East Lansing startup looks to ease academic publishing woes Agency works with educators on projects

MIKE SCOTT

Changes in the K-12 academic publishing market are making it harder for university professors and researchers to get their processes, materials and intellectual property published, according to Brad Wilson and Gary Abud Jr.

e founders of East Lansing-based Cogrounded, an agency serving educational experts and researchers, are sure they can help educators and institutions navigate the K-12 publishing industry.

e academic technology specialist and teacher have experience commercializing their own K-12 programs and consulting for national education groups. Abud calls the Cogrounded concept “a fresh approach to educational publishing.”

“We will work with (prospective) authors wherever they are in the lifecycle of their project,” Abud said. “We’re more than an agency (for authors), but we play the role of an agent as well.”

Leveraging experience

Cogrounded CEO Wilson is a former Apple Distinguished Educator for Jackson Public Schools. He developed a popular app for writing literacy while working in the K-12 space.

Abud is Cogrounded’s director of training and partnerships and a former Michigan Teacher of the Year honoree from Grosse Pointe North High School. He was a science teacher who expanded his expertise and consulting work to create STEM and special education curriculum programs.

Over the years, they worked with thousands of educators from hundreds of schools around the U.S., Abud said.

As a result, Michigan State University recruited Wilson and Abud to solve a problem — help its educators commercialize curriculum pro- grams and content. is has become more di cult with educational publishers seeking to increase revenues by, in part, restricting authorships to their own employees, allowing publishers to control content and reaping 100 percent of royalties. at trend leaves many K-12 authors, researchers and universities without publishing options, despite grant support and a wealth of traditional higher education resources.

“Cogrounded is taking a unique approach to evidence-based curriculum commercialization by enabling universities to more fully realize the potential of their educational content. By working directly with MSU researchers, Brad and Gary can leverage their experiences and knowledge base to bring new ideas to the classroom,” said Brad Fingland, director of Physical Science at Spartan Innovations.

Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Counseling Connie Sung, Ph.D., found publishing opportunities with the company’s help.

“Cogrounded gave us expert strategy and timely execution to land and expand in our K-12 market niche,” Sung said.

Cogrounded supports authors in development and publishing, strategic marketing, sales and distribution and training. ese skills are critical to university faculty members who often lack business experience, said Wilson, a Livonia resident.

“Universities and their (educators) often don’t have a good system for creating and commercializing these materials, such as math curriculum,” Wilson said. “Universities are not set up to be commercial entities. is is traditionally a large revenue generator for universities like Michigan State.”

A proven model

Cogrounded is headquartered in the Spartan Innovations incubator, part of the MSU Innovation Center. Wilson and Abud hired three team members to support the business with the hope of doubling its sta by the end of this year.

Revenue comes from fees for helping authors and universities through the publishing process and from royalty or revenue-sharing agreements for licensed products and services provided to the K-12 sector.

One example of this royalty model is when Cogrounded partners with a client to prepare research-only intellectual property commercial sales. “ en, we provide managed-training services to K-12 schools that purchase the program under a license agreement,” Wilson said. is includes corporate training and teacher coaching.

“ e successful incubation through Spartan Innovations in 2022 has resulted in both viability and growth,” Wilson said. “Clients are asking for more services.”

He declined to reveal revenue gures but is con dent Cogrounded will achieve “signi cant” growth in 2023.

A politicized marketplace

Abud and Wilson agreed that their work is more important today because of added tension in the K-12 sector caused by technology disruption, the COVID pandemic, parental and community opinions and the variable delivery of education from in-person to hybrid to online.

“If you adopt a math program at a school now, chances are your school and teachers will be under the microscope (from the public) more than ever before,” Wilson said. He added that student achievement has lagged, and parental expectations have increased.

Although Wilson and Abud have speci c areas of expertise in math, science and special education spaces, they said they work with clients in any educational eld.

“We’re here to help educators and researchers connect with their audience,” Abud said.

From Page 9

“I have seen some drugs get all the way through the process,” said Brinza, who is a lawyer by trade but has spent much of his career as a consultant in health care. “I know this sounds corny; we want to help people. is type of research requires a lot of shots on goal, but this technology is unique and worth the time and e ort.” e proteasome accelerator

Brinza spent seven years as assistant general counsel for Warner-Lambert and Parke Davis and consulted for four years for companies such as Abbott Laboratories and various small biotech startups. He was also general counsel for QuatRx Pharmaceuticals in Ann Arbor and chief administrative ocer and general counsel for Millendo erapeutics, which has since merged with Tempest erapeutics in Ann Arbor.

Tepe is researching could signicantly impact the industry, said Frank Urban, director of Life Sciences for Spartan Innovations. Urban has worked with Tepe for several years.

Enspired

From Page 8 e company has received $410,000 in pre-seed investment, won $270,000 in grants and prizes and has a $325,000 contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, Key said. Enspired has used the funds to optimize the company’s chemistry design, manufacture the rst PFASigator commercial-scale model, and hire three full-time employees.

“We are currently in a $3 million seed series funding round with signi cant interest from corporate ventures and independent investors,” said Key, a Laingsburg resident.

Meeting a need

PFAS are synthetic chemicals widely used for more than 60 years to make plastics, re ghting foams and lubricants. e term is an acronym for a class of more than 5,000 “forever” chemicals.

