Did you know where the HPV Vaccine known as Gardasil® was developed? What about Wi-Fi (an interesting case-study as the granted U.S. patent dates from 1994 well in advance of the technology being considered for use in laptops and smartphones)?
You may have recently seen the announcement about Qualcomm purchasing a company called HaloIPT that has developed new technology for charging electric cars. All of these technologies trace their history to Australia and New Zealand universities and research institutions. Gardasil hails from the University of Queensland, the Wi-Fi story from CSIRO and the HaloIPT acquisition originates at the University of Auckland. How do I know? Because I recently traveled to that most beautiful of countries, New Zealand, to attend and speak at the 2011 KCA (Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia) Annual Meeting. The meeting was titled “Innovation through Collaboration” and included speakers from government, universities, industry and service providers -- all to discuss better ways for universities and industries to collaborate on both research and commercialization to make an impact in the region as well as in the world. For those interested, KCA (www.kca.asn.au) is AUTM’s sister organization and is also a founding partner of ATTP (www.attp.info). The conference proceedings, including my presentation, can be viewed on the KCA website.
After KCA, I attended the ACCT Canada Annual Meeting, “Innovation 2011” in Montreal. Discussions of metrics, collaborations between industry and universities, and results of a year long study on Canada’s support for business innovation provided for a fascinating two days. A faculty member from McGill University and I were on a panel to discuss “Are we doing enough in global health and the environment” where we discussed new and innovative ways that universities, tech transfer offices and associations are approaching these issues. Our readers can learn more about ACCT Canada at http://www.acctcanada.ca/.
I came away from both meetings somewhat surprised, but also gratified, at how similar we all are. No matter what country, we were all talking about how to define and measure our impact -- the impact of our university discoveries and research – and how to find ways to better collaborate among each other and with industry. We may have different languages (or at least at these conferences speak English with some variation!) and different federal governments, laws and policies, but the overriding mission for all of us remains: translating technologies to industry such that they can be commercialized for the betterment of the public.
Now that I am back, I also want to remind you that it is time to renew your membership in AUTM. We continue to work hard to provide you relevant information, programs, publications and to advocate for our profession internationally. We can always do better and I encourage you to contact me or any one of the Board members with your comments and suggestions.
We are in full gear of getting ready for the AUTM Annual Meeting in March. If you haven’t seen Alan’s first blog, you can find it here. If you have been to the Annual Meeting you know it is a great opportunity to network with your colleagues in academia, government and industry, access professional development courses, and to attend workshops on a myriad of topics. If you haven’t been to the Annual Meeting I would encourage you to look at the program and consider attending this year. The AUTM Annual Meeting isn’t just for academics – each year we increase our industry attendees to give us a wonderful opportunity to reconnect, partner and discuss our technologies and needs.
By now you should have received your copy of the 2010 AUTM Licensing Activity Survey. Congratulations to Shawn Hawkins and her team for publication of this year’s survey, which marks the 20th Anniversary for this important document. AUTM will continue to work with you and with government and related associations to ensure that the survey remains robust and appropriate for our member needs.
I also want to welcome our new Board Members for the 2012 AUTM Board. I look forward to meeting with all of them at our January Board meeting and to work with Todd Sherer (soon to be AUTM’s President) on discussing our strategy for the upcoming year:
President-elect: Sean Flanigan, University of Ottawa
Vice President for Finance : Nikki J. Borman, Borman and Company LLC
Vice President for Meeting Development: Kevin L. Wozniak, Georgia Institute of Technology
Vice President for Membership Development, Eastern Hemisphere: Lily Chan, NUS Enterprise
Vice President for Metrics and Surveys: Richard Kordal, Ph.D., Louisiana Tech University
Vice President for Professional Development: Dipanjan Nag, Ph.D., M.B.A, CLP, Rutgers University
We recently completed a half day meeting to complete our 2012 Budget and discuss other issues at hand for the organization. A summary of this meeting will be posted soon on the website.
As a special present to our members for the end of the year, we have upgraded the search engine on the website; please try it out. You should now be able to much more easily access the plethora of information stored on the site.
And finally, from all of us on the AUTM Board and at headquarters, we want to wish you, your organization and your family a Merry Christmas, a happy holiday season and a Happy New Year.