Talking Tech Transfer

Andreea Serban is a doctor specialising in paediatric surgery and an entrepreneur who’s founded her own healthtech, KIDoc, and joined another, PhylloPharma, as chief operating officer. She’s also a 2022 fellow of the Young Transatlantic Innovation Leaders, a US Department of State programme that invites young entrepreneurs from Europe to the United States, that brought her to the University of Pennsylvania and introduced her to her mentor Michael Poisel, a previous guest on this show.

But she’s not only spent time in the US or her native Romania, she’s also been at various institutions in Paris, like Institut Pasteur, in Luxembourg, where she was a resident at the children’s hospital Kannerklinik, and in the UK, where she worked at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

Andreea is, as long-time listeners will recognise, the first founder on the podcast, so this episode is a little different — but it’s incredibly fascinating and we cover everything from a fledgling tech transfer infrastructure in Romania to tax incentives to what the US could learn from Romanian communication skills.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Andreea Serban: KIDoc & PhylloPharma first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

Bryn Rees is the associate vice chancellor for research and innovation, and managing director of Venture Partners at CU Boulder — one of two tech transfer offices in the University of Colorado system.

He’s been at the university since 2009 — apart from a few weeks in 2015 when he quit because he was done with transactional tech transfer. But then the opportunity came to fundamentally rebuild how commercialisation was done at CU, which is what he’s been doing since.

Today, CU Boulder has everything you’d expect from a tech transfer office that produces more than 20 spinouts a year: from a startup-friendly licence to a dedicated investment affiliate, the Buff Venture Fund.

It’s been a long and fascinating road to arrive at this stage (though the university is famous for having created the pharmaceutical giant Amgen a few decades ago, and the faculty co-founder is still launching spinouts today) and Bryn is going to tell us all about that journey.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Bryn Rees: CU Boulder first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

Ireland, despite its small size, is home to major global tech and pharma companies, and punches above its weight in terms of spinouts that tackle global challenges from sustainable agriculture to cancer vaccines to AI-driven language monitoring, Trinity College Dublin’s Neil Gordon tells us.

Gordon — who was the first startup development manager at an Irish university — also talks about the importance of overseas markets for spinouts, building a portfolio and ecosystem with strong gender diversity, and how a new €38m innovation hub called Portal will be a shop front for TCD’s innovative output.

He also talks about how family offices can play a key part, why Trinity College Dublin helped create the original University Bridge Fund (and returned for Fund II) and how state agency Enterprise Ireland has become one of the most important funders in the country.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Neil Gordon: Trinity Innovation first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

Earlier this year, TenU — an international collaboration between 10 tech transfer offices in the US and Europe developing best practices — launched the University Spinout Investment Terms (USIT) Guide. Developed together with law firms and VC firms throughout the UK, the USIT Guide aims to accelerate negotiations between universities and investors and solve some of the common sticking points in these discussions.

In June, members of TenU — Orin Herskowitz, Anne Lane, George Baxter, Jim Wilkinson, Karin Immergluck — together with Sofinnova Partners’s Maina Bhaman and TenU chairman Andy Neely came together for a discussion of the USIT Guide’s origins and ambitions in front of a live audience at London’s County Hall.

This is the full recording from this discussion, including audience questions.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post USIT Guide: A live discussion first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

Some snippets of upcoming interviews plus an explanation for why we’ve been on a break which involves a peek behind the scenes of Talking Tech Transfer.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Trailer first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

Jacek Kasz is the director of the Center for Technology Transfer (CTT) at Cracow University of Technology, Poland’s second oldest TTO. He tells us how the office came to also be responsible for regional SME support and Horizon Europe applications, and how Cracow’s ecosystem has been shaped by IT.

But while Cracow’s ecosystem is full of opportunity, challenges remain and Poland sometimes struggles to retain its brightest minds, who continue to be drawn overseas to Silicon Valley.

Jacek also talks about how sometimes government programmes are actually fantastic and how CTT’s involvement in the EU project IMPACT — which aims to improve the teaching of sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship — is adding value to his work.

And with the Ukrainian border just 250km away, Jacek also discusses how his university, and CTT itself, are helping refugees.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Jacek Kasz: Cracow University of Technology first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

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 has 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 Talking Tech Transfer tradition and reveals his magic wand wish.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Anton Bartolo: University of Malta first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

You could be forgiven for not having had the Royal College of Art in London on your radar, but there’s a wealth of fascinating opportunities here — and Nadia Danhash, executive director of the college’s centre for enterprise, entrepreneurship and IP commercialisation InnovationRCA, tells us all about them.

The RCA’s portfolio spans a vast array of sectors, from climate tech to consumer to medtech to agtech and more, and it’s been investing in its spinouts for the past 12 years. It’s also set up an angel network and is in the process of launching a (first of hopefully many) SEIS fund of up to £5m.

Nadia ponders how commercialisation has become less of a dirty word at the RCA and explains how the fascinating, two-term-long programme AcrossRCA is fostering an entrepreneurial, interdisciplinary culture on campus.

She also discusses how the RCA is increasing diversity and tells us why her magic wand wish is about students coming to IP workshops.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Nadia Danhash: InnovationRCA first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

Alison Campbell, a GUV Lifetime Achievement awardee and former chair of AUTM, took on a new challenge in April last year when she left Knowledge Transfer Ireland (KTI) after nine years to take over as CEO of the newly established UK Government Office for Technology Transfer (GOTT) — responsible for some 800 departments, agencies and arms-length organisations.

She tells us what convinced her to take the job and why it’s been a year full of wonderful surprises, such as finding innovation everywhere from the National Physics Laboratory to Kew Gardens to the Government Internal Audit Agency.

She also ponders the differences between government and university tech transfer, explains why GOTT’s remit does and doesn’t cover the whole UK and tells us how GOTT’s grant fund operates on a very flexible model.

If you want to hear more about Alison’s earlier career, you can listen to her first appearance on Talking Tech Transfer where she discusses everything from KTI and AUTM to her work on harmonising knowledge transfer metrics for the EU.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The post Alison Campbell: UK Government Office for Technology Transfer first appeared on Beyond the Breakthrough.

Marc Sedam is the vice-president, technology opportunities and ventures, at New York University where he sits within NYU Langone Health. But his team is also responsible for tech transfer on NYU’s overseas campuses, and Marc tells us about the challenges this poses.

Marc talks about why his team hired an analyst for its venture fund and he discusses what it takes to be an ally — from making sure job adverts are posted in places where minorities will actually see them and arranging office hours at a time that’s actually convenient for women all the way to setting up an EDI committee at AUTM that reports directly to the board.

He also tells us why, if it’s ever appropriated, the funding for tech transfer offices in the CHIPS and Science Act could prove truly transformational for the US economy.

Find out, too, what Marc learned when he moved from the tech transfer office at UNC Chapel Hill into one of their spinouts in the 1990s.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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