UC Davis News: Business

UC Davis West Village a global model for sustainable urban planning

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:46:00 -0700

UC Davis West Village overcame funding constraints, delays, regulatory changes, a housing market collapse and other challenges to become the nation’s largest planned zero-net energy community, according to a new report on sustainable, low-carbon developments.

The pioneering development is one of four case studies featured in the current issue of the journal Planning Theory & Practice.

The report, “Exploring the Challenges of Environmental Planning and Green Design: Cases from Europe and the USA,” highlights UC Davis West Village as a model for new town construction and an example of how progressive planning and creative partnering can lead to new possibilities in energy conservation.

The UC Davis case study was selected from among several international green design projects submitted for inclusion in the report.

“Our inclusion shows that West Village is a global example of an eco-district and of net zero energy development,” said case study co-author Stephen Wheeler, a professor in the UC Davis Landscape Architecture program.

Situated on 130 acres just west of the main campus, UC Davis West Village opened in 2011 to roughly 800 students living in 315 apartments. Eventually, the community will include 343 for-sale homes for faculty and staff and be home to an estimated 4,200 residents. The project also includes a village square; recreational, study, retail and office facilities; and the first community college center located on a University of California campus.

UC Davis West Village is designed to produce as much energy as it consumes in the course of a year. Highly energy-efficient design, photovoltaic solar panels and a planned waste-to-energy biodigester are expected to make the community meet that goal. UC Davis West Village also features bicycle and bus transportation, streets oriented to maximize passive solar design, on-site drainage, and relatively high residential density, all of which embody many goals of sustainable development, the report says.

UC Davis West Village overcame several challenges during its decade-long planning process.

While the university administration recognized a need for affordable, local housing to attract students, faculty and staff, the Davis community had historically resisted new developments, particularly those displacing agricultural lands.

To ease initial community concerns, the university held public workshops and eliminated direct street access from UC Davis West Village to surrounding city neighborhoods. Campus planners also secured and preserved farmland five miles west of campus, between Davis and the neighboring town of Dixon, to mitigate loss of agricultural lands at the new community.

The challenges continued when an unsuccessful lawsuit by a neighborhood group delayed selection of a developer.

Then the housing crash, beginning in 2008, presented new uncertainties. Developer Carmel Partners of San Francisco now plans to construct homes only when pre-sold, which could slow future build-out of the neighborhood.

Regulatory incentives discouraged the large-scale community solar “farm” that planners originally preferred, causing them to erect a system of combined rooftop and parking lot photovoltaic panels instead.

Though initially a challenge, the slow-growth culture of the Davis community became an asset. “The strongly pro-environment views of Davis residents encouraged planners to make the project highly green in order to gain community support,” the report says.

Davis residents had long supported bicycle and pedestrian transportation, energy-efficient development, and compact development. Village Homes, built in the 1970s and located roughly a mile from UC Davis West Village, had set a positive example of ecological suburban development. When zero-net energy emerged as a concept in the design process — well after the original plan was approved in 2003 — the Davis community was ripe for it.

The strongest advantage that UC Davis West Village planners had, the report says, was the university itself. UC Davis owned the land, provided a built-in market for the development, and, as a state agency, was exempt from the need for local planning approval. It was able to establish clear development guidelines and secure $7.5 million in state and federal planning grants to study zero-net energy systems.

The university was also able to draw on its faculty, research centers and community and business partnerships to create UC Davis West Village. Among others, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, Energy Efficiency Center, California Lighting Technology Center, and Western Cooling Efficiency Center all contributed expertise toward helping the project approach zero-net energy.

Yet constructing UC Davis West Village would not have been possible without private investment, the report says. While the university invested roughly $17 million to bring utilities to the border of the site, San Francisco-based developer Carmel Partners agreed to invest about $280 million in the project. The developer also took advantage of tax credits and incentives available only to the private sector, and brought financial analysis and construction experience to the energy efficiency and renewable power investments.

Wheeler hopes that others seeking to replicate the community’s efforts will have fewer hurdles to overcome now that UC Davis West Village has helped paved the way.

“The first examples of anything new will be the most difficult,” said Wheeler. “It may take special leverage to make them happen. But then you can work to try to mainstream it.”

Wheeler's co-author is Robert Segar, assistant vice chancellor for campus planning and community resources at UC Davis.

The other case studies in the paper include a large renovation project in Alingsas, Sweden; a comparison of low-carbon developments in Stockholm, Sweden, and a car-free suburb near Freiburg, Germany; and the carbon-neutral Aldo Leopold Legacy Center in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

UC Davis plans 13 commencements, will graduate first nursing students

Tue, 08 May 2012 11:25:00 -0700

Thousands of students from the University of California, Davis, will participate in 13 commencement ceremonies this spring, including the first class from the new Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Commencement season begins Thursday, May 17, and concludes Sunday, June 17.

Guest speakers will include:

Goodwin Liu, an associate justice of the California Supreme Court, at the commencement for the School of Law on May 17;
Marie V. McDemmond, president emeritus of Norfolk State University in Virginia, at the commencement for the School of Education on June 13;
James C. Davis, president of Chevron Energy Solutions, at the commencement for the Graduate School of Management on June 16; and
Secretary General Chris Buijink of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation for the Netherlands, at the commencements for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences on June 17.

For more about speakers, visit: http://commencement.ucdavis.edu/speakers.html.

Commencement dates, times and locations are as follows:

May 17 — School of Law at 2 p.m. at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts;
May 19 — School of Medicine at 10 a.m. at the Mondavi Center;
June 13 — School of Education at 4 p.m. at the Mondavi Center;
June 14 — Graduate Studies at 4 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 15 — College of Biological Sciences at 9 a.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 15 — School of Veterinary Medicine at 10 a.m. at the Mondavi Center;
June 15 — College of Engineering at 3 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 16 — College of Letters and Science at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 16 — Graduate School of Management at 10 a.m. at the Mondavi Center; and
June 17 — College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion.

In addition, the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing will hold a special celebration of its first graduates at 12:30 p.m. on June 14 at the UC Davis Conference Center, before students participate in the Graduate Studies commencement. About 25 nursing students are candidates for a Master of Science degree.

Established in 2009, the nursing school admitted the first students to its master’s and Doctor of Philosophy programs in fall 2010. The school focuses on preparing graduates as educators, researchers and leaders to promote health, advance quality of care and safety, and shape policy.

The School of Law will award 23 Master of Laws and 202 Juris Doctor degrees at its ceremony, and the School of Medicine will award 108 Doctor of Medicine, four Master of Health Informatics and 24 Master of Public Health degrees.

Estimates of degrees to be awarded at the other ceremonies will be available in June. In 2010-11, UC Davis conferred 8,350 degrees.

Tickets are required for all commencement ceremonies except Graduate Studies, and they are distributed to graduating students by individual schools and colleges.

UC Davis will offer live and on-demand webcasts of each of the commencements at http://commencementvideo.ucdavis.edu/.

Campus tech incubator graduates first tenant

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:16:00 -0700

Hear this: Dysonics, a startup based on audio technology research conducted at the University of California, Davis, is the first company to "graduate" from the UC Davis College of Engineering's fledgling high-tech business incubator, the Engineering Translational Technology Center, also known as ETTC. After less than a year of incubation, Dysonics secured $750,000 in funding from angel investors, enough to set out on its own.

“We are very pleased to see Dysonics, our first ‘graduate,’ exit with a solid financing round under its belt,” said Harris Lewin, vice chancellor of research at UC Davis. “We are proud of the pioneering research conducted by Professor Ralph Algazi and his colleagues in the College of Engineering that made this successful spin-off possible,” he added. “UC Davis has a long track record of translating cutting-edge research into technologies with strong commercial potential, and we expect to see many more such new ventures being formed from the quality research being pursued by our faculty.”

The Engineering Translational Technology Center was established in 2010 to help technology startups, based on intellectual property developed at UC Davis, attract support from external financial investors. The ETTC provides member companies with campus space close to the college’s laboratories as well as support, mentorship and introductions to potential investors and strategic partners.

Members are selected for admission into the business incubator through a review process that includes an assessment of the commercial potential of the faculty research and its readiness for commercial development.

“Within the incubator, professors can stay close to their research and teaching while they develop their ideas, and students can get experience in translational technology research," said Bruce White, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Davis, director of the ETTC and former dean of the College of Engineering. “The center identifies and nurtures promising research in the college, then supports faculty in the early stages of turning their academic research into commercial products.”

Dysonics was founded in 2011 by Algazi of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Robert Dalton Jr., an alumnus with a master's degree in engineering from UC Davis, and Richard Duda, a former research scientist at UC Davis.

The company, which has relocated its headquarters to San Francisco, is developing products for reproducing three-dimensional, immersive sound over headphones. The technology is based on UC Davis patents stemming from years of work conducted in Algazi's laboratory at UC Davis.

