AUTM on the Air

ETH is one of Switzerland’s main public universities. It has 16 departments, 23 000 students, and 250 faculty members. Today’s guest, Silvio Bonaccio, who attended the university as a student himself, has been the head of its technology transfer office since 2005. Silvio’s 31-person strong team is divided into 3 focal areas; contracts, technology licensing, and support of start-ups. They do approx...

Today’s guests, James Hutchinson and May Low, are the CEO and COO (respectively) of the Kiwi Innovation Network (more commonly known as KiwiNet). Their complementary skill sets (James with his science-focused education and May with her financial background) make this duo, along with the rest of their team, a force to be reckoned with! Their goal is to drive prosperity, subsequently changing the wo...

When Abram Goldfinger arrived in New York, there was little significant entrepreneurial activity taking place. In part through his efforts, it is now a thriving entrepreneurial hub. An example which illustrates this point is the fact that NYU’s Technology Opportunity and Ventures (TOV) office, of which Abram is the Executive Director, has gone from launching 2 or 3 startups a year in the early 200...

If you aren’t aware of the extent of the depth and breadth of technology transfer, this episode with Alice Li will leave you with a whole new understanding and appreciation of the field. As the Director of the Centre for Technology Licensing (CTL) at Cornell University, and with 18 years of university technology transfer under her belt, Alice is well positioned to discuss the way the field has evo...

Today’s guest is Markus Wanko, the Head of Technology Transfer at TWIST, which is the Tech Transfer organization for the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) in Austria.  Markus has been driving the development of IST Park, the technology park adjacent to IST Austria and IST Cube, a science and tech-based seed fund. Markus came to TWIST after a 15-year career in investing and strategy. Specif...

“A society without black leaders and black researchers does not bear thinking about.”  Dr. Natalie Cozier is, among many other things, a black female doctor, scientist, researcher and consultant who has been subjected to abuse and harassment in the workplace, and in society in general, because of the color of her skin. Despite this, she stays resilient, and this resilience has led her to have a ve...

Today’s guest hails from Chile, a country which still has a long way to go in terms of its capacity for technology transfer, but being the home of many world-class scientists, and with people like today’s guest, Alvaro Ossa, leading the charge, the future looks bright.   For over 15 years Alvaro Ossa has combined his creativity with his engineering skills to head-up the R&D effort, IP protecti...

When Scottish physical education teacher, Lesley Millar-Nicholson, moved to America for her then partner, and now wife, she could never have imagined the career trajectory that lay ahead of her.  An internship in the technology transfer office at the University of Illinois (where she received her MBA) led to a licensing job, which in turn led to her becoming the director of the office. She held th...

As an English major, Orin Herskowitz was an unlikely candidate for the science heavy world of technology transfer. However, after overcoming the initial imposter syndrome he felt when he became part of the technology transfer team at Columbia University, he realized that the field requires people with a wide range of skill sets, and he quickly found his feet.  As Orin explains today, universities...

Today’s guest started his career as a salesman, and his many years of experience in the sales world equipped him with skills that have been indispensable throughout his journey as the director of Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s (WPI) Office of Technology Commercialization. Todd and his two team members are responsible for the commercializing effort at WPI, and since 2009 they have taken the tech...

Like many technology transfer professionals, Thomas Schmidt found his way into the field by accident, after a part-time marketing role turned into a full-time business development position. His passion has been unwavering ever since, and after his 7-year stint at Aarhus University, he moved to the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), where, for the past 8 years, he has been the head of the techno...

Not only is Ellen MacKay the only registered technology transfer professional in her department, but she is also the only one in the whole of Northern Ontario! After completing her Master’s in education at Lakehead University, Ellen’s first job landed her in the technology transfer field of her alma mater, as an assistant. She quickly worked her way up, and for the past few years, she has been fos...

The field of technology transfer looks different all over the world, and in today’s episode I’m joined by Gilberto Medeiros Ribeiro, the Director of Innovation and Technology Transfer Coordination at UMFG, who is here to talk about the current technology transfer environment in Brazil. The field is faced with a number of challenges, including a high turnover rate, a federal aversion to funding bas...

