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SSTI’s recent webinar for its EDA-funded TBED Community of Practice work explored the emerging trend of creating centralized tech transfer offices (TTOs) serving multiple institutions. Centralized approaches are intended to more efficiently help develop and commercialize inventions from smaller or regional colleges and universities.

In the last twenty years, there has been a critical shift in the technology transfer landscape that calls for a fundamental overhaul of university Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) from focusing on passive IP management to active startup development, according to a recent SSRN article.

The Biden-Harris administration recently announced new actions to lower health care and prescription drug costs by promoting competition.

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a new $60 million investment led by NSF's Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships — the Accelerating Research Translation, or ART, program. The program will build capacity and infrastructure at higher education institutions that are needed to strengthen and scale the translation of basic research outcomes into impactful solutions and practice.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the establishment of a new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations that will support projects in areas including clean hydrogen, carbon capture, grid-scale energy storage, small modular reactors, and more. The recently-signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides $21.5 billion in funding for the office’s administration and projects through 2026.

The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) recently reported findings from its 2020 Licensing Activity Survey. The survey collects self-reported technology transfer activity volumes from universities, hospitals and other non-profit research institutions in the United States. The report highlighted a large increase in the number of patents issued in 2020 relative to 2019, with a growth rate of 15.6 percent. There was less clarity about changes in other metrics, however.

In a move designed to strengthen southwest Pennsylvania’s role in life sciences research, the University of Pittsburgh and Richard King Mellon Foundation last month announced a $100 million gift to help fund a bioresearch and development facility.

NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is working with the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to support projects partnering universities and MEP centers to encourage adoption of advanced technologies by small- and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs). APLU is working with Innovation Associates and Jim Woodell & Company to select three collaborative university-MEP pilot projects to develop and test different models of technology transitioning. APLU is currently soliciting two-page, pre-proposals from university-MEP applicant teams by April 16.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has continued to follow through on improvements to federal technology transfer proposed through the Return on Investment initiative. In December, the agency revealed legislative text for statutory changes and, on Monday, released a notice of proposed rulemaking related to Bayh-Dole.

A new set of technology transfer strategies designed to incentivize rapid utilization of available technologies that may be useful for preventing, diagnosing and treating COVID-19 infection during the pandemic has been established by a group including Stanford and Harvard universities and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The licensing strategies are meant to facilitate rapid global access of available technologies to help fight the pandemic.

The old adage, “we become/are what we measure” can push behavior of individuals and organizations into unanticipated negative space when the selected key performance indicators take on too much importance — sometimes amazingly negative space that becomes common practice and potentially damaging for the entire industry.

The Department of Defense commissioned a pilot study by TechLink of the economic impact of cooperative R&D agreements (CRADAs) at three Defense labs — U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division, and the Air Force Research Laboratory 711^th Human Performance Wing.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) is accepting federal laboratory T2 partnership story submissions for an online publication of state and local government successes this year. Recognizing that federal lab and state and local government partnerships are critical to the nation’s economy, FLC will showcase the regional value that results from such partnerships. The stories will be published in the FLC Success Stories Gallery and promoted across different media channels. The submission deadline is Oct.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced more than $24 million in funding for 77 projects through its Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF), which will be matched by funds from the private sector. Established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as a way to encourage energy innovation, each of the recently awarded TCF projects supports private sector efforts to commercialize technologies developed at DOE laboratories.

The New Mexico Economic Development Department is launching a new grant program to facilitate the transfer and commercialization of technologies developed in New Mexico national labs and universities to business startups. The New Mexico Technology Transfer Assistance Grants (NM-TAG) are designed to help offset the risk associated with licensing new technologies and assist the transfer and deployment of new innovative technologies.

Describing the 125+ page document outlining the administration’s thoughts regarding the movement of federal R&D into market use as a “discussion guide, not a policy document,”  Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Walter Copan announced the report’s release April 24 during the early minutes of the national convening of one of the communities most directly affected by any changes likely to result from the document: the technology licensing practitioners and offices which make up the Federal Laboratories Consortium fo

As a bedrock of American innovation, universities and federal laboratories research and develop new products that help drive economic growth. A new study from the Economic Growth Institute at the University of Michigan aims to improve national competitiveness in this arena by providing a roadmap for universities that includes best practices on translating research from the lab to the marketplace.

NIST released a draft paper in December making recommendations for improvements to federal technology transfer and commercialization policy. The agency’s ideas ranged from clarifying march-in rights to compelling agency participation in technology entrepreneurship development. Although NIST is one of the agencies affected by the shutdown, comments on the draft paper were due Jan. 9.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a paper making recommendations to improve federal technology transfer. Recommendations are organized around five topics: regulation and administration, private-sector engagement, R&D workforce, tech transfer tools, and metrics and benchmarks. These recommendations — and the responses they generate — are expected to lead to regulatory and legislative proposals over the course of the next two years.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is funding a program to better connect entrepreneurs, industry and investors with inventions from federally funded R&D. NIST has created a partnership with National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and will invest $1.7 million of its Lab to Market funding to complete the project.

The U.S. Department of Energy has launched a new Lab Partnering Service (LPS) that provides an online, single access point platform for investors, innovators and institutions to identify, locate and obtain information on the department’s 17 national laboratories. The new tool is intended to provide industry with a more efficient way to harness technical expertise and intellectual property housed at DOE’s labs.

Help inform decisions on the direction of federal R&D's role in innovation! Please complete this 10-minute survey by July 25 to share your ideas of current and future practices affecting R&D direction and tech transfer options with the federal labs.