“The experience of hearing sound involves more than reproducing some acoustic vibrations at their source," Algazi said. “The shape of the head and ears, motion of the listener, and the acoustics of the room all play a role in the experience.” Algazi's research has explored how to capture and reproduce these nuances, for a more realistic, immersive listening experience.

Dysonics plans to market its technology initially to mobile device users seeking a richer, more engaging listening experience and new ways to interact with their content on their devices. Companies can also use the Dysonics technology for better audio quality for existing media and to develop new audio products and services.

Two other companies are currently being nurtured in the incubator. These are PutahGreen Systems, which makes software to dramatically reduce the energy needed to run networks by consolidating data traffic at less busy times, and Inserogen, which aims to grow vaccines for animal and human diseases in tobacco plants. Several other campus startups are being evaluated for potential admission into the ETTC.

The ETTC is one of several initiatives being undertaken at UC Davis that are designed to foster entrepreneurial activities and translational research on campus and facilitate effective technology transfer and new company creation as a means of achieving the university’s mission of service to people and society. Since 2004, more than 40 new companies have been spun off from UC Davis research. The university held 375 active patents at the end of the 2011 fiscal year.

UC Davis program opens headquarters with two Davis startups

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:44:00 -0700

Davis Roots, a recently formed nonprofit business accelerator bridging the city of Davis and the University of California, Davis, officially opens its headquarters at the historic Hunt-Boyer Mansion today. The enterprise is geared toward supporting startup companies to succeed and stay in the city, with two companies ready to move in.

Davis Roots was founded by Andrew Hargadon, director of the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, and Anthony Costello, a founder of several successful startups and former chair of the city’s Business and Economic Development Commission.

“We have the shared goal of fostering the formation and early development of new high-growth ventures in Davis,” said Hargadon, who holds the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship at the management school. “We hope to eventually bring many more companies into this facility.”

The first two companies are:

Barobo, a UC Davis spin-off that is building programmable robotics for the education and consumer markets; Barobo robots are simple enough to enable robotics to be taught to elementary school children.
Nuritas, launched by UC Davis post-doctoral student Nora Khaldi, who has developed a proprietary bioinformatics tool for discovering ”nutriceuticals,” or food components that affect health.

The founders of both companies are recent graduates of the Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's Entrepreneurship Academy programs.

“Davis Roots is an example of the kind of partnership both parties need – the city so it can tap more directly into the research and innovation so prevalent on our campus, and the university so our students and faculty have another vehicle to help cultivate their commercial ideas and vision,” said Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.

“We each know how important it is to have an environment that supports and nurtures innovation so we can improve the lives of our residents and create new jobs and commercial ventures and partnerships,” she said.

The new headquarters has room for four to six more companies to move in during the next few months, and eventually, eight to 10 tenants in total. Davis Roots is leasing the space from the city.

“Davis Roots represents an exciting collaboration between the City of Davis and the entrepreneurial community,” said Rochelle Swanson, Davis mayor pro tem. “This is just the start of a new type of economic development for our city, focusing on home-grown startups and university spin-offs. The emphasis will be on innovation and creativity and the creation of new businesses and jobs.”

Hargadon added: “This partnership allows Davis Roots participants access to UC Davis’ entrepreneurship curriculum and to a broad network of mentors and potential investors, as well as entrepreneurs and emerging technologies from within UC Davis.”

Emerging ventures apply for and are selected first into the Davis Roots mentoring program, where they gain access to a network of experienced entrepreneurs, investors, patent and corporate lawyers and are supported in preparing a more detailed nine-month launch strategy, which includes a business plan, fundraising goals and project milestones.

Upon acceptance, new ventures are given office space within Davis Roots. Those that successfully grow and raise external funds receive assistance, as well, finding Davis office space to continue their growth in town. Those that are unsuccessful at meeting milestones or raising funds relinquish their Davis Roots space to new ventures.

Davis Roots is currently fundraising to sustain and grow its operations.

“The most important part was getting the space, and now—with that space—we are turning to the fundraising,” Hargadon said. He added that Davis Roots will take a small equity investment in each accepted venture. In this way, those ventures that ultimately succeed return value to the nonprofit, to support future ventures and the City of Davis.

Katehi has called for increased collaboration between the UC Davis campus and the region to bring new ideas to the marketplace, generate jobs and boost the economy. Recent initiatives include the creation of new “innovation hubs” on campus, aimed at better fostering collaboration among related research units, enhancing interaction with the private sector and accelerating the transfer of UC Davis inventions from the lab to the marketplace. Other examples are the College of Engineering Technology Transfer Center, where faculty establish startup companies in an on-campus incubator; the decision to bring energy-related research units together in a single location at UC Davis West Village, the nation’s largest planned zero net energy community; and the formation of a UC Davis Corporate Relations office to enhance communications among UC Davis and corporate partners.

