NASA and the University of Georgia (UGA) have launched a new collaboration this fall, connecting students with NASA’s extensive portfolio of patents through the T2U initiative. The partnership is designed to give UGA students in the Entrepreneurship Program hands-on experience in bringing advanced technologies to market.
“NASA has thousands of patents, but they don’t commercialize things,” said Don Chambers, assistant director of the UGA Entrepreneurship Program. “These students are searching for commercialization possibilities. They’re looking for problems that need solving.”
The T2U initiative links universities with NASA-developed technology, allowing students to build case studies and learn about technology licensing and design thinking. This semester marks the first time UGA students have participated in T2U as part of their entrepreneurship certificate capstone class.
“NASA solves very niche problems with extreme technology,” said Filipe Costa, a senior majoring in finance and real estate who is completing his entrepreneurship certificate. “You go through the patents, and they’re awesome. But what do I do with them? I mean, it’s sick, but how do I sell it? How do I make a business out of it?”
Costa was among several students who pitched business ideas based on NASA patents at the inaugural UGA-T2U pitch day held on November 19 at Studio 225, UGA’s student entrepreneurship center. Six teams presented their concepts to a panel of five judges.
Mike Riccio, a NASA technology licensing specialist based in Atlanta, explained that T2U was launched by NASA’s Technology Transfer Office in 2015 to bring new energy into technology commercialization efforts. Riccio works with startups and established companies to find uses for NASA’s patents and also develops relationships with colleges and universities across the country.
“T2U serves as an excellent pathway to get our technologies into the hands of creative folks who have the time and the energy to create new innovative solutions for real world problems,” Riccio said. “Injecting NASA’s IP portfolio into the classroom has a special way of generating novel product concepts and igniting the entrepreneurial spirit.”
Chambers noted that exposure to NASA research allows students to develop more advanced projects than they might otherwise attempt. “What a 20-year-old comes up with is less advanced because they simply don’t have exposure to the decades of research and engineering that NASA has,” he said. “These projects that they are pitching are definitely more advanced.”
Students worked in interdisciplinary teams designed by Chambers so each group could draw on diverse skillsets. One team led by Costa developed Rapid ICP—a noninvasive sensor intended for ambulances that measures intracranial pressure in stroke or head trauma patients.
Another team included Adelaide Mangum, a music therapy and entrepreneurship student who helped create Biobeats—a biofeedback sensor that monitors heart rate and adjusts environmental factors accordingly. Her team explored applications ranging from exercise training tools to devices syncing music playlists with heart rates for stress reduction.
Other teams created products such as PulseGrid (a real-time location system for manufacturing), HaloPulse (using cardiac signatures for rapid identity confirmation), Vitals VR (virtual reality clinical training), and Resiflex Innovations (durable materials for robotic delivery).
Riccio emphasized how interdisciplinary collaboration benefits innovation: “In the Entrepreneurship Certificate program, there’s a lot of different majors represented,” Mangum said. “There are business majors, but there are also people from different places across the university, so you get a lot of ideas that might be more niche to solve problems that people didn’t know existed.”
Mangum added that working with NASA patents broadened her perspective: “I could never picture myself working on a product that would help with music therapy instead of focusing only on one-on-one therapy,” she said. “But looking at all the NASA patents — that was eye-opening to me.”
The UGA Entrepreneurship Program aims to foster entrepreneurial mindsets among future business leaders; its accelerators are open both to UGA students and members of the Athens community.
