UCSF Innovation Ventures

Funds UCSF Innovation Ventures, moving University of California San Francisco inventions into therapies, devices, and digital health commercialization.

UCSF Innovation Ventures is the technology transfer and innovation office of the University of California, San Francisco. It is an internal UCSF funder built to move discoveries from the lab into therapies, devices, and digital health products, rather than an external grant program.

Its core funding routes are the Catalyst Awards and the InVent Fund. Catalyst offers up to $75,000 on an annual cycle for UCSF investigators working in therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, digital health, and biotools, while the InVent Fund is milestone-based at $100,000 to $500,000 and was not accepting applications as of May 2026. Eligibility is narrow: the funding is reserved for UCSF principal investigators and affiliated faculty.

The office pairs capital with commercialization support, industry mentorship, and executive-in-residence guidance, and Catalyst is backed by more than 80 active industry advisors. The program’s track record is unusually strong for a university translational fund, with 313 awards and $13 million deployed since 2010, plus $751 million in follow-on funding generated for awardees.