More about the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship: http://gsm.ucdavis.edu/department/child-family-institute-innovation-and-entrepreneurship

More about the UC Davis Graduate School of Management: http://gsm.ucdavis.edu/about-us

America's "war on immigrants" focus of Sheffrin lecture

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:23:00 -0700

Wednesday, May 16 — Doug Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, will deliver the 2012 Sheffrin Lecture in Public Policy at 5 p.m. in the UC Davis Buehler Alumni and Visitor’s Center, AGR Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Massey’s research points to paradoxical origins of what he terms the United States’ “war on immigration.” While immigration reforms initiated in the 1960s are widely thought to have opened the door to mass immigration from Asia and Latin American by eliminating past discriminatory policies, Latin Americans faced more restrictions, not fewer, according to Massey. The boom in Latin American migration, he asserts, occurred in spite of changes in U.S. immigration laws. Massey will explain how Latinos in the U.S., in just 40 years, grew from 9.6 million people and 5 percent of the population to 51 million people representing 16 percent of the population.

Massey is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. His books include “American Apartheid” (1993), which won the Distinguished Publication Award of the American Sociological Association, as well as “Miracles on the Border” (1995) and “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors” (2002). He also authored “Brokered Boundaries: Constructing Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times” (2010). The Sheffrin lectures in public policy are made possible by a gift from Steven M. and Anjali Y. Sheffrin. Steven M. Sheffrin is professor of economics and the director of the Murphy Institute at Tulane University and was dean of the Division of Social Sciences at UC Davis from 1998 to 2008. He is a professor emeritus of economics at UC Davis.

Expert sources on Calif. governor’s new green-building order

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:00:00 -0700

The following UC Davis experts are available to talk about the bold targets outlined in the governor’s green building order issued April 25. The executive order (B-18-12) aims to ensure that state facilities waste less energy on lighting, water, air-conditioning and heating.

UC Davis leadership in California energy savings

Nicole Woolsey Biggart, director of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, holder of the Chevron Chair in Energy Efficiency, and professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, is an expert in organizational theory and management of innovation, and can discuss the barriers to implementation of energy efficient technologies in the commercial building industry. The Energy Efficiency Center works with inventors, utilities and investors to propel promising energy efficiency solutions to the market, with a focus on lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and water use and transport. Contact: Nicole Woolsey Biggart, Energy Efficiency Center, (530) 304-5052, nwbiggart@ucdavis.edu.

How to slash lighting energy use

When the California Public Utilities Commission called for a 60 to 80 percent statewide reduction in electrical lighting consumption by 2020, UC Davis was the first large institution in the state to act. Guided by UC Davis’ California Lighting Technology Center, campus administrators began a Smart Lighting Initiative to reduce the campus's electricity use for all lighting by 60 percent by the end of 2015. Already, some campus facilities have achieved greater than 70 percent savings with the latest technologies. Contact: Michael Siminovitch, CLTC, (530) 747-3835, mjsiminovitch@ucdavis.edu. Also reach Siminovitch through Kelly Cunningham, CLTC outreach director, (530) 747-3824, kcunning@ucdavis.edu.

How California purchasing power can drive change

“The governor’s new executive order provides an opportunity for the state to further demonstrate leadership by using its purchasing power to drive innovation and adoption of efficiency technologies and strategies,” said Anthony Eggert, executive director of the new UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy. Before Eggert came to UC Davis in January, he advised Gov. Brown on clean energy and efficiency policy. Contact: Anthony Eggert, UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy, (530) 752-1083, areggert@ucdavis.edu. (Traveling in China until April 29; use e-mail, expect delay.)

Curbing lighting’s big energy appetite

Lighting accounts for nearly 30 percent of California's electricity use. Due to continued use of inefficient lighting, much of this energy is wasted. The California Public Utilities Commission has called for a 60 to 80 percent statewide reduction in electrical lighting consumption by 2020. The California Lighting Technology Center at UC Davis works closely with state agencies, manufacturing partners, and the research community to add new requirements in the pending state building code. “Upgrades for state facilities represent a significant opportunity to achieve our energy efficiency goals, provide green jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide,” said Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center and holder of the UC Davis Rosenfeld Chair in Energy Efficiency. Contact: Michael Siminovitch, CLTC, (530) 747-3835, mjsiminovitch@ucdavis.edu. Also reach Siminovitch through Kelly Cunningham, CLTC outreach director, (530) 747-3824, kcunning@ucdavis.edu.

