Connecting Inventors with Opportunity with Paul Roben and Al Pisano

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And welcome back to the Tacos in Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and today I am joined by the UCSD team who created the new San Diego chapter of the national association of Inventors. Paul Robbins and Al Pisano, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

Hey, thanks a lot, Neil. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, happy to be here.

So, as a UCSD and Jacobs School alum, I'm really excited to see the momentum foster around innovation that's coming on campus and off campus. And what we're going to talk about is how each of you, in your own separate areas of focus on campus, have come together to create not just this new chapter of national association of Inventors, but really everything you're doing to foster Innovation and create more companies and more jobs. So each of you have kind of day jobs, in a sense, and focus. Paul, do you want to give us your daily focus and a little bit of your background?

Sure. So I'm currently the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Commercialization up at UC San Diego, which is very long, but, yeah, I mean, my background, I was actually a postdoc at UCSD a long, long, long time ago, it seems. Then I went out and did a couple of biotech companies from Ireland originally. So I went back to Ireland to run the Irish government's Life Sciences Directorate, which is effectively pulling technologies out of the research enterprise into the private sector. But the weather is much nicer back here in San Diego. So I came back to San Diego, ran the Salks industry facing operations for a little while, and then came over to UC San Diego to do this. So what do I do? My office has a number of different functions. One is managing the intellectual property portfolio for the campus. Two is doing educational activities on campus, particularly for students in the innovation and entrepreneurship space. So that can be certificate programs, incubators, accelerators, helping to coordinate activities across the campus. And the third is managing the relationships with our community partners or helping to manage some of the relationships, at least with the community partners. So breaking down the walls and the barriers that may exist between the university and industry, government, and all the other people that we need to partner with to make magic happen.

Love it. And magic that does happen. Speaking of magic, Al, you're first of all, the magical house sitting off the side of the Jacobs Building there, showing magic to that regard. Do you want to give us a little bit of your background and daily focus, too?

Sure. Fine. So you refer to the Fallen Star, which is outdoor art from the Stewart Collection on the Engineering building. So, Neil, it's a pleasure to be with you and be with Paul today. I began my career as a practicing engineer, actually involved in innovation and design of new products. So I worked for Singer Sewing Machines, General Motors Corporation, Xerox Corporation. Designing new things and finding the right new thing has always been in my career here at the Jacobs School. And I've been the dean at the Jacobs School for eight years now by using two of our mantras. All right, so the first one is we make bold possible. And the other one is innovation happens here. So we use those two mantras to help shape our curriculum and shape our research efforts so that we can have a large community of people, 9,200 students, all get excited about the innovation game. And so I was very Very happy when we were able to bring a chapter of the National Academy of Inventors here to this campus. That's going to excite the local community. And I think what you're going to see is a continued outpouring of inventions, startups and innovations of all kinds, not just from engineering, but from the whole campus.

Let's talk a little bit about what's going on on campus and then we'll come Back to the NIA a little bit. Al, you mentioned 9,200 engineering students. I imagine that's got to be quite large for an engineering department compared to other schools. Do you want to speak to that? A little bit, but kind of the size and that piece of engineering.

Yeah. To put it in perspective, we're approximately the fifth or the sixth largest engineering school in the country. And for those of us who know the wonderful little city of Del Mar, we are twice the population of Del Mar. Del Mar is 4,700 residents. We are 9,200. And so we are not quite twice the size of Del Mar. So running the engineering school is like running a city.

Yeah, that's a good perspective for sure. Take us through a little bit. Maybe this is for Paul, like some of the output that comes from not just engineering school, but the whole campus, very entrepreneurial campus. Recently, I think there was a good article by Fred at the Business Journal, a former intern of ours who talked about the number of inventions last year. I think it was something around 500 inventions and maybe 760 active startups. Do you want to, Paul, talk a little bit about kind of the impact and maybe even the economic impact of that as well, too?

