This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Erik Iverson, CEO of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
WARF this year is celebrating its 100th anniversary, putting a spotlight on its role in supporting and commercializing UW-Madison research. Iverson shares his thoughts on the organization’s history, its wide-ranging impacts in Wisconsin and where it’s headed in the future.
“We now sit on significant resources that we put to work by making large grants back to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to support the continued phenomenal, world-class research that they do,” he said. “So it really is this cycle of providing grants to campus to support research, that research results in inventions, we protect those inventions, and find partners to take those forward to develop into products.”
Iverson discusses how WARF has impacted Wisconsin’s startup ecosystem, particularly over the past two decades as the foundation has put an increased focus on supporting businesses linked to the university. That can include working with faculty or students, as well as serial entrepreneurs.
Iverson joined the foundation in 2016 and was tasked by the group’s board with creating an internal venture fund, which has had a “prolific” footprint in the startup ecosystem, he said. He notes it’s now exceeded $250 million in size.
“We’ve had a significant impact, not just in Madison but really across the state, in venture funding as well as creating startups,” he said.
The podcast sheds light on the process for bringing scientific innovations from the lab bench to market, and WARF’s role in selecting inventions for patent protection and potential licensing. He says the foundation is the only technology transfer in the country, and possibly the world, that self-funds all of its patent coverage on its own without taking tax dollars from the state or campus.
Iverson also touches on the foundation’s various initiatives, including WARF Therapeutics, WARF Accelerator and others.
“So now we’re in the process of looking at how well are those things working together, but then what can we add to respond to the needs of campus, and the needs of industry, and the needs of the marketplace,” he said.
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison: