Text Box: Is Technology Transfer for you? Text Box: Inside this issue: Text Box: “Our society cannot exist as it is today if the future populations don't re-supply the engineering, research and teaching roles that have kept America strong and independent." NSF Current - July 2006 Text Box: Future Innovative Technology

 Oct. 2006, Volume 2

Funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant No. 0538751
Text Box: Go ahead and google “technology transfer.” No less than 93,100,000 listings show up. Every major university, government organization and commercial company has a technology transfer department, which is made up of teams of scientists, engineers, accountants and marketing professionals. No matter how fabulously fascinating the invention, only the ideas that have cost-effective commercial value get the golden seal of approval from all of the team members, and find their way to a store near you. Inventors with ideas are just waiting for the opportunity to make an entrance into our daily lives. Engineers are working on inventions with real life applications. Marketing professionals commercialize products on store shelves for you, the end user. But is this for you? It’s hard to imagine choosing a profession of which you know nothing. Howard Community College provide you the chance to step into the magical world of Technology Transfer. HCC, sponsored by a grant from the NSF, has created the Technology Assessment Program. Through a brand new course titled ENTR-915 “Technology Transfer from Invention to Marketplace” you can find yourself on a team of students going directly into the government-funded labs along the Baltimore-Washington corridor to review actual inventions in progress and work alongside inventors and mentors under the instruction of Wayne Swann, Director of Technology Transfer office from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. Marcia De Wing, HCC Workforce Development Assistant, NSF-TAP Grant.

             In order to maintain its current level of growth, Maryland will need a steady supply of innovative technologies that can improve the lives and businesses that make this state great.

             HCC developed an experiential course on technology transfer as part of its Entrepreneur Studies degree program. As of 08/30/06 twenty-three students were enrolled in the first offering of the new course ENTR-915 “Technology Transfer from Invention to Marketplace”. The course is open to high school, college, and continuing-education students. Teams of students are conducting market analyses of inventions developed by participating laboratories. At the end of the semester, students will present their technology assessment to entrepreneurs, technology transfer officers and venture capitalists. The course will be offered each semester over the next three years. As reported by course instructor Wayne Swann: “Inventions for this semester were selected in consent of each of the laboratories that are partners in the National Science Foundation Grant no. 0538751. Other partner laboratories are expected to submit technologies for the spring 2007 semester. The diversity of technologies is important to expose the students to a wide spectrum of real-life subject matter introduced during the lecture segments of the class. Local experienced businesses professionals were asked to volunteer as mentors for the student teams. There are dynamic interactions between students and mentors—both within and between the four teams.” Students have been in contact and met face -to-face with inventors and discussed the possibility of marketing their inventions.

Letters From Our Students

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An Inventor Never Grows UP

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WIN A PRIZE

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Technology Transfer is the Wave of the Future

 

Do You have a Great Idea...

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4-Tomorrow

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Spotlight on TAP

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