A company that comes out from the University’s research lab has received national recognition and support.
Graphene Frontiers, a Philadelphia-based advanced materials and nanotechnology company founded by Penn faculty through the UPstart program, was awarded a $744,600 grant from the National Science Foundation last week.
With developed technology on the production of graphene — a single-atom-thick layer of carbon — A.T. Charlie Johnson, professor in the Department of Physics and Director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center, co-founded Graphene Frontier in 2011 with his then post-doctoral researcher Zhengtang Luo, who is now a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, hoping to turn their research into a money-making business. Their CEO, Mike Patterson, is a 2012 Wharton MBA recipient.
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“Zhengtang Luo, Mike Patterson and myself took part in Innovation Corps program as a team,” said Johnson, referring to the program in the National Science Foundation that helps university faculty decide the entrepreneurial value of their invention. “It was a very interesting and intensive process of market exploration — we contacted over 120 potential partners and explored a number of different possible directions for graphene to go.”
The team is currently looking at how to use graphene in diagnostic medical devices, said Victoria Tsai, vice president of business strategy and product development. Tsai has three degrees from Penn: a bachelor of science and masters’ in Engineering, and a medical degree.
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The company plans to use the funds on their project to develop roll-to-roll production — a continuous process to have raw material roll up to the machine on one side and come out from the other side. This production will be more efficient, aiming to improve performance and lower the cost.
“We are looking at different markets that we potentially want to go into and see who are the big players and competitors,” Tsai said. “We are also exploring partnerships with bigger companies to launch the technology in different markets.”
“In the next three months, we’ll be doing a lot of designing,” said Bruce Willner, chief science officer of the company.
From a university research project to a business, Johnson considers this entrepreneurial experience “enjoyable, but also pulls you out of your comfort zone.”
“The biggest challenge for me was to accept that it isn’t going to be just about the science anymore,” said Johnson. “We spent quite a bit of time talking to people whose world is completely different from the world we occupy as professors. We have to talk to business people to see how to look at things and how they decide something is worth doing, in a language that’s very different from the language of basic science.”
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“You always need to convince your investors that you are making a real company with a real production — you are not a research project,” said Willner, who joined the company from the graphene industry. “UPstart has helped to move the process forward between the University and the company.”
Johnson said that more undergraduate and graduate students should work upon entrepreneurial efforts and considers this “something scientists can do.”
“I think that technology entrepreneurship is something that’s just emerging at Penn,” he added. “It’s not the same thing as webpage entrepreneurship or conventional entrepreneurship. The intersection of entrepreneurship and high technology has just emerged.”
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