Unknown Speaker 0:00 All right. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's webinars smooth, safe and successful transitions, how to return to in person TTL activities. Sorry about that. All lines have been muted for to ensure high quality audio and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for the panelists, we encourage you to use the q&a feature rather than the chat feature. If you have a technical question or comment, please feel free to use the chat. Now, since it's been flashing for all of us on our auto timing, before we begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank autumns 2021. Online Professional Development sponsor, we appreciate your ongoing support. I now have the pleasure of introducing you to today's moderator Sarah Greenberg BCCs, research manager of content marketing for BCC research, who will be introduce us to our panelists and guide today's presentation. Thanks, Sara. Unknown Speaker 0:59 Thanks, Sammy. Hi, everyone. Welcome to our webinar, as Sammy said, and I think Sammy, our next slide might be my little intro. I'm your moderator, Sarah Greenberg. We don't need to spend a lot of time on this slide. But just to introduce myself, I'm the manager of content marketing at BCC research. And I'm beaming in to you from Raleigh, North Carolina, where it's nice and sunny and warm. And I'm just excited to be with you all today. So if we could go to the next slide, a little bit about BCC. We develop market research that supports academic institutions, corporate professionals, and certainly the tech transfer community. And we do this through our report subscriptions that cover about five collections all listed on our slide here. And many autumn members are actually members with us. So we're very proud of that. And we also offer a collection of short reports and case studies called Innovation spotlights and our newest offering is our podcast called you should know this. And we have been a very proud partner with autumn for many years, we've attended their annual shows and regional meetings for a long time. And we were certainly just at their virtual show back in March. All right, here is what in our next slide what we'll cover in today's webinar. So we're going to talk about two real life scenarios of tech transfer organizations, making the transition back from remote work to in person work. And those two organizations are with us today. We have Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and UN ventures out of University of Maryland. And specifically, we'll discuss how to resume in person work without disrupting any progress on research partnerships and innovations. And we'll also talk about how to support new employees, especially those who on boarded remotely. Finally, we'll have time for questions where you can ask our speakers, anything about how to make that smooth transition back to in person work, wherever your office is in that process. All right. And now it's my great pleasure to introduce our speakers for today, both active in autumn, so they might be familiar to you and both supporters of BCC, so I appreciate them being with us today. So our first speaker is Ken Porter. He is the director of UN ventures at University of Maryland College Park, my alma mater. And our next speaker is Kat Donaldson, Chief Development and biotechnology program officer at Cold Spring Harbor lab in Long Island, New York. So it's just my pleasure to be in their company today. So Ken, Ken and cat welcome. And if we could just go ahead and dive into our first question here. I know that was a brief intro. So let's see. Sorry. So Ken and cat, where are you in the transition process? Are you back fully in person? Have you begun that transition? What's your office's current status? Unknown Speaker 4:19 So I can respond fast. So actually, Coldspring hopper is kind of in a unique situation, for various different reasons. But we've actually been back in office, as you can see, we've been back in the office since September. For the large part, we have had kind of a hybrid system and people working in shifts on rotation to make sure that, you know, people who are sharing offices aren't in at the same time and making sure that buildings kind of at the required capacities. So it's been this hybrid, kind of navigating this hybrid system since September. Um, but come the beginning of May. So just in a few weeks, we are, the expectation is that we'll be going fully in person as people are getting vaccinated more and more that people will be able to come back even sharing offices and trying to get back to that full time in person capacity. Unknown Speaker 5:24 For us, we're still remote we've been remote since March of last year. And as far as the university status, we just went to 75% research capacity. So we have been 25% until about six weeks ago, and now we're up to 75%. The student's educational mission is mixed. In person and, and remote. All of the in person classes are also being simultaneously broadcast remote. But for the research support staff, the rule is most people are still off campus working remotely. We have hopes for bringing things back to back to campus. But there's been no official word informally, in our group that you inventors, we have 15 people, and everybody expects to be vaccinated within a month or so. And so we will start at least outdoor staff meetings occasionally to start bringing the team dynamics back together with the