Richard G. Horan, senior managing director of the Slater Technology Fund, recently spoke with Providence Business News about the institution’s recently named fellows for the 2010-2011 academic year and the importance of the technology transfer function at local universities.
PBN: Part of what the Slater fellows will be doing is undertaking a survey of the technology transfer functions at various local institutions. Tell us more.
HORAN: The Slater Fellows and the Slater Fund are playing sort of a supporting role in that particular project. It’s a STAC (R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council) project.
STAC undertook a series of reviews focusing on the academic research enterprise and the business of commercializing the innovations coming out of the labs, if you will. One of the things they undertook – a year or more ago – was an assessment of the research enterprise at the University of Rhode Island – perhaps at some of the other state universities – but certainly URI. [The report’s] recommendation was to make the state’s research enterprises more competitive.
This is part of the follow up to that initiative, focusing on the technology transfer function, which is one of the critical links in the chain that runs from the basic research in academic labs through to commercial startups and larger companies licensing the technologies in.
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PBN: Who has technology transfer function departments?
HORAN: Typically, every university [that receives] federal research funding has a technology transfer function of some measure. It all got started in the ’80s when they passed the Bayh-Dole Act, which authorized universities to claim ownership to inventions that were developed in the university labs pursuant to federal funding.
It’s actually a very topical question as we speak; the U.S. Supreme Court [recently] heard oral arguments on a case which calls the very principal underlying the legislation into question. It’s a case where Stanford University has sued Roche, a Swiss-based biotechnology company, over the matter of the rights that were created through the Bayh-Dole legislation.
Most research-based universities developed technology transfer functions of some measure and there are some institutions – like MIT, Stanford, Columbia University, to name the three that first come to mind – that have very significant technology transfer departments.
They have 10-20 people and they spend millions of dollars a year filing patents and supporting the spin out – the transfer of those technologies into startup companies or established companies by way of licensing transactions.
Here, in Rhode Island, Brown has a technology transfer function, Lifespan has a technology transfer function, URI has one…they’re not as well-developed as those at places like MIT and Stanford but they’ve been at it since back in the early-’80s as well.
So STAC, as part of its agenda in trying to enhance the competitiveness of the research enterprise here in Rhode Island – both the academic side of it and the commercial side of it – is focusing in on some of the key issues in that domain. And technology transfer is one of them.
PBN: What are some of the other key issues?
HORAN: The chain runs from the basic research going on in the laboratories – which is typically funded federally out of places like the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation or the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense.
Those technologies – to the extent they become proprietary technologies often get patented and the business of patenting the technologies – is typically done between an academic laboratory and the technology transfer department. At Brown, it’s called the Technology Ventures Office.
PBN: Similar to the one at Johnson & Wales?
HORAN: Johnson & Wales isn’t a recipient of federal funding so theirs is of a different nature. There are three primary institutions that have a “traditional” or “classical” technology transfer functions – it’s Brown, Lifespan and URI, which is where the Slater Fellows will be going to conduct the survey.
PBN: How does the survey fit into the rest of the Slater Fellow’s curriculum?
HORAN: The Fellows program is following three tracks – on the one hand, there’s sort of the didactic portion, or the “classroom” portion where we provide teaching modules of various aspects of the venture development process.
The second track, where we expose them or immerse them in real ventures – be they active portfolio companies in which Slater’s involved or in some cases, ventures in our pipeline. But the idea is to get them to immerse themselves in those real-world ventures. A little bit like a medical student does internships in different clinical specialties.
The third track – the lesser track of the three – does this participation in the assessment of the technology transfer function in support of STAC’s efforts along those lines. The notion was it’s going to give the students a good window on the technology transfer function and, since STAC was looking to undertake this assessment anyway, it would be a good place for them to slot into.
STAC’s look at the function, to my knowledge, is the first assessment from the economic-development community here in Rhode Island. I think each of the institutions have undertaken their own assessments at differing intervals over the course of time but this is the first incident, that I’m aware of, that an organization in the economic development community is looking at the function of technology transfer on a statewide basis.