Sure, yeah. First of all, I think we'll have to start calling Al the Mayor of engineering, right? Yeah. I mean, people don't always appreciate the enormous impactful institution that sits right in our doorstep here of UC San Diego. I mean, we're one of the largest institutions in the country and one of the most impactful research institutions. So, you know, just to run some numbers, right, we do almost a billion and a half a year in research, and that's the engine. That's what drives all of the innovation. Right? And that's coming out of engineering, health sciences, biological sciences, etc. And then from that come all the inventions. And as you say, we have about 500 inventions a year, which puts us as one of the top institutions in the country. We license about 170, 180 of those a year. We start about 25 companies on average, depending on the year out of the research portfolio, which puts us for the last year that there was full numbers at least, which is 2018, it puts us number three in the country in terms of just starting companies. But that's actually really only the tip of the iceberg because innovation and impact is really about people and it's all of the work that goes on in engineering through the Institute of the Global Entrepreneur and the Rady School of Management and Health Sciences and everywhere across campus to actually develop the innova tours is really the impact that we have. It's all of the people that come off the campus and enter the innovation economy that we have here in San Diego. That's what's driving the economy here. That's what makes San Diego so special, why we have so many high paying jobs. That's the real economic impact bolstered by the companies that are also coming off campus. But when you look at most of the startup companies across campus, it's hard to find ones that don't have some UCSD connection. Either the people on the board are UCSD alums or the management team or somebody on theirs as a connection to ucsd. It's the engine behind the innovation economy here in San Diego.

So Neil, if I could add on, I'd like to explain a little bit of the secret sauce that we're using to drive that aside from all the research investments. So just a short little story and I'll put it in an anecdotal way. The engineering school has been invaded by the right brained people. Now I know it's dimethor psychology, right? But the left brained people are supposed to be very analytic. The right brain is supposed to be very creative. If you think about a successful innovator, they have to be both creative and have the technical tools so internal to engineering. We joke about our well balanced, our holistic student body that we're striving to perfect. From that you get three things. First, innovation is something that is done across the campus, right? You don't have to be an analytic type, a left brained person to be an innovator. But it helps if you know one at the same time. The engineering school, where you figure you might have a higher density of the left brained people is welcoming this onslaught of right brained people. And we're reshifting our curriculum so that they stay encouraged, thrive and mingle with the left brain people. And the third thing is that the edges of engineering blur deeper and deeper into the campus, right? You're no longer oh he's or she is an Engineering type or not. Now we see this gradation, that gradation is valuable, right? It means that for different kinds of innovations, you need different mixes. The other divisions are doing similar things as what we're doing in engineering. But I think when you look across the country, San Diego is the place where the secret sauce is being used so that we educate people to be able to come at this holistically. And I think that is one of the reasons why our numbers for innovators, inventions and startups are so great.

You bring up some good points around those blurring of the lines, for sure. I mean, when you've got a startup team, what you want is a team that's complementary of each other, right? That fills in each other's holes and gaps. And I remember as an undergrad, as an engineering student, when I walked over to Rady and said, can I take a course here? And they're like, what? You can't? No, that's not a thing. And to see how much it's progressed now, where it's. Obviously everyone is welcomed everywhere, and not just that it's welcome, but it's expected that, yes, if you're curious, come try it and come do something different. So it's really encouraging to hear that. Specifically, I would love to hear the background, Al, if you want to take this one first on the NIA a little bit. National association of Inventions. What is the background of it? And then why is it so important to bring it here to. To ucsd, Right?

So the National Academy of Inventors was put together, I think, about 15 years ago, and it really is there to honor people who take this holistic approach and actually have impact by prosecuting successful inventions. We have a National Academy of Engineering, right? We have the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. We have the National Institutes of Health. The point is, there are academies that look deep within disciplines. The National Academy of Inventors is the one that honors the holistic, effective people who actually drive the invention forward. The world requires all kinds of people. NAI is really focused on that one special kind that is really in the DNA of the campus. So I'm honored about all the hard work. I praise all the hard work everyone did to make it happen here. For us to get a chapter, you know, it was inevitable, right? I mean, the match is so good, even if we didn't want it, it would end up happening, happening here anyway. So I see it as a spectacular match. And I'm hoping that the students and the faculty and the staff get really excited about the possibilities that this unlocks.

I love that. Paul, do you want to add more a little bit on kind of goals? Because obviously it sounds like we've got some great numbers already. We're already one of the top institutions. What does this allow us to do to kind of even level up further?

It does a lot of things and it's terrific to have it here. It raises awareness of just what we do, not just as a campus, but as a region. And I'm glad that Al brought up the idea of this boundless collaboration type thing because that's what San Diego is really, really good. I know I'm going to off on another answer here, but, you know, that's really what differentiates San Diego. Right. You know, I go back to Ireland and they say, how does San Diego do so well? I mean, it's about the same size as Ireland, yet they're so far ahead of us. And it's because we are so well connected here. You'll never get a door shut in your face. You know, people are willing to reach out to help. And it's that interconnectivity and that sort of transdisciplinarity, as we might call it, on an academic campus that really puts us ahead of the rest of the. And you know, just to finish on that thought, last year we pulled in over 5 billion in venture investment. That puts us way ahead of Austin, Seattle, Denver, all of these places that we've traditionally been compared with. So, you know, we're getting up there with the big boys at this point. But as far as the nai, what it allows us to do is to really raise awareness around that. It gives us a national platform to showcase not just what we're doing at UC San Diego, but what's going on across the whole county here. It gives us an excuse, if you like, to collaborate with others in a different way. So, for example, niwc, the Information Warfare Centre, the Naval center, also has a chapter which we're hoping to do some collaborations with over time. It gives us a platform to honor the inventors that we do have through the creation of fellows in the National Academy of Inventors. Right. We have about. I think we have 10 or 12, Al. I'm not sure exactly what the number is already on campus, including the current Chancellor as well. It'll help us to do that. And it also opens up a global network of inventors and entrepreneurs and mentors for our members. So it gives our students. In fact, I would love to see student involvement in this at some point as well. Not that they'd become fellows yet, but they'd have access to this global network of advisors and mentors, which again would help them. So there's plenty of ways that I think we can leverage this to help not just UC San Diego, but the region, the whole county of San Diego.

I'd like to toss in an implicit challenge there, not to Paul, but to the community. One of the powerful things about having a local chapter is that you can petition to host a local meeting for the nai. Now that would be an important nexus, right? Imagine that you host a meeting for the National Academy of Inventors here in San Diego, pull together the community and all the people who aren't quite sure that they could do that and see people like them doing it. That is a powerful accelerator for the community. And I know we're not going to be big enough to host such a meeting immediately, but I'm sending this message out over the airwaves using the inconvenience of billions of electrons to communicate the message that this should be on our agenda. And I think it would be another great event for the community.

That's a great call.

I love that. Paul, you mentioned kind of the greater county wide of San Diego, which obviously includes thousands of private companies. What's the opportunity for private companies to kind of engage not just with the nia, but in general with the innovation that's being created at ucsd.

