At our first monthly meeting on January 26th, I hope you had a chance to see David Brown’s excellent presentation on his "Investigations with Light and Sustainable Energy Resources" (iLASER) Program at Southwestern College. His demonstration of the properties of light with a red gummy bear and a green gummy bear was fascinating. David also had a very nice demonstration of the use of light to generate hydrogen and then the use of that hydrogen to produce electricity. David furthermore described his trip along the Mexican border from California to the Gulf of Mexico and back where he demonstrated the properties of light to Boys and Girls Clubs. The presentations were very well received and David plans to do the trip again in March.
At our monthly meeting on February 22nd, Melinda Richter will discuss "The Incubation of Innovation: Creating a Capital-Efficient Ecosystem". Melinda is CEO and Founder of Prescience International. The presentation looks to be very exciting. For more details see the February Newsletter.
Our March monthly meeting will focus on the ACS National Meeting to be held in San Diego March 25th to March 29th. Julann Miller is our Local Section Coordinator. If you wish to volunteer to help, please contact Julann at jmiller@sandiegoacs.org. The theme of the meeting is the "Chemistry of Life" and there are a variety of excellent presentations and keynote addresses. Craig Venter is one of the keynoters and will speak on "From Reading to Writing the Genetic Code".
At our Executive Committee (we are no longer are a Board according to our new Bylaws) Meeting on February 2nd, it was decided to go ahead with the funding of ACS Project SEED from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). Other items included a budget for the year which has subsequently been revised and is currently being voted on. A discussion was held on the vacancies we have on the Executive Committee for a Chair-Elect and Education Committee Chair. Nobody volunteered at that time. If you would like to nominate somebody, please get their concurrence and then let me know. This includes self nominations.
Our next Executive Committee (ExCom) meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 6th and I hope to see many of you there for the meeting.
CHAL PROGRAM AT THE NATIONAL ACS MEETING IN SAN DIEGO
SDACS LAW COMMITTEE EVENT
TITLE: "Strategies for Designing Around Chemical Patents"
TOPICS:
1. Identifying blocking patents: the FTO
2. Rules of claim construction relevant to chemistry
3. The boundary between infringement and non- infringement in the chemical arts
4. Application of the Doctrine of Equivalents in the Chemical Arts
5. Non-infringement opinions
SPEAKERS:
1. Edward Robinson, DLA Piper LLP (US)
2. Donald Lewis, Lewis Kohn & Fitzwilliam, LLP
3. David Wallace (Consultant)
DATE: March 28, 2012
TIME: 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM
LOCATION: San Diego Convention Center, Room: TBA
111 W. Harbor Drive, San Diego, CA 92101
INFORMATION: Don Lewis at dlewis@lewiskohn.com
THE INCUBATION OF INNOVATION:
CREATING A CAPITAL-EFFICIENT ECOSYSTEM FOR SUCCESS
Melinda Richter
Founder & CEO, Prescience International
DATE: Wednesday, February 22, 2012
TIME: 6:00 PM Social Hour, Light Dinner
7:00 PM Lecture
PLACE: Town Hall Room,
Janssen Research & Development
3210 Merryfield Row, San Diego
RESERVATIONS: By Friday, February 17, 2012
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
With over 15 years of global experience in creating, financing and managing innovative companies in emerging and convergence technologies, Melinda Richter specializes in accelerating the development of products-to-market, andcompanies-to-investment. She is the founder and CEO of Prescience International, a full-scale management firm which focuses on accelerating the commercialization of science and technology. For Janssen Labs in San Diego, she guides an operations management team to enable innovative life sciences companies to rapidly deliver better solutions to the healthcare challenges faced today. In addition to Janssen Labs, the Prescience innovation center portfolio includes the San Jose BioCenter and the Environmental Business Cluster (EBC). Under her leadership, the San Jose BioCenter was named one of the best life science incubators in the U.S. by CNN, honored by the National Business Incubation Association with its 2009 Incubator of the Year Award and granted the Harvard’s Bright Ideas Award. The EBC, one of the first cleantech incubators ever to be established in the U.S., was ranked as a "Top 10 Incubators Changing the World" by Forbes.com, one of the “Top 10 Start Up Incubators to Watch” by Inc.com, named by Popular Science Magazine as one of three Places Where Inventors Are Born, and also ranked as a top incubator by CNN. Richter has served on the governing board of the National Business Incubation Association and currently sits on boards of University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business Center for Executive Education BioExec Institute, the San Jose State University's Masters of Biotechnology Program and UC San Francisco's School of Dentistry. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and an M.B.A. from INSEAD in France.
ABOUT THE LECTURE:
Barriers to discovery and development faced by innovative startup companies prevents great science from leaving the bench and moving to the marketplace. Not the least of these barriers is the flow of capital that is needed to continue necessary R&D. In order for innovation to happen, it must have the right capital-efficient environment in which scientists and researchers are able to concentrate on their discoveries. Today’s market realities require an unconventional ecosystem for them to explore game-changing ideas and move those to success. Addressing the theme, "The Incubation of Innovation," Richter will share with ACS her successes in developing a new lab model that boosts success rates for early stage companies and allows them to conserve resources to put their money to work in an optimized, capital-efficient environment.