Making rooms comfortable with less energy

Energy-efficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning/cooling (HVAC) is the mission of UC Davis’ Western Cooling Efficiency Center. The center is supported by the California Energy Commission, as well as industry affiliates including utilities, manufacturers and contractors. Its research has changed California Title 24 policy to make rooftop packaged cooling units more efficient. The center has also installed and evaluated energy-saving strategies for the CEC’s Public Interest Energy Research program, such as “demand control” kitchen ventilation. Western Cooling Efficiency Center director Mark Modera developed Aeroseal, for sealing HVAC ducts in homes, recently named the “best home improvement” product by This Old House Magazine and currently under study in a Stockton home. Modera holds the UC Davis Sempra Energy Chair in Energy Efficiency. Contact: Mark Modera, Western Cooling Efficiency Center, (530) 754-7671, mpmodera@ucdavis.edu.

Less energy to use and move water

Almost 20 percent of electricity used in California is spent moving, using and treating water. Frank Loge, director of the UC Davis Center for Water-Energy Efficiency said, "Public policy and business practice have treated water and energy as separate resources, but they are inexorably linked.” The center’s researchers have worked with the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to commercialize water- and energy-conservation technologies, such as a system to convert wastewater into biodegradable plastic (being developed by Micromidas in West Sacramento). Center researchers have also begun work on a statewide strategic plan for water-energy conservation. Loge is a professor of civil and environmental engineering. Contact: Frank Loge, Center for Water-Energy Efficiency, (530) 754-2297, fjloge@ucdavis.edu.http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10221&preview=yes

$25 million grant aims to boost food security in developing world

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:10:00 -0700

A UC Davis agricultural economist will direct a $25 million federal program aimed at creating financial systems that can boost agricultural productivity and food security in developing countries.

The five-year project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, will finance research projects that design and test financial technologies, such as linked credit and insurance contracts, that can reduce the vulnerability of poor households to adverse events, making it easier for them to invest in new agricultural technologies and break the cycle of poverty.

“Many developing country farmers are mired in low levels of agricultural productivity, and new seeds and markets by themselves can go only so far in solving the problem,” said Michael Carter, a professor of agricultural and resource economics and director of the newly funded project at UC Davis. The project is called the BASIS Assets and Market Access Collaborative Research Support Program.

“Closing that productivity gap now requires that we address financial, risk-management and asset constraints that are hindering poor, rural households,” Carter said. “In a world in which more than one billion people suffer from chronic hunger, this is one research effort in which failure is not an option.”

An authority on development economics and poverty dynamics, Carter has focused his recent research on agricultural risk management and the economics of sustainable food security.

The newly funded UC Davis-based program is designed to work with other research partners worldwide. It will soon put out a first call for research proposals.

The program will cooperate with the I-4 Index Insurance Innovation Initiative, also directed by Carter and housed at UC Davis. The initiative has developed an innovative livestock insurance program intended to prevent rural livestock producers in arid east Africa from falling into indigence and food-aid dependence

Index-based insurance protects against risks shared by an entire community. In this case, the index, or statistical measure of risk, is the availability of forage based on satellite imagery. When the forage index predicts livestock mortality in excess of 15 percent, an insurance payment is triggered to all clients within the defined geographic area.

Researcher's waste-to-energy technology moves from the lab to the marketplace

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:00:00 -0700

Technology invented by a University of California, Davis, researcher that converts solid waste into renewable energy is debuting today as the first commercially available, high-solid anaerobic digestion system in the United States.

Ruihong Zhang, a UC Davis professor of biological and agricultural engineering, has been working on her anaerobic digester technology for the past decade, bringing it from the laboratory to the pilot stage in 2006. When Clean World Partners, a Sacramento-based startup that licensed the technology from UC Davis, unveils the biodigester today at a Sacramento, Calif., packaging company, it will mark the first time her research has reached the market.

“I applaud Professor Zhang for this tremendous accomplishment," said UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. "Scientists like Professor Zhang are helping UC Davis address the most pressing global problems of our time. Her work brings us a giant step closer to the sustainable future we all hope for.”

The anaerobic digestion system is located at American River Packaging. It will convert 7.5 tons per day of food waste from regional food producers, including Campbell’s Soup Company, and a half ton each day of unrecyclable corrugated material from ARP into natural gas. The system will generate roughly 1,300 kWh of renewable energy per day, meeting about 37 percent of ARP’s electricity needs and preventing an estimated 2,900 tons of waste from entering landfills each year. The project has created about 22 jobs.

