Tag Archive for 'conference'

i.Lab Dedication
Last Friday, Darden celebrated the opening of the new i.Lab (short for Innovation Laboratory). The events included a ribbon cutting ceremony and an inaugural keynote speaker, New York Times bestselling-author Daniel Pink. You can watch a video of the i.Lab dedication or a short video about the i.Lab on Darden’s YouTube channel. BusinessWeek.com also wrote a blog post about it, “Darden Opens a New Innovation and Design Lab,” and the Wall Street Journal included the i.Lab in a piece titled “Business School, Through Design.”

9th Annual Darden International Finance Conference
The 9th Annual Darden International Finance Conference took place on March 18-19. The two-day event highlighted issues and practices surrounding access to capital in both emerging and developing markets and included sessions on “Financial Institutions and the Global Crisis,” “Politics and International Finance,” and “International Portfolios and Returns.”

2nd Annual Venture Summit
The University of Virginia, which last year hosted a summit that brought together venture capitalists representing nearly $20 billion in active capital funds, will hold its 2nd Annual Venture Summit on March 25 and 26. Dean Robert F. Bruner said entrepreneurial activity is critical to America’s economic recovery and job creation. “This summit goes right to the heart of that challenge and is the kind of contribution to recovery that a university is ideally suited to make,” he said. Virginia U.S. Senator Mark R. Warner will be on hand via videoconference for a special session on federal regulation of venture capital. U.S. Representative Tom Perriello of Charlottesville will participate via videoconference in a special panel discussion on energy. The summit will also showcase U.Va. start-ups and student concepts. All six of the U.Va.-based start-ups showcased in 2009 found funding following their presentations at the Summit.

U.Va. has rapidly become a destination for sourcing new technology-based ventures.

• U.Va. innovators have spun 77 new technology-based ventures out of the University, including 61 over the past decade. U.Va. start-ups have helped to establish Charlottesville as a hotbed for new ventures (ranked 18th “Best City for Living and Launching a Business” by Fortune and Money magazines and ninth “Best Small Market for Business” by Forbes in 2008).
• Over the past five fiscal years, U.Va. researchers have reported the invention of 885 new technologies, 302 (34 %) of which have been licensed to companies and institutions for further development.
• U.Va. has recently entered into strategic research partnerships with major corporations and industry leaders such as AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Rolls Royce.
• Over the past five years, U.Va. has attracted significant innovation funds and generated high returns on investment via private translational research funding through the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Translational Research Partnership, the Ivy Foundation, the Thelma R. Swortzel Collaborative Research Award, the Launchpad Program and others.

For more information about the Venture Summit, read the UVA Today article, “Innovation and Investors Will Converge at U.Va. for Second Annual Venture Summit.”