truth, which is certainly something that has been missing over the past year, we've, we've had remarkable success at staying productive. But the isolation has really been challenging. Unknown Speaker 6:35 Yeah, thank you both. I think a lot of people on our webinar today can relate to, to both of those scenarios wherever pieces of that scenario. So I'm glad we have both of these examples. All right. My next question, if we could go to the next slide, please. regarding any progress that's been made on partnerships, innovations, research, how can ttoc transition back to in person work, you know, while maintaining steady progress in the work that they're doing? Unknown Speaker 7:12 Our a lot of our work is going on unimpeded. For example, licensing is always done over the phone. And we found that Zoom is more effective than phone conversation for licensing activities. So actually, we are we've been able to concentrate on licenses and our number of licenses is up over our previous year. Same thing with patenting that's always done remotely. And and we were joking the other day that we're starting to know how the examiner's feel since they've been removed for a couple of years now, and looking for someone to talk to during the day. So we find ourselves in that same boat sometimes. So we are scheduling more examiner interviews. The the where we've been challenged is outreach, outreach and networking, of course, and that's out of out in space that square owns for the whole for the whole year. And so our disclosures are tapering just a bit, they stayed strong all the way through December, at or above last year's level, but they've started to taper a little bit. And what has really been noticeable is the number of new inventors that we've been able to read. So we're still getting saying nearly the same number of disclosures, but from New Inventors has fallen maybe to a quarter of the level last year. So outreach, because outreach and inventors is non existent practically non existent. And so outreach to the to the faculty has been compromised, and outreach to the community as well. So we're missing out on both of those more social activities that everyone's that everyone. You know, everyone has been disrupted there. Unknown Speaker 8:50 Yeah, I 100% agree with Penn's comments. So in many respects, the virtual format has added a lot of efficiencies, right. So the days of scheduling a half day visit to drive up to Pfizer's offices and meet in person kind of for a scouting presentation. And then having to schedule that months in advance and that kind of delay and progressing projects, I think we're not going to be looking at a walk operating like that anymore. Because everyone has just realized that doing things by Zoom is so much more efficient, you can get things progressing much more quickly. So in that respect, outreach has been made easier. And but I agree with Ken, that really the outreach that has suffered is is more internally with our internal community. So our reach to our faculty and really engagement with them that is, you know, face to face contact and informal kind of serendipitous contact around campus. That's what is lacking. And that's that's been that's been really what's missing. But in terms of kind of processes of the tech transfer office, like we've, we've had entire company formation events that are coming to a close now that started during the pandemic. And the PIs and the investors and the kind of the CEOs of the company, they've never met each other in person, even, it's kind of amazing that this is this is what we're all used to now. But it's happening. So I think, moving forward, as we do come back in person, really looking at maintaining those, those capabilities that have made things so much more efficient over the past year, keeping those going, but then seeing what is lacking, and it's a lot of what is lacking is kind of the intangible special sauce of what tech transfer offices do. So it's, it's, I think it's, it's kind of a deeper conversation than just processes that tech transfer offices go through. But figuring out what, what is important to maintain in person. And then the other point, I think that's kind of overarching and not specific to us talking as tech transfer professionals, but I think for any, any manager or anyone looking to transition back to an in person working environment, is just really fundamentally individualizing support for the whole team during that transition. So you know, obviously, on a fundamental level, people need to feel safe, and not everyone either has access to the vaccine, or has been able to book an appointment, even if they, in principle do have access, or they may not want to get the vaccine for whatever reason, that everyone has their own kind of set of special circumstances. And I think, you know, when we're looking at going back to the workplace, it's easy to paint in broad brushstrokes, and make a lot of assumptions, but everything has to be very tailored to the individual. And that does mean you have to give people you know, their own kind of autonomy to a certain extent over deciding what, what they're comfortable with, or what works best or childcare issues, things like that. If good, if schools are not resumed fully, yet, then people just can't come back to the office. But then the flip side of that, which we've experienced is also people do need guide rails. And actually, there's been giving people kind of too much autonomy without setting where there are expectations without setting those expectations explicitly. That's also made people feel lack of confidence or uncertainty, I think about what is expected of them, whether they're expected to be in full time as their pre pandemic hours, or whether they're actually expected to be, you know, minimizing timeshare, in shared offices, these kinds of things. So I think being very explicit about that has proven to be very important, especially as we've been navigating kind of this hybrid, in and out walking situation. So whether expectations being clear about them, where there aren't expectations, and what is left up to the individual to decide also being explicit about that, and letting people be free to choose. Unknown Speaker 13:30 Yes, if I could add, with the transition, one of the things that I'm trying that we're trying to keep in mind is not to leave behind the learnings that we that we've accumulated over the past year. And surprisingly, some of that is directed towards team dynamics I mentioned in isolation. But actually, the Zoom meetings have brought us together in some ways that we don't want to lose as we go back, guys, we go back to work. So as we were on campus, we would have, we have a team of 15. And so we would have an all hands meeting twice a month. But now and then and then the other, most of the other interactions were either one on ones form form a one on ones with with your supervisor, or the informal meetings, of course, we're always we're, you know, we're missing the collisions, that's for sure. But what we put in place of that with the Zoom is that we have three functional units or three operating units within our group of 15, an admin group and IP group and our licensing and startup group. And so those groups meet and meet each other four days a week. So there actually is having more conversations than they had when we were in the office. And we don't want to and we don't want to lose that that's for sure. Because a lot of the conversations aren't just updates but learnings and so as as an individual learns in real time they share the learning, you know, the next day Oh, With the rest of the team, and so we've really accelerated our, our game. We enhanced our team dynamics that way. And also, there's a lot more cross talk among the three operating groups. So, for example, the IP team, I'm sure everyone will resonate with us as always looking to the licensing folks for patent decisions in a timely manner. And we're everyone always seems to be behind on that. And, and I think that it is because of the perspective, we always looked at it from a patent deadline perspective. But now, the IP group invites a single licensing case manager and to them into to, to have a discussion with them once a week. And they take a look at it from a portfolio view instead of from a deadline view. And so that, that is both enhance our ability to meet the deadlines, and also enhanced everyone's understanding of what we're trying to get to towards those deadlines. And so, so we want to figure out how to, how to maintain that kind of interaction when we go back in person. And as well, you know, I'd be remiss for not saying that we spent here in College Park, we spent an ordinate amount of time, an ordinate amount of our energy in rush hour traffic. And, and and I see no reason for us to ever have to deal with that, again, because we can have these virtual check ins every morning at night, and nobody will be on the road at that time. Unknown Speaker 16:38 Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that, Ken. I mean, I, I can at least speak from BCCs percept perspective, we've had a lot more collaboration, cross talk, commutes have been easier, as then no one has had to commute. So I guess. And we don't want to lose that either, as we transition. So I guess maybe my follow up question to you both would be? Do you have any ideas of how you might preserve what you liked? And what worked for your teams virtually, as you transition back to the office and the ideas of how you'll preserve that? And then can you also you mentioned the kind of special sauce that happens in those maybe spontaneous conversations or in person run ins? How might you? Or what kinds of things are you thinking about as how as to how to preserve that, you know, as you stay and maybe a hybrid model. Unknown Speaker 17:37 So I think in terms of the, you know, the serendipitous meetings, and this, I think depends a lot on, you know, each individual campus and its infrastructure and how it's set up. But I'm just so I suppose when we first started coming back to the office, it's also weather dependent. But when we first started coming back to the office, it was kind of frustrating, because we would drive into the office to sit in my office and still meet everyone on Zoom exactly as I was doing at home, you know, so it was kind of, it didn't quite make sense. But now, you know, can you point it out, as the weather's getting nicer, we can start meeting outside in person. So just encouraging that. I mean, I think it's really just encouraging kind of social reconnection with people like getting getting coffee, sitting outside, having lunch, going for walks these kinds of things and not know, high tech solutions, right. But just reconnecting with people on a very, like, personal level. And just it reinitiating that and getting back into that pattern, I think is the key. That's the kind of special sauce that that I was referring to. And, yeah, it's a good question how you know, how you balance being in person, but still having these meetings because you don't, you know, Zoom meetings, it's easy to have a lot of meetings, right. So you don't want to have the same meeting schedule, but having people feel like they have to be meeting in person then for every single one of those scheduled meetings. So we will be to some extent sitting in our offices and zooming each other on campus. So figuring out that balance where it makes sense, but I think with with teams that are already, you know, teams that are operating together, as we have been for the last few months, we can continue zooming with each other for the most part, but I think it's it's the people that you don't you're not zooming with on a weekly basis that you need to reconnect with in person. Unknown Speaker 19:44 Sir, is your I mean, cat? Is your team going out and meeting with researchers? Are they mostly zooming with them? Unknown Speaker 19:51 We are mostly zooming as I say for like the process stuff to continue with projects that are already in motion. Um, but I am when meeting with researchers on as I say, like, without an agenda just kind of a reconnecting on a personal level we are meeting in person. And as I think the expectation is that in May, what as people are getting vaccinated will be, I'm seeing more group meetings for group meetings being scheduled, not many. But selectively there are some, so I think we'll see more of that through the summer. But at the moment is predominantly kind of just possible interactions. Unknown Speaker 20:41 Yeah, I really like what you said about, yeah, the process oriented meetings, all beings in so all of our office action responses, there's a reason for an in person meeting for that way more efficient over zoom. For the internal meetings, I still in depth, but I don't want to lose this the value of these check ins that we have, we just started going to meetings to see each other's face every morning. And I like to think that there can be one more back in person that the check ins will stimulate follow on in person discussions have more depth, because you have 30 minutes, you can't there's no depth on a 30 minute meeting. But I hope that we can use that to set an agenda for the day for For more in depth discussions. Unknown Speaker 21:28 And as we move and this goes into my next question, on our next slide, so as, as you've been, or how have you been kind of taking your staffs temperature about how they feel? Not COVID temperature, but how they feel about returning to in person work? So have you met any resistance? Have you done kind of informal conversations about that done a survey monkey? How have you done that? Unknown Speaker 22:00 Um, so kind of informal surveys. Nothing too formal. But I mean, really, as I say, it's so individualized to each person that there's no way to get around it other than, like, individualized discussions, like really honest communication and very open discussion. You know, it's kind of like, management, one on one of one on one kind of MBA classes. But and making people feel very comfortable to really say how they feel about the situation, because there's no right or wrong. So yeah, some people do feel like it's too soon to be going back, especially this move that is happening next month, where we're really looking at actively moving towards this expectation that everyone will be back as much as possible. As they were pre pandemic, some people feel that's too soon to be setting that clear expectation as an institution. But then, yeah, I think, I think can elaborate on this. But I think it's inevitable that a lot of people will, if they can get their work done remotely, as they have proven, they really can. There's no reason not to be looking towards more flexibility moving forward in the future and giving people that autonomy to choose kind of a different conversation long term than, you know, looking at the remainder of 2021. And, and how people are feeling on a more practical level about coming back into the office. So I think that's two conversations that have to be kind of separated out. They have very different motivations. equally valid conversations, but Unknown Speaker 23:50 for us, I was I was a little, just a bit of background. University workers were put in group one B, I think, for our vaccine schedule. So we've been eligible for a vaccine for excuse me quite some time, and most people have taken advantage of that. Six weeks ago, when vaccines six weeks or so ago when vaccines were just started, you know, early on in the vaccine vaccination process, people I've mentioned, you know, outdoor meetings, outdoor staff meetings, occasionally got tremendous pushback at that time. Tremendous pushback, and, and I didn't mention that I haven't mentioned that anymore for a while but dead last week brought it up again, and and in the context of you know, who's been vaccinated, who's, who plans to be vaccinated. Everybody plans to be vaccinated, everybody is scheduled for vaccination. Most people have already been vaccinated at least one shot and, and I thought that maybe it would be a gradual move towards accepting in person meetings, but actually there was an anticipation and embracing people wanting to get back together and feel and people feeling feeling calm. Trouble with the, with the protection that the vaccines are offering and thinking, I think feel uncomfortable in the precautions as far as the social distancing the masks and the vaccines. And, and a close group of people that you have whom, you know, their status, their vaccination says folks are comfortable with that, and, and are actually looking forward to getting back together. So the resistance has fallen away completely. We're, I think, as a manager, what's coming up, though, is when you know, when they when we do open offices again, and people are ready to go back to work or the expectation of administration is we will be back at work. How are we going to do that. And so I mentioned in the slide that, you know, our our innovation managers course thing, you know, the outreach is such a big part of their job, they'll want to be on campus more than not on campus. Nevertheless, things like drafting license agreements are going to be done more efficiently at home. And without the interruption, everybody's has seen how much time and interruptions take out of your day. And when you're trying to draft the license or, or, or, or added a license, a quiet room is the most no doubt the most efficient way to attack it. But then on the on the other end of the of our work spectrum, the administrative staff, again, you know, they're the interruption slow down their day, they can be more efficient at federal reporting at home than they can in the office. And so they don't want to come to office anymore. And they have they quite rightly can say I can get more work done at home than I can at the office. And they can what I worry about, again, the my favorite phrase team dynamics. And so how does people, you know, people contribute their energy not just to their job, but to the whole team. And so if everybody's at home, they're not contributing that. And so I worry about the team as a whole. And also worry about not worrying about our kids and concerned about the individual and their career growth. So you can do what you know how to do at home. But how do you learn more, and do that I think more efficiently when you're around your teammates. So the first so I have, you know, for me, I'll be in the office every day. And my associate director will be in the office every day for our innovation managers, I think probably foreign one in the office four days a week and off one or maybe off one or at home one every other week, I still think there's tremendous value in that team being being face to face, but the administrative staff on it the other way, some of them will take five days at home. And and I really don't like that idea. But I think they kind of grudgingly offer one day or one day in the office and for at home. And then still I'm concerned about the team dynamics and the growth of the individual. But and I have heard from rumors from the administration, that it will be a two day limit, and they'll put they'll put that blanket Yeah, that's how the whole administration will start that a maximum of our minimum two days on campus will be required every employee, and that will be helpful to me, because I think two days is a gracious plenty for most administrative people on our task on our staff to be on campus. But then by then I don't have to tell them that. So if there's ministration be giving me a lot of cover for I think, taking a conservative look at you know, what's the proper split? Unknown Speaker 28:40 Yeah, and I'll add another issue of people working remotely is they they just lose engagement, not just with the team, but with the institution with kind of the higher, you know, cooling of what what it is they're contributing to what they're doing. And then you really run the risk of them becoming completely disengaged, just not not interacting at all with with their work on a on a deeper level. Unknown Speaker 29:10 Yeah, and I didn't even think about, I mean, can what you said, you can do your job really well at home, for example, but how do you learn more? How do you grow? I have not thought of that before. So that's great. And that kind of moves us into our next question about in person or like your staff, building their careers are coming, being on boarded to your team. So can you have some experience with this? How have you been able to support any staff members who have come who have joined you? But they were on boarded remotely? How have you navigated that? Unknown Speaker 29:56 Well, I'll throw this out. I don't know. And again, it's been Because I, my social network is sort of limited these days, but I have a feeling that the job market is opening up or other people feeling that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we've lost three staff members since Christmas. I think we've just gone on to really, Unknown Speaker 30:15 I was gonna ask about retention and attrition, too, so we can talk about it. Unknown Speaker 30:20 We've lost three since January. And let's see the first person, you know what I'm talking about this N equals one. So we had an associate director whose wife got a job on the West Coast, I guess, about two years ago. And he moved on short notice and was going to be a stay at home dad. And so the office kept him on contract. You know, like 10 hours a week, Max usually was two, and didn't really know what to do with him. He really has his wealth of experience. He was Associate Director, but we use in light for market studies, or early invention assessments. And and I was thinking, you