“This kind of project and technology is actually changing how societies treat and view waste as a resource, which, overall, leads to a better world, a cleaner environment and new jobs,” said Zhang.

Anaerobic digestion relies on bacteria to break down biodegradable waste material in the absence of oxygen. Zhang’s system turns that waste into such valuable byproducts as renewable energy, compost, water, and natural fertilizer. While anaerobic digestion is not a new technology in itself, operational and material-handling limitations had prevented its commercial adoption.

Unlike most other digesters that primarily treat liquid waste, such as manure from dairy farms and municipal wastewater, Zhang’s high-rate digester technology can convert both liquid and solid waste, including food waste, yard waste, plant residues, paper and cardboard.

Zhang also sought to overcome two key barriers to the widespread use of anaerobic digesters: time and money. The new technology makes such waste conversion systems replicable, with many components prefabricated, reducing the time it takes to build them. For example, the Clean World Partners system at ARP went from bare ground to energy production within 90 days and cost about $2 million to $3 million.

Zhang’s system also turns waste into energy in half the time of other digesters and produces more gases that can be turned into clean energy. These efficiency improvements are expected to drive down cost and maximize the amount of energy produced and the volume of waste diverted from the landfill.

Clean World Partners formed in 2009 to commercialize Zhang’s anaerobic digestion technology and bring it to a wider market. The company plans to open a second waste conversion facility using Zhang’s technology at Sacramento County’s south area transfer station in June.

“Ruihong’s contributions continue to be critical to our success as a key adviser,” said Clean World Partners CEO Michele Wong, a UC Davis alumna. “We are proud to work with UC Davis and Ruihong to commercialize these technologies.”

The anaerobic digestion facility was first developed and tested as a pilot plant at UC Davis. The university is currently working with Clean World Partners to bring a full-scale biodigester to campus. Though still in the planning stages, that biodigester is expected to help UC Davis West Village, the nation’s largest planned zero-net-energy community achieve its goal of generating as much power as it consumes in the course of a year.

Major public funding for Zhang’s biodigester research came from the Department of Energy’s Community Renewable Energy Development project, the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research program, and CalRecycle.

UC Davis experts on accounting and tax issues

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:45:00 -0700

The following University of California, Davis, faculty are available to comment on accounting and tax issues.

Evaluation of accounting methods, financial information and disclosures: Paul A. Griffin, professor of management in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, is a leading international authority in accounting and financial information and disclosures. He has advised companies and governments on accounting and tax issues for the past 20 years. He has also published more than 50 articles in leading accounting and finance journals, five research monographs for the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and two casebooks on U.S. corporate financial reporting. His current research projects examine relations between stock prices and greenhouse gas emissions, among other topics. He serves as co-editor of Accounting Horizons. Contact: Paul A. Griffin, Graduate School of Management, (530) 752-7372, pagriffin@ucdavis.edu.

Financial reporting and valuation: UC Davis associate professor of management Michelle Yetman researches financial reporting quality, governance and taxation with a special interest in international and nonprofit settings. Her research has been published in the Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, National Tax Journal, Management Science, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy. She teaches the core MBA course in financial accounting, as well as an accounting for non-financial managers course in the UC Davis Wine Executive Program. She is a certified public accountant in Texas. Contact: Michelle Yetman, Graduate School of Management, (530) 754-7808, mhyetman@ucdavis.edu.

Response of nonprofit organizations to economic incentives: Robert Yetman, associate professor of management, is an expert on corporate tax, financial accounting, income tax, U.S. and international financial accounting, and nonprofit accounting and tax issues. His research concentrates on the effect of taxes on business decisions and the response of nonprofit organizations to economic incentives. Yetman recently examined why some tax-exempt charities choose to be taxed on their unrelated business income, and how such behavior is not always driven by the desire to maximize profits. He has lectured on cost accounting at executive education programs for wine industry professionals. Contact: Robert Yetman, Graduate School of Management, (530) 752-3571, rjyetman@ucdavis.edu.

Financial and tax accounting, education of CPAs: Will Snyder is the executive director of the Master of Professional Accountancy program, which will welcome its first class at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management in fall 2012. UC Davis will become the first University of California school to offer a master’s degree in professional accountancy — a response to major changes in educational requirements and the resulting need for improved training of certified public accountants in California. Snyder served as a full-time member of the Charles W. Lamden School of Accountancy at San Diego State University for the past 24 years. Prior to that, he was a partner with Deloitte Haskins and Sells, an international professional services firm. He was also a professor at the University of Southern California, his alma mater, from 1992 to 1994. http://gsm.ucdavis.edu/faculty/will-snyder Contact: Will Snyder, Graduate School of Management, (530) 752-7403, wsnyder@ucdavis.edu.

