Anton Bartolo is the director for corporate research and knowledge transfer at the University of Malta, where he built the Knowledge Transfer Office from scratch in 2009 (with help from Oxentia, Oxford’s consultancy arm).

He tells us how the challenges of being the only university in a small island nation have led to an offering that isn’t actually all that dissimilar to that of institutions in larger countries — including tech transfer internships, an incubator open to all, TAKEOFF, and a master’s in entrepreneurship.

Malta has historically had a very low proportion of its GDP going to research and development, and many companies are subsidiaries that leave research to their overseas parent, and Anton ponders how this is affecting his work and what can be done to remedy it.

And finally, Anton talks about why two of Malta’s three spinouts thus far were set up in other countries and, of course, he follows podcast tradition and reveals his magic wand wish.

Get in touch

Follow Thierry Heles on LinkedIn.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)