Delving into science for capital ideas

Long Island venture capitalists Mark Fasciano and David Calone have half a million dollars riding on a challenge: translating highly esoteric science into concepts that can fuel new businesses.

They are to select a dozen technologies created at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Hofstra University, and North Shore-LIJ Health System and get entrepreneurs to turn them into businesses. Earlier in the week, Fasciano and Calone announced they have committed $500,000 in total to the effort.

That may have been the easy part.

Now, Fasciano, of Canrock Ventures of Westbury, and Calone, of Jove Equities of Babylon, must begin by speaking to the lab scientists about such esoteric topics as "methods for assaying clustered DNA damage to determine effects and leaks of radiation," and "inorganic bulk heterojunction solar cells."

"The scientists need to translate their work into generalist terms," Fasciano said. "That's the price of admission. If they can't do that, they don't get off space one."

Fasciano and Calone must then find entrepreneurs who can turn the technologies into commercial enterprises. "They're rare in the population, no doubt," Fasciano said. But it can be done. Fasciano said in the last 18 months Canrock has developed a portfolio of 12 companies.

"I think it's absolutely doable," he said.