Tax law: Dennis J. Ventry is a professor at UC Davis School of Law. He is a frequent contributor to Tax Notes, the leading publisher of tax policy and tax information, and he has written extensively about the effects of taxation on the U.S. economy. His articles include: “The Accidental Deduction: A History and Critique of the Tax Subsidy for Mortgage Interest,” (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1498784) in Law and Contemporary Problems, 2010, and “Protecting Abusive Tax Avoidance,” in Tax Notes in 2008. http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Ventry/index.aspx. Contact: Dennis J. Ventry, School of Law, (530) 752-4566, djventry@ucdavis.edu.

Launching multiple products to attract both consumers and application developers key to tech firm success, UC Davis study says

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

High-tech firms should market multiple product versions at the same time, such as Apple did with the iPhone and iPod Touch, both to attract early adopters and build a network of individuals and companies that develop applications, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis.

Professor Hemant Bhargava of the Graduate School of Management and co-authors Byung Cho Kim from Sogang University and Daewon Sun from the University of Notre Dame studied 20 years of products such as the Xbox, e-readers and the iPhone devices that operate in two-sided markets. One side of the market is the consumer side, where consumers can have an iPhone on which to communicate or a video game console on which to play a game. And the other side of the market is where developers who make games and other applications to run on those devices reach potential buyers.

“Often, entrepreneurs and firms are unable to successfully commercialize their innovation despite having technologically sophisticated products,” Bhargava said in advance of the study’s publication in the journal Production and Operations Management.

To be successful, he said, companies must overcome many obstacles, including:

Chicken and egg problem — For example, convincing a sufficient number of merchants to adopt a new payment technology, before customer demand warrants the technology.
Uncertainty in product design and compatibility — For example, should all electric cars use the same battery, one that could be charged at every battery station, or will the market be fragmented among many technologies?
Convincing consumers to pay high up-front costs — In return for small and uncertain benefits delivered over time (such as residential solar power).
Growth-versus-profitability dilemma — Should a vendor of an e-book technology sacrifice margin and profits in return for a high market share in order to entice publishers toward its technology?

Bhargava and his co-authors found that start-ups often roll out minimal product lines during initial launches to avoid design complexity and higher fixed costs, then wait for substantial developer participation before expanding the product lines. The research shows, however, that early expansion is generally better than deferred expansion, except when developer participation is extremely uncertain.

While the common belief is that firms can either have growth or achieve profits in the early launch of a product, “our research is founded on the proposition that growth and profitability need not necessarily operate in conflict,” Bhargava said.

“Firms should expand the product line early in order to increase the installed base and induce a higher level of developer participation,” he said.

The researchers build on existing theory that launching two versions of a product — basic and premium — could resolve the growth-versus-profitability conflict, especially when the value of the new product increases with the number of people using it. The premium version would provide the needed higher profit margin, while the low-priced or free basic version would deliver the larger overall market share that would attract outside application developers.

A case in point is Apple's entry in 2007 into the mobile phone and smartphone market, an industry filled with powerful incumbents, Bhargava said. Soon after launching the relatively expensive iPhone at the end of June 2007, Apple added the much cheaper iPod Touch (iPhone minus the phone feature).

“With this second product, Apple quickly was able to increase the number of devices running iPhone applications, which made the platform very attractive to potential application developers,” he said.

For a startup that wants to expand an Internet-based information technology that relies on consumers and third-party developers, the new study suggests these important practical guidelines:

Increase the awareness of the product to make customers purchase it in the early stages.
Provide incentives or convenient development tools to application developers to enable fast growth of applications.

The paper is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1692252 (click on one-link download).

About the UC Davis Graduate School of Management

Dedicated to preparing innovative leaders for global impact, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management is distinguished by world-renowned faculty members, entrepreneurial students, a powerful alumni network and locations in Northern California’s economic and innovation hubs. Ranked among the nation’s best for 16 consecutive years, UC Davis is the fastest-rising U.S. business school, moving up to the top 6 percent of AACSB-accredited schools in U.S. News & World Report’s latest survey. The school has 110 full-time MBA students at the UC Davis campus and more than 450 Working Professional MBA students in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. A Masters in Professional Accountancy program launches this fall. http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu

Venture capital managers affect firms’ success, UC Davis study finds

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Corporate venture capital investment strategies, goals and outcomes vary greatly depending on the background of the investment manager, a new University of California, Davis, study shows.

