Remembering the Past - Exploring the Future
March 15, 2011, marks the 29th anniversary of the existence of the Polymeric Composites Laboratory (PCL) both as a consortium and a world-class facility. Created primarily to educate a new generation of engineers and scientists, first in academia and then in industry including management through life-long learning, it is now well into its second useful life, if one considers 25 years the average life time of an organization. To be sure, the transformation of the PCL from an academic lab to a hybrid of profit/non-profit activities with a featured store front was a unique experience. It was only made possible because of the unique relationships established over the years with people and organizations that formed the foundation of the Business Education Design Research (BEDR) network with firm roots in government, industry, and academia the world over. The significance of this biennium activities is that it involves former students in their now professional capacity for the traditional honor process of of their professor’s reaching his 60th birthday. However, I also feel privileged that colleagues with current professional ties to our organizations have achieved major milestones in their life. Dr. Eric Kaler, President-elect of the University of Minnesota; Dr. Haris Doumanidis, Program Manager of the National Science Foundation nanotechnology initiative; and Dr. Nikos Kanellopoulos, newly-elected president of the Greek National Research Centre Demokritos will provide new dimensions for future collaborations. At the same time, new people and organizations such as Dr. Connie Wan of Intellectual Ventures are also providing ample opportunities to explore synergies with new frontiers. Our GloCal Network Corporation (now the PCL parent) has morphed along with a network of four non-profits in the U. S., Greece, France, and Japan into a unique investment concern of people and organizations, promoting R&D commercialization activities of material and process technologies for aviation, green energy, sporting goods, biology, health, and information with focus at the nanoscale. We continue, however, to provide training and life-long learning activities with a unique global and local perspective by partnering with universities and individual faculty around the world. In the past few months, we have begun exploring formation of venture teams that can be deployed directly to work in academia and/or research concerns that at the appropriate time become either an integral part of the institution or a consortium to be managed by a major university. Either way, it is becoming the first attempt for accelerating build-up of expertise in academia as venture teams from the beginning rather than hiring individual faculty and hope to mature into world-class operations like the PCL in their lifetime.
Our R&D and commercialization activities on featherweight composites are progressing nicely with the continuing support of the U. S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and long-time sponsors of the PCL consortium. However, a new consortium framework is underway capable of customizing for each member proprietary and IP-related information for commercialization into entrepreneurial ventures. In addition, with the University of Delaware, we are experimenting re-innovation and revitalization of our biodiesel and eco system investments with detailed analysis of the distributed business model and desk-top type of processors. As a group, we continue to sustain our venture capital activities that were started in Greece in 2008, but the economic environment forced us to globalize and transformed our operation closer to a hybrid with private equity and incubation. We continue to build our presence in this domain with full membership participation in European Venture Capital and private equity association (EVCA) and the U. S. National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF). There are several investments and co-investments in the horizon with our partners with what we hope will be a model system in providing acceptable returns to our investors while maintaining our social mission in education. For this, I have to thank our long-time colleague and CFO, Chris Velisaris, who (with some personal sacrifice I should add) is transforming our vision to reality. However, he could not have achieved this without the support of our Seattle and Athens operations as well as the global reach of dedicated people in our network. As appropriately captured in symposia organized during the biennium, this is the time to fondly remember the past, but excitingly explore the future.
James Dimitrios Constantine Seferis
Founder, Chairman of the Board, CEO
Polymeric Composites Laboratory
GloCal/FREEDOM
GloCal Venture Capital
GSM/GIVE – TANEO
B.E.D.R.
March 15th, 2011