know, as you go through the course of this year, we actually lost that position for due to budget cutbacks. We haven't talked about that, you know, what's done to our budgets. We had a 5% budget cut. And last, last and open position, July 1. And as quality's job, who was the contractor who was the former associate director and contractor force was lost. And actually, even though we lost his hours, he stayed on with us. Yeah, he was he continued to, to, to attend our daily check ins and participate in the conversations, he wasn't doing work, but he stayed engaged with us. And when we log on our first person, and what first are the three people who got a new job, left in January, I immediately sought it in. In fact, I talked, you know, while he was doing this work for free for us, and said, Well, we really didn't know what to do with you before. But we do now. And so when that person left, we just took the whole portfolio and gave it to him. And so he was on board immediately. And so, you know, that was terrific onboarding, you know, have someone worked for you for three or four years, and then stay engaged with you. And then take a portfolio. So that's probably the ideal way to onboard an employee. So that was great. But now we've lost two more people. And the one person, the second person we lost was our attorney. And, and we are actually have to final second interview this afternoon. We got we got two days, and we got tremendous response to our posting, or to our autumn posting, and, and it narrowed down to three finalists and three tremendously. Yeah, it was a, it was a tremendous hiring pool as good a hiring pool as I've ever seen in my career. So so Unknown Speaker 32:53 that's a good plug for autumns job board. Unknown Speaker 32:55 Yeah, they did, they do an excellent job. And, you know, as far as onboarding this employee, so this is an attorney, and, and it will be your, you know, to lead the management of our portfolio. But as we talked about early on, this is an administrative job, this isn't, you know, out and you know, all our patent work is already done over the phone before we have zoom, so we're doing our pattern work better than we could before. So I don't see, I don't think there gonna be any issues with onboarding, this person with respect to how they manage the portfolio, how they deal with outside counsel. And then the IEP team itself is only three people and so they can, they can interact very well over. So then, we lost our third employee, and this is an innovation manager, so Portfolio Manager for us. And I just got that. And so I got the job approved today with HR and that posting will be on the autumn website within a few days. So everybody, take a look at that and apply. And, and then we'll see about how how we'll go about onboarding new technology manager that we don't know. So we know how to do what we do know about when we don't know. But it will be for a senior level person, so an experienced person so that training won't be such a big deal. They should be able to hit the ground running with with their portfolio, fitting them in the team will have to figure that out. And as I did mention a couple of things here of how we get what we're doing now that we think that will, will support a new person coming in and one is more reliance on our Sofia database, everybody's been you know, whereas they some past people would get around to entering things when they got around to it. Now people are taking that much more seriously and realizing that the database is a point of contact and proportionate means of communication amongst a team and so they take that much more seriously. Our our database is in much better shape than it was last year. And then I mentioned before our daily check ins, that's our socialization and then and then we have weekly least supervisor one on ones. So that's what we're gonna try to do. Again, I think it varies depending on the responsibilities in person. Unknown Speaker 35:11 Right? So as you're sifting, as you're looking through applications and writing job descriptions, how has remote work and in person work? How was that factored into, you know, what you look for in a candidate and how you write job descriptions and cat if this is applicable and what you're doing right now, please. I'm curious. And I think others might be curious about how, in person work, remote work, how has that factored into looking for a candidate and even writing a job description? Unknown Speaker 35:48 I mean, I think was, so we are, we are also hiring people. And I think, look, it gives us extra flexibility, right, because although we are looking to get back to normal in person as much as possible situation, that's one of the things that we struggle with, based out here on Long Island kind of disconnected from a lot of anything else. I think that's one of our main struggles, in terms of recruitment generally, and always has been, you know, people flocked to New York City, but then it's kind of a commute, if you have, you know, a partner, if one person in the family is working in New York City as a commute to come all the way out to Coldspring harvest, and vice versa, the other way around. So I think all a patient is a great hindrance in our recruitment of the best people. So I think it'll help us in the long run, to find good people to be able to offer them that flexibility, if they are based in the city, then to say that either they work remotely part