Jacob Johnson works in the Office of Business Development at the University of Minnesota, where he is involved with commercializing university research as well as interfacing and creating relationships with the outside business community.

Motivated by the desire of the University of Minnesota to create a fund of its own, Jacob surveyed and gathered information from 50 research institutions and early stage funding organizations across the nation, compiling data relevant to gap funding at each participant institution. More than 80 funds were detailed during this process and summarized in a working paper entitled “Mind the Gap”.

The results were first presented at an innovation roundtable discussion at MIT in August, 2005.  Further research interests relevant to this subject include investigating the metrics of gap funding and determining if there exists a correlation between gap funding and the commercial success of developed technologies.

Jacob earned undergraduate degrees in Business Management and Biology from Luther College.