FCOI and Startup Companies
Entrepreneurship among faculty and graduate students is an increasing trend, both at Columbia and at many of our peer institutions. Columbia offers a number of programs to support these initiatives, and you may learn about them at http://entrepreneurship.columbia.edu.
The establishment of a faculty or graduate student startup company may raise issues concerning potential conflicts of interest. If conflicts are not appropriately managed or reviewed, they could leave the researcher and the institution vulnerable to charges of bias in research, and may also raise regulatory concerns. For companies based on University intellectual property, the Office of Research Compliance and Training (RCT) works closely with Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV) to ensure that such issues are flagged early and addressed so that the startup can move forward as smoothly as possible.
Resources