the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) office of commercialization and entrepreneurships deeptech ventures was nominated as one of five finalists in the outstanding contributions to venture creation award category during the 2021 global consortium of entrepreneurship centers (gcec) conference gcec is the premier academic organization that addresses emerging topics of importance to the nations university-based entrepreneurship programs it has become the vehicle by which top established entrepreneurship programs as well as emerging programs can work together to share best practices develop programs and initiatives and collaborate and help each other in advancing strengthening and celebrating the role of universities in teaching the entrepreneurs of tomorrow their awards annually showcase and celebrate university entrepreneurship in 10 categoriesto be recognized by this consortium not only brings prestige and recognition to our institution but allows other peer institutions to recognize our accomplishments said dr saurabh biswas executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship at tees and associate professor of practice in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university in a sea of academic entrepreneurship globally a recognition of this level is rewarding and meaningfulthe gcec awards showcase and celebrate the very best of university entrepreneurship globally to be considered there is a rigorous application process submitted to the consortium from universities that are fostering a culture of innovation in their respective ecosystems the submissions are reviewed by the awards review committeethe outstanding contributions to venture creation award that the tees office of commercialization and entrepreneurship was nominated for honors a center that creatively supports the process of launching and accelerating university-affiliated startups through competitions incubators accelerators and other programs selection criteria includes the strength of program content specific outcomes of the program (including diversity of participants) growth of the program over time and level of community engagementtheir submission was for deeptech ventures which has played a critical role in advancing deeptech innovations (early-stage companies applying deep technologies with an available prototype) from lab to marketplace with significant local national and global impactwe are very proud to be selected among the top global entrepreneurship/venture creation programs with this recognition said biswas the commercialization and entrepreneurship team is responsible for managing intellectual property new venture creation and commercialization of ideas emerging from one of the largest engineering research enterprises in the nation and serves more than 700 faculty members and 20 000 students in every area of engineering with our focus on launching deeptech startups and supporting industry partners in the commercialization process we are entering our next phase of growth at tees we are committed to continue working closely with our students researchers and ecosystem partners to accelerate the creation of more transformational startups"