High PFAS exposure can lead to liver damage, thyroid disease, decreased fertility, high cholesterol, obesity, hormone suppression and cancer in humans, according to the CDC. Although fewer than 10 are considered highly toxic by the EPA, up to 95 percent of Americans have measurable levels of PFAS in their blood because they are in everyday products from stain-resistant carpet coatings to fast food restaurant burger wrappers, Key said.

e biggest danger to humans is the presence of PFAS in groundwater and wastewater and their threat to clean air because PFAS are in the foams re ghters use to put out high-temperature res.

“We have to do something to destroy the PFAS, or they will continue to accumulate in the environment.

( ese chemicals) never go away,” Key said. ey just move from a person to some other (physical) property.”

A study by scientists from the Environmental Working Group found that median amounts of PFAS in freshwater sh were 280 times greater than similar chemicals in com- mercially caught sh. Testing data was taken from the EPA and FDA, according to Manufacturing.net. e PFAS-remediation market is more than $160 billion, she said. However, current applied technologies are not removing the contamination but rather capturing the PFAS and transferring it elsewhere, Key said. One e ective strategy to remove PFAS is using a carbon lter to remove nearly all harmful chemicals from water or other materials. However, it is di cult to dispose of carbon in an environmentally sustainable way. If not done properly, the carbon releases PFAS into the air or water.

Building their clientele

“I have been impressed by the technology and the team at Enspired Solutions.... e traction they are getting in diverse sectors means their business model is strong and has positive repercussions for raising capital with partners here in Michigan,” said Je Wesley, executive director at Spartan Innovations and its funding organizations Red Cedar Ventures and Michigan Rise.

One possible Enspired client is chemicals company Haviland USA.

Haviland uses the carbon- ltering method to rid wastewater of PFAS, but Steven Buday, director of water treatment for the company’s Grand

Rapids location, is interested in Enspired Solutions’ system if its recent bench testing proves e ective.

“Obviously, we don’t want PFAS to go into a land ll, and we’re open to any system that allows us to get rid of PFAS here onsite,” Buday said. “ ey seem to have a good process.” e state of Michigan established the Industrial Pretreatment Program, designed to protect, preserve and improve the state’s surface water quality by implementing federal and state rules to limit pollution from industrial discharges. Numerous states have similar initiatives in place and could be clients of Enspired Solutions as well.

Buday expects testing results to be available by the end of this month, which could lead to a pilot program with Enspired Solutions.

In addition to current clients like the U.S. Department of Defense, which supports re ghting training activities and strategies, Keys said other potential clients are wastewater treatment operators and a growing number of manufacturers in such sectors as metal platers and fabric manufacturers.

Drinking water facilities are another key target for Key and Wang.

Scaling operations

Key and Wang worked at the global architecture, engineering and consultancy company Ramboll for a decade before starting Enspired Solutions as a fully woman-owned company. at fact alone is a unique di erentiator in the industry, Key said.

Together, they aim to commercialize an already patented technology to permanently remove and destroy PFAS and to function as a global supplier of PFAS destruction equipment and technology. e company is fully licensed to sell the patented technology exclusively and commercially.

“It’s hard to believe that we quit our jobs and started our new careers in the middle of a pandemic to do this,” Key said.

While COVID was not the motivation to start Enspired Solutions, the fact that Wang, a Chicago resident, and Key were working from home in 2021 may have positively in uenced their decision.

Now, Key wants to increase the size of Enspired’s East Lansing headquarters at the incubator, upgrade its research and development capabilities and create a global sales and distribution network.

“ ere are more PFAS in water than is acceptable by EPA guidelines,” Key said. “Municipalities around the U.S. are also trying to decrease PFAS in drinking water. We can be a partner and solutions partner for all of these (entities).”

He said that while the odds are against commercialization, there has been some success in this space.

“ e pharmaceutical industry has been working on proteasome inhibitors in cancer for over 25 years. Some success has been seen with drugs like bortezomib, car lzomib and ixazomib, but these have been somewhat limited to blood cancers like myeloma and lymphoma,” Urban said.

Researching for the best-case scenario

e best-case scenario might be a long way o , but it would include Portera receiving the funding needed to hire more sta , expand o ce space and add a larger lab.

“A proteasome accelerator would be a whole new class of drug and could be applicable to a broad range of cancer types as well as a host of other diseases,” Urban said. “ at makes this research very exciting.”

In 10-15 years, Tepe’s research could be the impetus behind a new FDA-approved drug treating cancer and neurological diseases.

His research is pursuing small molecules that target and activate the proteasome to accelerate the degradation of proteins that create plaque over time. is plaque resides in the human brain and can lead to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. e hope is that proteasome activation could prevent, reverse or slow the toxic accumulation of these proteins.

For this and his other research, Tepe was named the MSU Innovation Center’s 2022 Innovator of the Year.

“He is a brilliant chemist and is very easy to work with,” Brinza said. “ at’s what makes this such a fun experience.”

Portera erapeutics is purposely keeping a low pro le for now. Brinza said the company remains in its early seed stage and has yet to invest in a website.

“It’s biotech and life sciences, so we know the odds,” Brinza said. “But if it works, the results could be immense.”