the region, And you're new or you're starting in the region, how do you know where all of those things— how do you go from an incubator here to Evo Nexus to Techstars to Plug and Play to whatever else is coming into the region over the next few years? How do you know what your pathway as a company is and what's the right spot at the right time to do? I think we haven't done that yet, to map it with MetroConnect. Mm-hmm. Like all of those things that are already occurring, we don't have a really good map for a new company, a new factoring.

This is what we're working on at Connect. I love that you said that because this is our next iteration and why we have a director focused on national security and tech issues and a director focused on life science and director on AI, because their job is to expand from what we've always done to help them get to you at the right moments where it's easier for folks.

That's the right thing.

And we didn't even plan that. It was the perfect setup. Well,

because, because all of us in the region are seeing it, and we just need Connect, in this case, to take the lead in doing it.

We might be able to partner with you because we think we can use some AI agentic agents to help us with that. We've talked to one of our founders about that, but maybe that's a— I think Marshall and I need to come sit with you and Fiona and like a little brainstorming on how we can do that together. I love it.

I love it. It's been on my radar for a while. I just don't have the bandwidth.

Thinking out loud.

I appreciate that you have this idea.

I will hit up Tommy and Kathy and be like, Hala said, I have a podcast. Let's go. I love it. Oh my gosh. All right. Well, I know I get in trouble when I go too long, so always want to make sure that I'm cognizant of time. But we have one last question. It's our standard Connect Current question. It's a very San Diego question. What drives your innovative flow? Where do you get your creativity? What sparks it from San Diego?

That's interesting because San Diego is unique. It's the environment we're in, our ocean, our walks, our weather, our people. And for me personally, my family, like my daughter is my inspiration for almost anything I do. So I think It's— we're just lucky to be in San Diego.

Agreed. I mean, San Diego itself is inspiration. It's crazy.

It is. In every way, everything you think about. I was just thinking this morning with the little rain we have, how many people were complaining.

I loved it.

Yeah, but I'm sure there were— people were whining when they woke up. Wanting weather. Yeah, yeah. But I think that's what makes San Diego so special. It's the little things that happen along the way in every day that we have.

And it was just what? It was foggy over the weekend. People were like, oh, it's sad. I'm like, it's weather. It's so nice. I'm sure in two years they're gonna be like, meh.

You're gonna, you're getting into May gray and June bloom and people get cranky. Crankiest part of the year.

The summer. It's so funny. It's the opposite of everywhere else. Well, I wanna thank you for taking time out. This was an incredible conversation and a great reminder about how universities, and especially San Diego State, can be a powerful partner for founders, funders, in any kind of vertical where research talent, industry needs, and regional priorities need to be better connected. And SDSU's work across AI, national security, technology, workforce development, applied research, insert everything here, 'cause there's so much more that you touch. Those are just some of the major, major areas. How it's such an important part of our innovation future in San Diego, and how your perspective, especially in what you're driving and changing there, helps founders better understand how to engage with the ecosystem. Any last words before we let you go?

No, I'm grateful for being here, and I think San Diego's gonna continue to be better every day.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to The Connect Current. As always, we'll have more information on Hala San Diego State University and Kiln Rancho Bernardo in our show notes. If you want to learn more about Connect and explore resources across San Diego's innovation ecosystem, visit us on LinkedIn or connect.org. We'll see you next time on The Connect Current, where San Diego's innovation story keeps moving forward.

This podcast was edited and produced by Resonate Recordings.