Exceptional Contributions to Technology Transfer
Ashley Stevens, director of the Office of Technology Transfer, will be recognized for his contributions.
Ashley Stevens, director of the Office of Technology Transfer and a School of Management lecturer, will be given the Bayh-Dole Award by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) on Friday, March 9, at the organization’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Stevens will be recognized for his lifetime contribution to the technology transfer profession, a field that analyzes and then commercializes groundbreaking academic research. The award, named for former U.S. senators Robert Dole and Birch Bayh, the legislative founders of U.S. technology transfer, is awarded annually to individuals who have made “exceptional contributions to the profession.”
Stevens attributes the recognition primarily to his work on the economic impact of the Bayh-Dole Act, which enables universities to keep the title to inventions created in their federally funded research programs. He also has collaborated with a researcher at MIT to develop the Stevens-Pressman model, which estimates the economic impact of developing products based on licensed technologies.
Since he came to Boston University in 1995, Stevens has worked to commercialize innovations on campus. He and colleagues were responsible for spinning QuitNet, the School of Public Health’s smoking cessation Web site, into a successful company that was eventually acquired by Healthways. In addition, he has identified 112 drugs, vaccines, and biological medicines that were discovered at universities or national laboratories and are now available to the public. “I don’t think anybody has any idea that this many drugs and vaccines were first discovered at universities,” he says.
Stevens has worked in the biotechnology industry since 1982 with start-up companies and academic organizations. He publishes and lectures frequently on technology transfer and has held various positions in AUTM, including vice president of meetings and surveys.
Brittany Jasnoff can be reached at bjasnoff@bu.edu.