Collaborating with research companies to develop patent ideas based on educational research, one Boston University office allows students, professors and professionals an opportunity to cohesively market ground-breaking technology.
Created in 1976, the Technology Transfer Office was one of the first offices in the country to offer a type of service that combines educational research with invention and patents.
“Technology transfer is mainly about professors, usually with graduate students, who come up with things in the course of research that they think are useful,” said OTT Director Ashley Stevens. “We then work with [professors and students] to get them involved with a company, or we start a company ourselves.”
Developed before the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which permits any university to patent inventions that result from federally funded research, the office has “progressively put the pieces together” over the past 10 years to collaborate with investors and up-and-coming businesses, Stevens said.
Through collaboration with Biomimetic Systems, an organization working to evaluate technological dilemmas, OTT works with BU’s Photonics Center to create a sniper-detecting robot, Stevens said. OTT also collaborates on the project with iRobot, a company that produces robotic vacuum cleaners.
Having disclosed about 110 inventions in the last academic school year, OTT works with BU’s colleges, including the School of Medicine and the College of Engineering, Stevens said.
“The College of Engineering is the most productive,” he said. “It has three to four times less funding than the School of Medicine but produces an equal amount of patents,” Stevens said.
To enhance its work in furthering research and innovation, OTT partners with Fraunhofer USA Center for Manufacturing Innovation, Europe’s largest nonprofit research and development organization.
BU and Fraunhofer are collaborating on “Bleed to Read,” a system that works as a “lab on a chip” that can automatically determine blood test results by reading blood droplets on a computer chip, said Fraunhofer USA Executive Director Andre Sharon, a BU manufacturing engineering professor.
“[There is a] tremendous out-of-classroom engineering experience and the ability to be much more marketable,” Sharon said.
The Technology Development Office, which encompasses many business and technology-oriented offices at BU, including OTT, aims to promote technology commercialization founded through faculty research, said OTD Director Stan Willie.
“One of the biggest changes is the fact that technology transfer is now part of bigger organizations that provide a comprehensive approach to commercialization,” he said.