Biomedical professor at intersection of teaching and entrepreneurship
Next week’s University of Colorado Showcase is bringing together all that is great about entrepreneurship and innovation across our four campuses.
Our community is made of diverse industries and perspectives – in this case, that of a biomedical professor at CU Boulder who is also the CEO of Aspero Medical.
Mark Rentschler is a tenured professor of mechanical engineering with roles in biomedical engineering, robotics at CU Boulder and surgery at CU Anschutz. He leads the Advance Medical Technologies Laboratory, innovating “smart” medical devices and surgical robotics with support from NSF, NIH and industry partners.
His lab focuses on advancing health care technologies toward a futuristic operating room. As the founding CEO of Aspero Medical, a CU spin-out, Rentschler drives innovation in gastroenterology devices. The company’s FDA-cleared device is on the market, with a promising pipeline for future commercialization.
Here’s a Q&A with Rentschler:
You are interestingly both a professor and a CEO. Which came first, professorial life or private sector life? And how did you move into the other?
It was a bit of both, almost in parallel. Before I started at CU, I spent two years as the first employee in a startup that spun out of a university based on my Ph.D. research. Here is where I was likely first bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. Coming to CU then as a professor, I anticipated spinning technology out at some point, but didn’t anticipate leading the company.
As a deep tech founder, much of the early time at the company was heavy in technical development, so it’s been a reasonably smooth transition to picking up the additional skills needed to lead a small spin-out company.
How has being part of CU Boulder affected your innovations and entrepreneurship?
CU has been extremely supportive of my entrepreneurial pursuits. While there are roadmaps, rarely is there a perfect blueprint for how to translate technology out of a university. CU has been flexible and creative in helping me and my co-founder establish a startup and spin the tech out of the university.
With your unique perspective, how do you see the CU campuses helping or encouraging faculty in their innovation and entrepreneurship journeys?
What I see as a major strength is that CU doesn’t see one size fits all. There is creativity and willingness to try different approaches to supporting faculty and entrepreneurs in an effort to move tech along in an efficient manner. The willingness to try and fail, with emphasis on failing early, is something I’ve observed as a hallmark of success.
CU Showcase is Oct. 4
Meet Rentschler and other members of the CU ecosystem at next week’s CU Showcase, which brings together ventures spanning quantum tech, AI, health care, the arts and more, all tackling big challenges for our state and world. This gathering celebrates their hard work and aims to spark serendipitous connections and creative collaborations that will shape the future of Colorado and our university system.
We hope to see you there: You are the showcase!
Event Details
- When: 1-6 p.m. Oct. 4
- Where: CU Anschutz Medical Campus
- Register HERE
- Learn more about the initiative HERE
- By Megan Barbour, I&E Initiative Adviser