ANN ARBOR ? A group of venture capitalists who are University of Michigan graduates have begun giving advice to U-M professors on whether their technology business concepts have commercial value.

The group, which calls itself the University of Michigan Venture Partners Network, hosted its first network get together on Sept. 9 at the U-M where 35 venture capitalists meet with 40 professors from a variety of disciplines. The group broke up into nine roundtables over two 90-minute sessions.

Researchers came from the medical school and the engineering school. The venture capitalists that attended invest in life sciences, materials, software and various other technologies. They know what the market is investing in, and have insight into what the private equity market might go for in the future.

?We got them reconnected to the U-M and its professors,?? said Marc Weiser, Managing Partner of Waypoint Partners in Ann Arbor. ?It also gave the professors an opportunity to talk with venture capitalists from all over the country to give professors feedback on what they should be doing to prepare and how they should be thinking if they are considering commercialization of their research.?

Weiser said this was the first meeting in Ann Arbor, but the group has met twice in Silicon Valley. Plans now call for the U-M Venture Partners to meet twice a year, once in California to network and set an agenda for working with the U-M, and once in Ann Arbor for meetings with professors.

?As an alumni group, this network potentially could have a lot of influence on commercialization efforts at the University of Michigan,?? Weiser said. ?Hopefully it is the beginning of a ground swell of commercialization at the U-M.?

Weiser said the idea for the U-M Venture Partners Network was cooked up about a year ago by Weiser and two fellow alumni, Ravi Mohan, managing director of Shasta Ventures (www.shastaventures.com) and Will Johnson, a principal with In-Q-Tel, the Central Intelligence Agency?s Venture Fund (www.in-q-tel.org).

?If you look at the other top 10 engineering and business schools, they all have capital alumni groups,? Weiser said. ?What resulted was every Venture Capitalist at the dinner agreed we?d like to do something to help the University with its commercialization efforts.?

This story is featured in the Fall edition of the University of Michigan Growth Capital Journal, the quarterly newsletter of the Michigan Growth Capital Symosium. For more information, click on MichiganGCS.Com