- Welcome to another edition of Campus Spotlight. Today we're going to talk about the UNeTech Institute, and my guests are Rod Markin and Mr. Joe Runge, who are both leaders of our UNeTech Institute. What exactly is UNeTech and what exactly do you do?

- We provide a variety of services for the university. We help inventors prototype their inventions. We pair those inventions with entrepreneurs, and we support entrepreneurs in launching companies.

- So this is really important for economic development for not just for Nebraska, but for the Midwest.

- Yes, you know, the way that funding operates for a lot of these companies, we are looking at not just local investors, but national and even global investors.

- What role does the state have to do with UNeTech?

- The state legislature funds UNeTech, and that funding started in 2016, and they've continued to fund us for the last several years. And without that funding, we would not be able to help train and prototype and get these investors together with the entrepreneurs and the inventors.

- And I'm assuming that there's been some rewarding companies that have come out of this joint venture with the state.

- What you're holding is a swab free solution for nasal specimen collection. And so the way it operates is rather than cramming a swab, at everyone's nose, which no one likes, that device directs a jet of fluid to be able to collect the specimen. And then kind of like ski ball, it collects it as it comes back down. Now, this was a very effective prototype, but it was only after UNeTech was able to partner with a entrepreneur that we collaborated with that had evolved into this. So this is the second version of the prototype, and it's really amazing what we can do with 3D printing now. These were produced by students at Metro Community College under a grant received by the University of Nebraska Medical Center. And we were able to produce this more advanced prototype, which really brought into a sense of larger problem. So we were focusing on making swabbing less uncomfortable for patients and making it less dangerous for doctors. But there was an entire different problem with laboratories that we failed to really appreciate. So they were having issues in being able to build out a version of the device that would work better in the laboratory machines. And so in the previous existence, when you do the swabs, you would just stick the swab into a tube just like this. But what they were interested in is taking the tube, putting it on the specimen, and then turning it upside down. That made it so it would no longer jam their machines. And that way the whole thing is operative there.

- That is really clever.

- It is really clever.

- So tell me where we are with this prototype right now.

- So this is the final production version. So this one is actually injection molded. It's at a facility in Omaha, Nebraska that's working on it. The company that ended up taking this invention in collaboration with our inventors in emergency medicine, they raised a million and a half dollars and are launching this product globally right now. Another great example is actually this. So this is a syringe that was originally invented out of ophthalmologic sciences, and it really goes to show why you want an entrepreneur working on a project because the surgeon had a great idea, but he failed to appreciate the full scope of everything could be involved with it. And when you work with an entrepreneur who has to get an investment and a return on investment, there's an understanding on how to operate it.

- How do you identify the investors and the entrepreneurs?

- The technology is presented to UniMed and UniMed, works through it, patents it, and then creates a license agreement. Once they create the license agreement, then they kind of throw that over the transom to UNeTech and Joe and the team go out and start scouring for entrepreneurs to help put those two together.

- What would you say have been some of the greatest accomplishment so far for both UNeTech and projecting forward? How do you see that translating to the catalyst?

- I've been really proud that the creation of the UNeTech Institute has given the University of Nebraska Medical Center another way that we can help lead in the community. So UNeTech through some of the programs we've established, we're not only working with UNMC, we are leading Metro Community College, we're leading regional investors. We're leading the University of Nebraska, Omaha altogether to do things we couldn't do otherwise. I also think that there are a lot of opportunities with artificial intelligence based platforms to really try to provide products earlier. So we spent a lot of time talking about the FDA, all those devices that you were looking at had to be registered and produced in FDA compliant facilities, which is really difficult. With artificial intelligence based technologies, there is less of a requirement on that production side and opportunity to get to revenue more closely. But ultimately, I think that it better leverages what is the most important thing at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which is the incredible global expertise, and how can we embody that in software products that are able to really impact the world in some impressive ways.

- Well, thank you both. This has been really, really wonderful to learn more about the work of UNeTech and what we have to look forward to and see you around campus.