It's endless. Let me just give a couple of examples. I guess. I mean, through all the work that Al has been doing over the number of years and through the Chancellor goals in terms of innovation and economic development in the region, we have done many, many things over the past number of years to break down any sources of friction or inertia between the campus and the community, including our industrial partners. Al can give lots of examples from his perspective. From my perspective, there's things like we've totally changed how we do tech transfer, which is the transfer of technologies. So we create all of these technologies. We are not a development organization. We need other people to then take those technolog and actually develop them into products and services for the most part. And that's our industry partners that maybe in the past was a little bit more difficult. We have done what we can to break down the barriers and enable companies to get access to those technologies a lot more easily. As an example of that, startup companies now can take technologies from us, exclusively licensed technologies from us, without giving us any money. Actually, they can give us a bit of equity. So if they're successful, we'll share in their success, but we make it very easy for them to do that. We've done a whole bunch of collaborations recently, particularly in the therapeutic side and health sciences, like the Deerfield Collaboration, Bridge, Bio Autobahn, all of these things, which are very large, broad collaborations with these community partners to take the programs that we have in therapeutics and develop them through to clinical development, which is, you know, the stages of therapeutics development. And we've seen a lot of dividends in that. New drugs for patients. I mean, that's really what that's about. Right. And the last thing that I'll mention are physical manifestations of how we're trying to break down these barriers. The Design and innovation building very much is supposed to be an environment that brings the community on campus so that there's this whole ecosystem created with investors and companies and our innovators and researchers and so on, all mingling together to really accelerate this idea of innovation. The center for Novel Therapeutics on the east campus is another example. We have an accelerator for startup companies from anywhere. It doesn't have to be UCSD startups, biotech, pharmaceutical companies, cancer research, all mingling in the same building. And this is the whole idea. Create this wonderful environment, you know, where all the people are together and that's how these ideas come to come to life and you get development and that is innovation. Right. It's the diversity and transdisciplinarity that Al was speaking about earlier.

Now it speaks a lot, I mean, especially around density. You know, density usually ends up bringing these kind of wonderful randomized bumping intos where people from mix and share ideas. Sounds like that's what you're building right there. I think it's right at the trolley stop, the new trolley stop that will be coming, right?

Yeah, that's the design and innovation building. It's going to be great because if you're a community member, that's going to be one of the front doors. Now if you come to campus by trolley, as soon as you get off, you're going to see this great big building and it's going to have students and companies, investors and, you know, wonderful stuff going on. It's going to be really quite exciting actually. I'm looking forward to it. Activating the whole thing. We call it engineering serendipity.

Yeah, exactly. And on the other end of that trial line is, I think is the new downtown campus as well. Right. Which. So there's this bridge also to come on campus or for UCYSTI to come off. Do either of you want to Speak to a little bit of what you're also trying to engineer downtown as well, too.

So I'll take a quick crack at it and I'll let Paul also do so. I'm excited about the U, which is what they call the facility, because it really provides an opportunity for us to connect deeply into the city and the region. So to connect two or three themes together. Right. Successful inventions bring benefit to people. You know, the inventions that I worked on that got me into the NAI were special catheters to deal with arterial plaque, arterial disease. I mean, I love doing that. If it's successful people benefit. Well, you don't know everything that people need unless you're out there mingling. So just as Paul referred to, as I would put it, an acceleration of the circulation of people and ideas that we're driving on campus. That's where all the magic happens. Now we have this other footprint downtown which enables us to accelerate the circulation of people and ideas with a larger community in a convenient way. So you know that we're going to learn a lot about what some great ideas for innovations would be from those new relationships. And people downtown conveniently will learn firsthand about what we're doing. So I see this as a step, a very important connection step. And kudos to the teams that got those buildings and all that work sorted out. I'm looking forward as they open to a real surge of activity.

Absolutely, yeah. Us as well. I've been working downtown since 2013. The startup community has always been small but mighty. And then there's been a very dedicated crew that says we're staying downtown. And so it's exciting to see, not that La Jolla is very far 15 minutes, but just to see the melding of those communities and mindsets as well, too. So we're excited about that.

Just to add, if I might, on that, I think we're going to see an enormous shift downtown. We're on the sort of the brink of new developments. I mean, look at the IQ HQ thing. Almost 2 million square feet of life science is going to be down there and there's a whole bunch of other developments. So I think it's a wonderful time for us to be there as well, to really start to leverage that and, you know, bring the whole community together, the art, science, media, culture, everything mixing in that building. I think it's going to be wonderful for the community.

Totally agree. Back on the NIA a little bit. You know, obviously, I'm guessing you worked on this for a bit to bring it here. Were There other universities or other chapters that you kind of looked at as a blueprint to say, hey, we could do this too, or we could even do it better, like certain ones that kind of came to mind, I would say.

Well, let me also say that this was a whole cross campus effort as well. I mean, we also had the health sciences and Rady and others were involved in this as well. And I think that's going to be our strength, is the diversity that came together to do this. When we first were doing this, we worked a lot with NAI themselves to sort of figure out how did other people do this. And then we reached out to some of our compadres in similar universities such as Michigan, Texas, these places, just to chat with them and see how they were doing it. Different people have done it different ways. We have to make this work for the environment that we have at ucsd. And I think you'll see it evolve over time to do that.

So how can the community as a whole kind of support inventors? What do you think? What's another rallying cry that we can give people to say, hey, not just engage in the chapter, but engage in the spirit of innovation. And for people who want to innovate and actually create, what's the big ask from the community?

The first thing that comes to my mind is engagement. UC San Diego is not an aloof, haughty organization perched on an ivory tower fending off all who approach that is not who we are. And the actions we've taken to reach out and make the connections happen easily, I think really should be the way we're judged. Right? Judge us by our deeds. So the number one thing is to engage because that circulation of people and ideas drives mutual benefit for each of us, enables us to focus our intellectual resources where they are most needed, and enables the community to benefit most directly from us being there. I think that is the number one thing we're reaching out. Please reach back. That would be my rallying cry.

I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what it is. It's engagement. We can't do this by ourselves, Right? We need to work together to make all of this happen. I mean, just to give you specific examples, we need mentors and advisors and experts in the tech and the life sciences areas to work alongside our researchers and our faculty and our students to help them understand how they can take their ideas through the next few steps to impact. Right? So the more that people want to help us, the more we're going to accept them. You know, there's so many programs in engineering that people can engage through. Through my shop, we have the entrepreneurs in residence, and all the incubators and accelerators have mentors around them. We need the community to actively engage with all of our people to really help us have the impact that we're shooting for. I actually have this monthly coffee chat thing now where we just go out. Anybody from the community can sign on. It's been really cool, actually, because you never know who's going to come on and what sort of questions you're going to get. But it's really helped me to understand how the community views the university and, you know, how we can sort of get ourselves out there so that we get that engagement. But Alice is. He's dead, right? It's all about engagement.

Yeah.

And you mentioned the entrepreneur in residence program, which from my perspective, being kind of off campus, I've seen a lot of peers now come onto campus and really dive deep, which has been really great to see. So kudos to creating that program. I know Greg Horowit was involved there as well, too. Keep that program up. You know, we've started at Startup San Diego, the nonprofit as well. We now have six EIRs a year that pledge to one year on, and they kind of train. There's a little bit of overlap. They train their next eirs for a few months. So I think it's a great, great idea to have the people who've done it before be the ones that help people to do it the first or second time as well, too. Another way, obviously, the community gets engaged in San Diego is we eat tacos. We love our taco scene here, as we do on this podcast. And so we got to know al thrown at you first. You have a favorite taco spot?

Oh, it's got to be City tacos up in Encinitas. Sorry. I'm a North county guy when it comes to tacos, and I apologize to all the great shops down in San Diego, but they have a traditional carne asada, which is just to die for. So I'll confess right away. Hey, man, pulled pork on a taco. Can't beat it. I love it.

City tacos, they've been growing. I think they're up to seven locations now, so you might be able to get it all over the county.

You know, a million taco eaters can't be wrong.

Ah, totally agree, Paul. How about you? Got a favorite spot?

Well, my spot for the last year this pandemic has been Del Sur down in South Park. They have some great tacos and they also allow you to take margaritas back back home. It's fantastic.

Love that. Well, guys, really appreciate the time here and even more so, really appreciative of what you're doing for, for the community. I know as an investor to be able to see opportunities that exist more and for talent to be able to have all these opportunities to enrich and grow and meet other inventors. We're really excited not just for the nia, but in general for UCSD to continue to overflow into the community and make this an even more innovative town. So thanks guys. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Neil, thank you.

My pleasure. Thanks Neil.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Coworking in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom as well as Fresh brewed tech and tacos in Tech Pod on Twitter too.

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