time or potentially full time or part time will be the more likely situation, they only have to commute out school three days a week, it just opens up a whole new pool of candidates that wasn't really feasible previously. So I not that, not that that's something that we would explicitly write into a job description necessarily, although, maybe we should consider that. But I think it will make recruitment easier. Unknown Speaker 37:30 Yeah, and I think a tough question and tough decision coming up is the level of pay for that. So we're gonna keep our we'd like to keep pass quality who's in Tacoma Washington on your on this contractors, staff permanently? But I don't know if I'd want to offer? I don't I don't know if that would be appropriate for the for a permanent job. We had talked about for this patent job, does the person have to be local? Or could they do this job remotely just like the patent examiner's do? I prefer since this person is leading a team of three, I think that in person is is critical for this position. But if it weren't the leader of that group, I don't know if I could say that. I don't know if it would be as critical for the person to be located here or located somewhere else and never be able to come into the office. I saw in the paper this morning. They were talking about tech companies doing that. And allowing permanent, permanent remote work, but at reduced wages. Unknown Speaker 38:43 Yeah, and I was just going to ask what if I mean, have you come across any candidates who have made kind of a blanket statement of I'm only available for remote work? You know, and no. Okay. Yeah, just wondering if that's been part of our you Unknown Speaker 39:03 know, that question was in my mind, and the first couple of interviews we had, I said, you you are going to move here, right. And they said, Yes, of course. Oh, okay. Unknown Speaker 39:13 What was there? Right. Yeah, I Unknown Speaker 39:20 think a leader needs to be a person. I'm not ready to make that leap. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 39:27 Absolutely. All right. That kind of brings us to our last question, at least on the slides here. And I certainly have more questions we can ask or Sammy, if you are if you are there. I'm not sure if you're seeing any questions on your end. We Unknown Speaker 39:48 don't have any submitted just yet. So remember attendees, you can use the q&a feature to submit any questions. Sarah, if you want to start with a couple that you still have on your list, folks, get those some added we can do that? Unknown Speaker 40:01 Sure, yeah, I can keep it going. So this is not necessarily not not about hiring, but um, it's just something that, you know, I can imagine might be a good thing to talk about, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about it. So, you know, COVID brought to light, a lot of, you know, disparities and many kinds of populations that have been facing those disparities for years. And certainly COVID made, made people more aware of them have a going a little off book here, but have you has COVID brought to light any disparities that you've noticed in the tech transfer world during this time? Unknown Speaker 40:58 I don't know about that. Something where we're blessed in this region region was good internet service. And, and but we had a few storms back in the winter. And that really highlighted to me how critical good internet is for this kind of situation to be sustainable. Like when we have like, we have a good connection now. And this is the same for our meetings all day, and I went and we can have very effective meetings like this all day. But when people's voice starts breaking up, even when their video starts breaking up, so the efficacy of the meeting goes down fast. And so folks that are in rural areas or play in places that don't have such access, I can imagine it's very challenging. Unknown Speaker 41:45 Yeah, especially as we work towards, you know, making maybe a high office hybrid, in person hybrid model, more permanent access would be crucial, crucial. Unknown Speaker 41:57 Yeah, I think it's, I was just talking to someone yesterday about how enlightening is to realize that, actually, so many people in this country do not have access to internet at home. And it's, you know, something that we assume, and we take for granted, but I mean, it this whole process made me realize even people that I work with in the office don't have internet at home. And it's just something that you you don't really think of. But in a different angle, we actually did have some very direct experience. With this, this also, you know, I think in the past year, or institutions have been thinking more broadly about how they can contribute to improving diversity in all spectrum of their activities. But I'm so Cold Spring Harbor was running a clinical trial for use of commodity or we are running a clinical trial, we don't know the outcome yet. But for the use of commodity and to treat longer lasting COVID symptoms and kind of non hospitalized patients. So not super severe COVID. So it's from Altadena it's an approved drug, it's kind of the most, you know, it's not an IND candidate or anything like that. It's kind of if you were looking at clinical trials, it's a very straightforward clinical trial to run, right. And, and there are so many COVID patients that fit the bill to enroll in this clinical trial. So we will really walk in with a lot of