In an analysis of the corporate venture capital units of 93 U.S.-based information technology firms, UC Davis researchers found that if managers had private venture capital backgrounds, they tended to invest in start-ups with high-growth prospects — and had less regard for the start-ups’ technological or strategic “fit” with the corporate parent.

On the other hand, if managers came from inside the corporate parent, or had a strong technical background themselves, they tended to invest in start-ups that could fill a strategic need of the larger corporation.

The finding affirms that the experiences of the people who work for an organization shape its functions in important ways — and that this is true not just at the top.

“It is widely understood that the leaders of corporations have strong effects on the organizations, but we show that individuals at lower levels can also affect the way organizational practices are conducted,” said Gina Dokko, an assistant professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and co-author of the study.

The new paper, “Venturing into New Territory: Career Experiences of Corporate Venture Capital Managers and Practice Variation,” is scheduled to be published in the June 2012 issue of Academy of Management Journal. It is co-authored by Vibha Gaba, an assistant professor at INSEAD, an international business school.

Starting in the 1990s, many large U.S. companies started setting up in-house investment units. Doing so enabled corporations to gain a stake in promising start-ups, which have the potential not only to make money but also to give the larger corporation access to important new technologies, patents and intellectual property.

By 2001, more than 300 U.S. firms had established corporate venture capital units. The corporate share of venture capital rose from 2 percent in 1994 to 17 percent at its peak in 2000. In the years 2002-2006, the share leveled off at 6 to 8 percent.

But the way venture capital units function varies widely, Dokko and Gaba found.

“What we saw is that corporate venture capital managers with an independent venture capital background are more oriented toward financial goals,” Dokko said. “We also found that they are more likely to make investments in earlier stage start-ups. They tend to be less focused about the industries they invest in. They're just looking for something that appears very promising.”

Those with technology backgrounds, however, showed a different investment pattern.

“Managers who came to the job with technology backgrounds or from within the corporation tended to invest in a narrower range of start-ups, typically with a technological orientation that could help the larger firm,” the researchers wrote.

Using corporate websites, LinkedIn, and other sources, the researchers determined the career backgrounds of the 311 corporate venture capital/investment managers at the 93 U.S.-based information technology firms they studied — whether they had worked for independent venture capital firms, or had been hired from within the corporation or had technical backgrounds.

Using venture capital databases, the researchers then determined the approach of the units to the timing and industry focus of investment, as well as their orientation toward financial or strategic goals. Through statistical analyses, the researchers were able to determine how the backgrounds of the managers affected the approaches and goals of the venture capital units.

An abstract of the paper can be found at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1969861 (select one-click download box, and download with id or download anonymously).

About the UC Davis Graduate School of Management

The UC Davis Graduate School of Management is consistently ranked among the premier business schools in the United States and internationally. The school has nearly 600 MBA students enrolled in Daytime MBA and Working Professional MBA programs on the UC Davis campus, in Sacramento and in the San Francisco Bay Area. U.S. News & World Report ranks UC Davis among the top 6 percent of MBA programs in the nation. The Economist ranks the school’s faculty quality No. 6 in the world.

Human Rights Watch director to speak March 5

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

March 5, Monday — The inaugural UC Davis Provost’s Lecture in Human Rights features Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Walter A. Buehler Alumni and Visitor’s Center, AGR Room. Whitson’s talk “At last, an Arab Spring: Black Swans of the Middle East; Human Rights Watch Reports from the Ground,” will address the role of the international community in Arab uprisings and challenges ahead.

The lecture opens UC Davis’ celebration of Human Rights and Humanities Week March 5-9. More information: http://humanrightsinitiative.ucdavis.edu/human-rights-and-the-humanities-week-march-5-9-2012/.

Whitson is an expert on Middle East and North Africa issues, having led landmark investigations of human rights conditions in Libya and Saudi Arabia since joining Human Rights Watch in 2004. She graduated from UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School. Whitson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Whitson’s full bio: http://www.hrw.org/en/bios/sarah-leah-whitson.

The Provost’s Lecture in Human Rights demonstrates UC Davis’ commitment to human rights, said Ralph J. Hexter, UC Davis provost and executive vice chancellor and a longtime advocate of human rights on college campuses.

"A commitment to human rights has always been central to UC Davis — to what we believe as an institution, and to our mission of public service," said Hexter. "In recent years, the subject of human rights has not only gained a new prominence, and urgency, around the globe, but also received a growing amount of scholarly attention — a key component in the advancement of this cause. I am personally delighted to contribute to our campus’ work in this crucial area through the establishment, this year, of the Provost’s Lecture in Human Rights."