Ohio Third Frontier Approves $200,000 in Commercialization Grants to Kent State Researchers

The Ohio Third Frontier program recently made three separate grants to Kent State University researchers through the newly established Technology Validation and Start-up Fund, which promotes the commercialization of Ohio technologies developed by the state’s institutions of higher education.

“These projects demonstrate our commitment as a university to high-quality research that supports the health and livelihood of the people of Ohio,” says Grant McGimpsey, Ph.D., Kent State’s vice president for research. “We would like to express our gratitude to the Third Frontier for showing confidence in our researchers and for supporting these efforts.”

Joel Hughes, Ph.D., associate professor in Kent State’s Department of Psychology and director of the university’s Applied Psychology Center, will lead a $50,000 effort to develop the project “iLidRX — an Interoperating Medication Container for Health Management of Chronic Illnesses.” This venture will complete the development of a system for managing patient compliance in both clinical trials and the treatment of chronic diseases.

“I think that this product could be completely revolutionary,” Hughes says. “At this point, we know that a major barrier to effective medical care is medication adherence. Solving this problem is a ‘holy grail’ of health behavior right now, and the iLidRx will be uniquely suited to improving medication taking, reducing medication errors and ultimately improving health.”

Kent State Trustees Research Professor John L. West, Ph.D., from the university’s Liquid Crystal Institute® and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is spearheading a $50,000 materials science project titled “Controlled Cracking of ITO on Plastic Substrates,” which will demonstrate the commercial viability of a manufacturing method for use in flexible electronics applications. 

“It’s an exciting new technology, and I’m glad the state has provided this support for it,” West says. “We will move quickly to build a prototype and commercialize this new technology.”
 
A $100,000 Phase 2 grant was made to GraphSQL LLC, a newly established Portage County company co-funded by Kent State Associate Professor Ruoming Jin, Ph.D., from the Department of Computer Science. The grant will help develop the firm’s software system supporting graph data analysis for massive business data.

“We also are very excited about this Phase 2 award for GraphSQL,” McGimpsey says. “This is an excellent example of university-private sector cooperation that reflects what we see as the university’s responsibility to promote economic development in the region through research and development.”

Ohio Third Frontier, an unprecedented and bipartisan commitment to create new technology-based products, companies, industries and jobs, has attracted more than $6.6 billion in other investments to Ohio, and has a nearly 9 to 1 return on investment since its inception. The Ohio Third Frontier also has assisted in the creation and retention of more than 79,000 direct and indirect jobs for Ohioans.

For more information, visit http://thirdfrontier.com.

For more information on research at Kent State, visit www.kent.edu/research.