At a time when many people are looking for work, UVA is still looking to hire its first ever Executive Director for Technology Transfer and Ventures. The role represents UVA’s broader attempt to increase revenue from and recognition for its inventions and innovations.
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Thomas Skalak, UVA’s vice president for research, says that the role of Executive Director of Technology Transfer and Ventures is “to recognize one of our primary missions is dissemination of knowledge to move new ideas, inventions, and discoveries that come from faculty, students, and scholarly research into society.” |
At the September 11 Board of Visitors meeting, UVA’s Vice President for Research Thomas Skalak gave an update on changes to UVA’s process for technology transfer. Whenever a UVA student or professor invents or discovers something, the university transfers intellectual property rights to a nonprofit organization, the UVA Patent Foundation (UVAPF). The UVAPF and its staff of about 20 people then help patent those ideas and license them to companies in exchange for a fee. But as the minutes for that BOV meeting noted, “Patent Foundation revenues have dropped at the same time that research grants for faculty have increased.” In short, UVA was getting less bang for every research buck.
That downward trend had been occurring more or less steadily since 2001. Even though the UVAPF generated $4.6 million in revenue in 2008, it struggled to break even. According to the minutes of the meeting, whereas the top universities generate revenue from technology transfer worth about 10 percent of their research investments, and the average university nationally generates 2 percent, UVA in 2008 only generated 1.4 percent. Hence, UVA overhauled its system to give more money back to the inventors and the departments or labs that housed them in the hopes of spurring more innovation. So far, it has—with 12 patents, 65 deals and 178 disclosures in 2008. In 2009, 25 U.S. patents were issued and 57 deals with companies and institutions were also recorded and 162 invention disclosures were reported.
But finding someone to lead the way to further improvements and to help court corporate buyers for UVA ideas is crucial, too. “The basic idea of this role,” says Skalak, “is to recognize one of our primary missions is dissemination of knowledge to move new ideas, inventions, and discoveries that come from faculty, students, and scholarly research into society.” The job posting itself calls the process “science and scholarship serving humanity.” Skalak hoped to have an Executive Director for Technology Transfer and Ventures by the end of October. So far, that hasn’t happened.
The position appeared on UVA’s Human Resources job site just before the September BOV meeting. It also made the usual rounds of classifieds for academics, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as the Wall Street Journal or the website Technology Transfer Tactics. Ideally, the applicant has a science PhD, significant university research experience, knowledge of how start-up businesses and intellectual property work, and the ability to raise capital. The ad stops just short of asking that candidates also play the violin. “The person,” Skalak explains, “will be the primary face of the university with external private partners to build relationships.”
Gary Helmuth, who leads the executive search for UVA HR, did not reply to several requests for information about how many people have applied and when the search might conclude. However, the position is listed as open till filled, with a start date of the 2010 academic year. Meanwhile, says Skalak, “We do believe that the definition of this process and the search have already created national recognition that UVA is a leader in the area of innovation and research.”
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