How to turn research into profit

While Boston University has a history of helping to turn academic research into profitable ventures, a process known as technology transfer, many international institutions are taking their first steps in that direction.

In an effort to share BU’s experience in the field, the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), welcomes its second international fellow this month.

Created in 2005, the fellowship is an exchange program for senior researchers with business, scientific, and legal skills who want to establish technology transfer offices in countries that don’t have a tradition in this field.

Ashley Stevens, director of OTT, says the fellowship encourages discussion on how to translate academic research to the private sector with researchers worldwide, as well as builds institutional relationships.

“I see it as a way to establish an international network of collaborators and friends of BU,” Stevens says. Starting this year, fellows will also begin working on a research subject that will lead to publication. But ultimately, the fellows’ work at BU is aimed at boosting the economic and technological development of their home countries.

This year’s fellow is Katrine Wyller, director of technology transfer at the Norwegian Radium Hospital Research Foundation in Oslo. Wyller explains that although the Norwegian economy is currently very dependent upon its offshore oil and gas industry, “one day the wells will be empty, and we will need land-based industry.” With the advanced technology and knowledge, such as biotechnology, that comes from state-of-the-art research, Norway, she says, will be able to compete.

“Norwegians have a lot to learn from the United States with regard to this,” Wyller says. While American universities have had technology transfer offices for 20 or 30 years, Norwegian universities first began initiating such offices in the early 1990s.

For instance, when Norway’s leading engineering school invented GSM (global system for mobile communications), the dominant cell phone system worldwide, it didn’t patent the system. Instead, the school simply gave the technology to Finland’s Nokia. By contrast, Stevens says, a California-based inventor of another major cell phone system makes close to $1 billion annually from licensing patents to other carriers.

“These examples illustrate why Norwegian research institutions are interested in developing a robust technology transfer capability internally,” he says.

Smaller European countries, the former Soviet Union, and emerging South American and Southeast Asian countries are ripe for technology transfer, according to Stevens. “India has excellent scientists that should start to learn about the opportunities in commercializing this research,” he says.

The program’s first fellow, Ravi Dhar, is a staff scientist at India’s National Institute of Immunology. He says that what he learned at BU has changed his perspective.

“Anyone who shows interest in the fellowship,” Dhar says, “should be ready to change his mental orientation, should have determination to spend long hours on patent Web sites to understand how to support start-up companies, and also develop a close rapport with venture capital firms.”

Although federally supported laboratories in India develop new drug molecules, therapeutics, and diagnostic kits, the labs need to find partnerships in order to deal with global health challenges such as AIDS, dengue, diarrhea, or malaria. “With India suffering from all these diseases,” says Dhar, “we need to set up well-laid technology transfer offices.”