Press Release

November 16, 2004 Okemos, Michigan

Michigan State University spins off a new technology company

A new tech startup, NamesforLife, LLC (N4L) has been founded in Okemos, Michigan to commercialize research conducted at Michigan State University. The new company is funded by founder equity and targets terminology management and document classification in the Life Science Publishing space.

NamesforLife is a project, a novel technology, and a University sponsored start-up business (NamesforLife, LLC) that arises from a long-term electronic publishing collaboration between George M. Garrity, ScD. and Catherine Lyons (Explicatrix, LLC, Edinburgh, United Kingdom). NamesforLife models the evolution of biological nomenclature and terminology, resolves instances of synonymy and homonymy, and provides a mapping to the underlying concepts that can be viewed in a temporal context. Through the use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), our technology can make names or terms actionable, can provide a direct path through the literature, and link to a variety of databases and other contextually relevant services. NamesforLife can provide publishers and data providers with a unique opportunity to provide their end-users with a direct path to related content, based on a name or term, even if the name or term has changed over time. Equally important, NamesforLife technology can provide publishers and data providers with opportunities to further exploit the long-tail phenomenon associated with Internet distribution of content and identify new business opportunities outside their normal markets.

[permalink] Posted November 16, 2004.