Venture Catalyst is one part of a multipronged effort at the school that its leaders say is helping turn university research into companies that produce world-changing technologies. The school has facilitated a total of 49 startups in the last four fiscal years, up from 18 in the four years prior.

Innovation cannot occur within a vacuum. While it’s nice to have an office door that shuts the world out, successful entrepreneurs understand that the best ideas are molded through collaboration.

Each month, Comstock’s online features a different Startup of the Month. As 2016 comes to a close, we take one last look at these startups to see how they stack up.

Technically, Atocera Inc. is the result of a shaving accident.

Back in 2012, Saif Islam, a UC Davis professor of electrical and computer engineering, was in the campus labs building silicon micro-walls for solar panels. During the process of cutting semiconductor material into small slices, something unexpected happened.

But Anpac Bio’s major innovation is not about where, but when. Catching cancer in the earliest stages has been Yu’s goal since the company launched in 2010. With so much medical research focused on treatment and imaging, he set his sights on early detection as the key to prevention. His ideas were unconventional.

The technologies coming down the pipe now, though, are like nothing we’ve seen before. They’re coming all at once, and they’ll make the most recent digital age feel more like the Stone Age.

Your company could benefit from its own version of an online retail event to drive excitement, loyalty and sales.

In the first few days after a baby is born, the mother produces colostrum — a yellowish, thick and sticky substance packed with fat, micronutrients and antibodies. In breastfeeding circles, this special milk is called “liquid gold,” which is essentially a supercharged immunity boost to equip newborns for their new world.

Less than three years after its first resident moved in, the highly-touted energy-efficient development in Sacramento called 2500 R Street is now mired in a legal dispute over the alleged false advertising of its homes as net-zero energy and LEED-certified.

Entrepreneur Stephane Come feels that “fun” products and games currently on the market are short-changing children. That’s because they don’t often show kids that it’s OK to fail. Instead, Come wishes that children would be challenged and taught that getting things wrong is an acceptable part of the process. It isn’t necessary to come to the solution instantly.