UTEN Portugal and Carnegie Mellon Portugal promoted workshop on technology transfer

15 Jun 2010

A two-day workshop in Lisbon addressed strategic partnerships, intellectual property rights, and best practices.

The UTEN Portugal Network and the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program co-organized "Corporate Partnering to Facilitate University Commercialization Activities," a workshop at the Faculty of Economics and Management, Catholic University of Portugal, in Lisbon, on June 15 and 16, 2010. Several experts from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) participated. The workshop's main objectives included:

• enable the discussion of good practices and the most effective ways to establish partnerships between the universities and companies
• aim to attract new business partners and thus promote the commercialization of innovation and technology.

Some of the themes discussed at the event included the:

• strategic partnership between the universities and companies
• promotion of a continuous bond between the university and its alumni
• intellectual property rights and the consequent advantages that may come from a partnership between the parties involved in the process.

José Mendonça, scientific director of UTEN Portugal, considers “the development and improvement of competencies in technology transfer and commercialization are nowadays crucial for the entities within the national scientific and technological system, namely for the scientific and/or higher-education institutions, technology-based business incubators, and science and technology parks. In this context, the relationship with companies' [Industrial Liaison Offices] play an increasingly important and relevant role. This is why UTEN Portugal is paying special attention, in 2010, to the development and improvement of competencies in these areas — so as to promote more effective partnerships between the universities and companies. [This] will lead to an economic valorization of investments in research and technological development.” João Barros, national director of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal program, stated that “the strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon offers the opportunity to get in touch with the best practices of the top North-American universities. This way, making it possible to speed up innovation processes within the Portuguese academic and business contexts."

Carnegie Mellon University's experts presented CMU's technology-transfer model. It is considered one of the best in this area with a particular emphasis on the establishment of strategic partnerships. Experts included Bill Swisher, acting senior director, Corporate and Foundation Relations; Tara Branstad, associate director of the Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC); Gene Hambrick, corporate relations director at Cylab (Cyber Security Training and Research Centre, established at CMU, which works together with several organisms and companies in the United States); and Aamir Anwar, director of international alumni relations at CMU. Hyong Kim, an electrical and computer engineering professor at CMU, delivered the keynote speech. The speech addressed upcoming information and telecommunication-technologies challenges not only at the market level but also at the level of universities' main research topics. Debate sessions and hands-on analysis of real case studies filled the two-day workshop. Participants discussed several questions relevant to the Portuguese universities and the research and technology sector. Topics also included models, solutions, and proposals successfully implemented in the U.S., namely at CMU.