Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute is Oregon’s original “signature research center”, launched in late 2003 and incorporated as a 501c3 in early 2005. Our mission is innovation-based economic opportunity creation for Oregon via acceleration and commercialization of research. We are a lean organization with 2 employees and 5 contractors including a commercialization manager, three entrepreneurs in residence, and a market research and strategy specialist. ONAMI has received $39M in funding over the FY06-FY17 period, and has consistently met or exceeded quantitative performance goals, which today are leveraged funding (over $350M), employment (over 250 in Oregon) and revenue (~$8M/yr) for companies (pre-revenue when we started with them) across our gap fund company portfolio. ONAMI was honored in 2012 by the State Science and Technology Institute’s “Excellence in TBED” award for Commercialization research and has been frequently showcased (by NSF, NGA, etc.) as an example of how to combine support for thematic research and early stage funding. ONAMI President Skip Rung was appointed to the National Science Foundation SBIR/STTR AdCom the same year. In the FY18-19 biennium beginning July 1, 2017, ONAMI will be “going upstream” and using everything we have learned to start or help start science-based companies based on the work of university and independent inventors and prepare them for market success, non-dilutive (e.g. SBIR/STTR) funding, management team formation, and commercial (angel/venture) financing. We have done all of these things for many of our portfolio companies.
