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By David J. Craig
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As vice president of technology commercialization, Robert Ronstadt directs the University’s Technology Commercialization Institute, which helps bring to the marketplace the fruits of groundbreaking research. Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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Boston University researchers regularly create technologies that could
help save lives and in other ways benefit society if turned into commercial
products. Scientists and engineers, however, often lack the time or the
business expertise to commercialize their inventions on their own.
In
order to move knowledge out of the laboratory and into the marketplace,
where it might be used, for example, to cure a disease or improve drug
screening procedures, BU has long assisted its researchers in developing
businesses. In 1975, the University formed the Community Technology Fund
(CTF), among whose aims is to help BU researchers with innovative ideas
develop business plans and obtain venture capital financing. CTF was
one of the first such programs at any university and to date has helped
launch 31 faculty start-ups. Recent successes include Affymetrix, Inc.,
a company that has created the first relatively noninvasive screening
test for early diagnosis of lung cancer; Cellicon Biotechnologies, which
uses a unique understanding of bacterial function to create more effective
antibiotics; and Centagenetics, which is identifying so-called longevity
genes that enable people to resist diseases associated with aging. In
addition, a new gene therapy for fighting cancer, developed by BU scientists
in collaboration with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and
the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, recently was licensed to the British
biopharmaceutical company Oxford BioMedica.
In order to expand and coordinate
the entrepreneurship efforts of several BU organizations that include
the creation of new companies in their
mission, earlier this year the University launched the Technology Commercialization
Institute (TCI). Led by Robert Ronstadt, BU’s vice president of
technology commercialization, TCI coordinates the efforts of seven BU
organizations integrally involved in technology transfer — CTF, the
Photonics Center, Beacon Photonics, BioSquare Discovery and Innovation
Center, the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation, the Entrepreneurial
Management Institute, and the Center for Health Care Entrepreneurship.
In
addition to helping those organizations collaborate efficiently, TCI
is leveraging the University’s expertise in technology transfer
to launch education and research programs that will train students and
faculty in how best to commercialize groundbreaking research. The goal
is to “combine education with research to build a new academic
and professional discipline in technology commercialization — something
we have been building toward for a quarter of a century,” says
President Emeritus John Silber.
Ronstadt, who has extensive experience
in business planning, raising capital, financial management of new enterprises,
and managing new product
research and development, predicts that technology commercialization
will be recognized as an academic discipline within the next 5 to 10
years. He says BU is positioned to lead in the field’s development. “Many
universities don’t have any programs of the sort that BU has to
help researchers develop venture ideas,” he says. “So the
University is way ahead of the game.”
TCI’s education component
includes a graduate-level, University-wide course in technology commercialization
offered for the first time in
spring 2004. “The course focuses on how to assess the commercial
potential of an idea at the research stage, determine what kind of market
it’s suited for, and then develop it,” Ronstadt says. “Graduate
students today increasingly are thinking about commercialization, because
they see their professors doing it, and they’re getting involved
in commercialization projects themselves. It’s a positive aspect
of their education.”
Ronstadt emphasizes that faculty start-ups,
in addition to financially benefiting researchers and the University
through licensing agreements,
serve a humanitarian function by shuttling important technologies into
the marketplace. “I believe that tomorrow’s graduate students
in almost any discipline, but particularly in the sciences, engineering,
medicine, law, and business, shouldn’t leave school without taking
a course in technology commercialization,” he says. “They’re
going to be affected by the process in one way or another.”
Ronstadt,
who directed a technology think tank at the University of Texas in Austin
for five years before coming to BU this year, says additional
technology commercialization courses will be offered in subsequent semesters
and that eventually BU may offer a master’s or a Ph.D. program
in the field. He says TCI plans to offer seminars on technology commercialization
for faculty, and to collaborate with the School of Management’s
Entrepreneurial Management Institute to increase the number of professional
seminars the SMG institute offers on the subject.
In order to discover
the best strategies for bringing technology from University labs into
the marketplace, Ronstadt is conducting a research
project mapping BU’s technology assets “to find out where
technologies are bubbling up and where we have strengths and weaknesses
in terms of identifying technologies and helping researchers in the commercialization
process.”
In addition, he hopes to increase the number of relatively
small awards, between $50,000 and $75,000, available to BU researchers
for developing
technologies that could be commercialized, increase assistance to researchers
whose inventions are commercially viable but lack the huge market potential
necessary to attract venture capital, and hold more competitions for
promising research projects.
“
I also want to improve outreach efforts to BU researchers so that they
know whom to contact for help with a disclosure, a patent, a license,
a venture possibility, or with any other questions they may have associated
with the commercialization process,” Ronstadt says. “The
main objective of this institute is to increase opportunities for faculty
and students, and to make the technology commercialization process inclusive.”
14
November 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations