As I wrote in my post last week, this week I am going to highlight four technologies/teams at CMU that are looking to spinout to form a company, and are looking for a CEO. Project Olympus is helping to facilitate matches. Up second…
POW! – This project originates with Mor Harchol-Balter, faculty member in the Computer Science Department (CSD) within the School of Computer Science (SCS). Prof. Mor Harchol-Balter has invented a series of innovative algorithms for managing and optimizing power usage. This technology has tremendous commercial applications such as for server farms, and single severs. Since August, 2008, I have met with Prof. Harchol-Balter on numerous occasions. This has included meetings with Reed McManigle, from CMU’s technology transfer office, on the complex intellectual property issues facing the formation of a new company as a result of Prof. Harchol-Balter’s work with IBM. Fundamentally, there are two patents: the first, focused on server farm optimization algorithms, is a joint patent with IBM. The second patent is focused on single server algorithms (and I have thought of applying this to mobile phone applications as well). The technology is currently funded by The Technology Collaborative, with match from IBM, Project Olympus and Idea Foundry. Additional funding has been secured from the CMU Enterprise Creation award and Project Olympus.
I would guess that branding is a first priority for this startup…
You can learn more here at the Project Olympus site for POW!.