What does this award recognize?
This award recognizes extraordinary faculty early in their career for their innovative approaches to major scientific and technical challenges in energy and materials.

What do the awardees receive?
Awardees receive funding toward a one-year exploratory project that has potentially disruptive impact or could provoke a new field of study or technology development. Funding will cover salaries and supplies for one year. In addition to research funding, the MDV investment team is available to offer perspective and guidance on any commercial interests.

Who is eligible?
Faculty from UC Berkeley and Stanford University are nominated for this award by the MDV Innovators Award Advisors. Nominees are early in their career or are making a career transition, are taking revolutionary and potentially high-impact directions with their research program, and may have interest in seeing their future discoveries commercialized.

What obligations do the awardees have?
The Award funding is a gift. Recipients and recipient institutions have no contractual obligations to MDV. The MDV investment team welcomes opportunities throughout the funding year to get to know the Awardees and their lab members. At the end of the funding year, the Awardee will present a seminar at the university.

Who are the members of the MDV Innovator Award Advisory Board?
Five faculty from Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley advise MDV on the MDV Innovators Award. MDV Advisors are Professors Paul Alivisatos, Jay Keasling, and Paul Wright from UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley Labs; and Professors Jeff Koseff and Richard Zare from Stanford University.

What is the MDV Innovators Advisor's role?
The MDV Advisors nominate potential awardees, invite project proposals from them, evaluate their proposals, and advise MDV on selecting Awardees.

When are awards made?
The inauguaral MDV Innovators Awards were announced in November 2007.

Which awards and projects will MDV consider a success?
MDV aims to develop rich relationships with faculty thought leaders and innovators at Stanford and UC Berkeley who are doing research related to energy and materials. From MDV's perspective, successful Awards are those that lead to strong relationships with the Awardees. Successful projects may lead the Awardee to receive major government grants in a new area of research.

Press Contact:  Pamela Mahoney or KT Moortgat; Mohr, Davidow Ventures;
650-854-7236