hospitals, in Queens in the Queens area of New York City. And just the very, it was really eye opening to see the limitations of going into kind of community hospitals and community clinics trying to enroll patients. Just explaining to them the concept of a clinical trial explaining to them the concept of you know why we're giving you a tablet, we're giving you an iPad, we'd like you to fill out this questionnaire every day. Why we need to do it, why we need you to adhere to this every day to kind of fulfill. We had PIs who are running the trial who were spending their day phoning patients, Oh, I see you haven't filled out your questionnaire today. Can I go through it with you so that we make sure we have the full set of data? Again, it's very easy on our end of things to assume that everyone knows the concept of the clinical trial. Everyone knows the infrastructure of trials and the purpose and what the goals are and why it's important to stick to the trial structure, but that people really don't and there's no reason that we should expect them to so so this is kind of sparked other interests of the institution and really like building a program that walks on outreach to communities around clinical trials and improving engagement. Because you know, that's it taps into a whole nother discussion about dying bustin biomedical research, right if we're not, there's this fundamental barrier to giving access to certain communities to enroll in clinical trials and be involved in that, then, of course, there's a feedback loop that we're going to be suffering from in the long run. So I think, yeah, thinking about these things more deeply, I think every institution has to be doing it. And I'm thinking a little outside of the box, you know, a lot just kind of doing it the same way that we've always done it. Unknown Speaker 45:31 That's so interesting. So has that. So what might you do maybe for future trials that you run? Like, what what were some of the lessons learned maybe. Unknown Speaker 45:42 So we're trying to build in to kind of an integrated program, that's not just I think the actual running of clinical trials is almost at the the end, the final end of the pipeline. So we're also looking at working with, like, a hospital in Brooklyn, and looking at collecting patient samples. So rather than just the traditional kind of point to point contact a clinician to researcher and trying to get those patient samples, really, you know, hiring teams putting together teams that can be embedded in the hospital clinical setting, who can be responsible, their responsibility is patient engagement. So really talking to patients. Again, this point, it comes back to I suppose, this point about the value of face to face contact, because that's not something that you can achieve virtually right you, if you're a patient in the hospital, and you have colon cancer, you need someone sitting next to you with the clipboard, filling out a questionnaire with you explaining the purpose of why we're asking for this biopsy specimen to take back the research what the researchers are going to do with it. So really looking at putting together teams of people who can be embedded in the hospitals looking at, you know, developing tech, not even I don't want to say innovations, because it's not innovation, but how can we find tech solutions that will make things as easy as possible? So, again, how much can we do? How much can we do with people on their phones so that they don't need internet wired up at home? And they can do things really, truly remotely? So those kinds of things, but I think it really has to be there's so many different points that need to be addressed. So kind of figuring them out and stitching it all together. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 47:36 absolutely. All right. I do have another question that just kind of, I thought about it while we were talking. So you know, as you were, and I'm, again, I'm kind of going all over the place here. But as you were taking, taking the temperature of your staff about how they felt about coming in, and I know that change, you know, at different points in the year and as vaccines are opening up, that is changing as well. So, but have you had to defuse or? I don't know, some like, yeah, defuse any. Anyone who maybe had a more controversial viewpoint about COVID? And who demanded coming into the office, and did you have to diffuse anything like that? Or did you run into any issues with that? And maybe not? No, Unknown Speaker 48:34 that's good. Well, we Unknown Speaker 48:36 had, we have people who are in different risk category categories in the office. And, and so that was a concern. Very much concern. And I but I don't think it was the individuals that were that were is being starch, but more concern of team for the individuals who are in a different risk category. Unknown Speaker 49:07 Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's a spectrum of people. I wouldn't use the word diffuse, because I think that ultimately, no matter where anyone sits on there exists stringency towards COVID restrictions. I think everyone was ultimately respectful of those restrictions, right, especially when you're talking about workplace setting. So there hasn't been kind of any, anything any kind of confrontational situation that needed defusing, but for sure there are people who felt more or less strongly about adhering to restrictions and regulations. