Intellectual property rights from the University of California, Berkeley, have been used to start 146 businesses in the last two decades.

Some prolific professors have started plenty of companies -- chemist Richard Mathies, for example, has helped start 15 businesses, with five of them directly based on his laboratory’s breakthroughs. Mathies has 35 patented inventions, among them miniaturized “labs on a chip” -- an idea behind Affymetrix Inc., which he helped found.

Chiron Corp., now owned by Novartis, was another U.C. Berkeley baby, along with Alphabet Energy Inc. and Nanosys Inc., both of which were spun out of the laboratory of chemist Peidong Yang. Alphabet Energy seeks to save the waste heat from engines and reuse it.

Carolyn Bertozzi, another Cal chemist, helped start drug maker Redwood Bioscience Inc. in 2009.

Jay Keasling, a chemical engineer, helped start Amyris Inc. (NASDAQ: AMRS), a company valued at $478 million at the end of 2011.

Electrical engineer Kris Pister said helping to create Dust Inc., now Dust Networks Inc., helped make him a better teacher. “Now, when I interact with students, I impress upon them the importance of thinking of research in the context of how the technology will fit into the real world.”

U.C. Berkeley has earned plenty over the years in license fees -- $87.5 million, for example, from Bristol-Myers Squibb for a possible cancer treatment, which it spent on lab space for students in the vast Valley Life Sciences Building and also on important fundamental classes for biology and pre-med majors.

William Ibbs, a civil engineering professor, praised the benefits of close connections between the ivory tower and the private sector.

“It’s a great thing,” Ibbs said. “It’s important that researchers work closely with people who are going to use that research, rather than have a gulf between them. It will make the research more valuable, it will prepare students better, and it will enlighten both sides.”

(Source: San Francisco Business Times)