Despite the fact that Pooja Bhatia’s Innovation and Technology Transfer Office (i-TTO) opened in March 2020, just before COVID-19 lockdowns came into effect in India, her and her all-women team have managed to achieve an incredible amount during the past year and a half. In today’s episode, Pooja, the Chief Manager of the i-TTO at the Foundation of Innovation and Technology (FIT) in Delhi, joins m...

Today’s guest, holder of a PhD in biochemistry, found his way into the technology transfer field through an unusual method; cold writing to technology transfer offices. After working at Northwestern University for 17 years, Mike Moore decided he wanted to expand his scope of experience and he moved to the far lesser-known University of Augusta, where he is currently the Director of the Office of I...

Christy Wyskiel’s passion for born and bred local business prompted her to leave her job as an institutional investor on Wall Street and focus on helping Baltimore entrepreneurs and inventors thrive. In her estimation, her current role as the Executive Director of Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV) is close to the best job in the world! JHTV acts as a bridge between world-changing inventions...

While working as the Program Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Jon Soderstrom received a phone call which would end up altering his career trajectory in a way he couldn’t have imagined. Although Jon’s initial response to the offer to work at Yale was no, after having a meeting with the man who was to become his future boss, he realized that Yale was exactly where he needed to be. Over 25...

Today’s guest is meant to be winding down towards retirement, but she’s too enamored with her work to let go just yet. Teri Willey’s colorful career has taken her from the chemical industry to the world of angel investing and fund creation, from the US to the UK and back again. She is currently the managing director of Indiana University (IU) Ventures which assists students, faculty, staff, and al...

Throughout her amazing career, today’s guest has had a huge impact on the Tech Transfer community and continues to do so today. Kathy Ku has been working in Tech Transfer since the 1980s and in this episode she shares her unique journey describing her career moves as “happenstance.”  Kathy is the Chief Licensing Advisor in the Palo Alto office of Wilson Sonsini. She is also a member of the technol...

Today I am joined by two guests; Cullum Clark and Christian Blackwell. Cullum is the Director of the Bush Institute SMU-Economic Growth Initiative and Christian is the Managing Partner at Opus Faveo Innovation Development, and their combination of skills and experience is a force to be reckoned with!  The purpose of today’s episode is to unpack the report which was produced by Cullum, Christian, a...

Even before she expresses it outwardly, it is clear that Alison Campbell is deeply passionate about technology transfer and that working in this field brings her a lot of joy. In today’s episode I have the pleasure of speaking to a woman who was one of the first technology transfer managers at the Medical Research Council and is currently the Director of Knowledge Transfer Ireland (KTI).  KTI is n...

Today’s guest, Jeff Purnell, has an engineering degree, a PhD in chemistry, and is currently working as a senior technology licensing officer in the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). Prior to this, Jeff held various R&D and product development roles in major companies.  The goal of Jeff’s department, which is one of three situated in UMB’s Office of...

Our guest today is the commercialization director of the Office of Research commercialization in the Texas Tech University System (TTUS). In order for inventions to reach the people who need them, they need to be patented, and Cameron’s role is to bridge the gap between industry and academia by executing commercialization agreements to bring inventions to market.   In today’s episode, Cameron expl...

This episode is a little different as I, Lisa Mueller, host of the Tech Transfer IP podcast, take the interviewee hotseat for a change! In today’s show, you’ll hear a brief rundown of my professional background, and how I ended up in the field of patent law after focusing my studies on environmental law. However, the main focus of this discussion is the podcast itself. When I first decided to crea...

In some ways, the Bayh-Dole Act saved the United States, and our guest on today’s show played a key role in its adoption. Joe Allen was part of the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Birch Bayh, the senator whose name makes up one part of the Act which was deemed one of the most inspired pieces of legislation that America had seen in half a century.  The intention of the Act was to foster R&D p...