Founders' Bench Award (Inaugural Ophthalmology Cycle)

About

University Lab Partners' inaugural six-month ophthalmology-focused accelerator provides a funded wet-lab bench, shared equipment, mentorship, fundraising support, and an investor showcase to pre-seed and seed-stage companies with a Southern California nexus and a genuine wet-lab need, without taking equity or IP.

Benefits

• 🧪Funded wet-lab bench
  A funded bench for six months at ULP's professionally managed wet-lab facility in UCI Research Park.
• 🔬Shared equipment access
  Access to shared scientific equipment for awardee research.
• 🧑‍🔬 Mentorship
  Customized coaching and mentoring from industry professionals, including Bausch + Lomb scientists and business leaders, and subject-matter experts in regulatory strategy, intellectual property, clinical development, and finance.
• 💰Fundraising readiness
  Support for dilutive and non-dilutive capital, including NIH SBIR/STTR grants.
• 🤝UCI resource connections
  Concierge-style ULP support to connect with UCI faculty, core facilities, and student talent through ULP's UCI Resource Navigator.
• 📈Investor showcase
  Showcase progress to investors and the ULP community in Month 6.
• ⚖️ No equity or IP taken
  ULP takes no equity and claims no intellectual property in any applicant or awardee.

Eligibility Criteria

• Mandatory: pre-seed or seed-stage company
• Mandatory: founder, academic spinout, or corporate spinout
• Mandatory: Southern California nexus
• Mandatory: genuine need for hands-on wet-lab time, not purely computational work
• Mandatory: solution aligned with ophthalmology/eye health; current cycle seeks ocular drug delivery and therapeutics, cell and gene therapies, diagnostics and imaging, and surgical and digital technologies

Target Region

Applicant geographic eligibility: Southern California nexus. Work takes place at ULP, UCI Research Park, Irvine, California.

Target Sector

Healthcare & Life Sciences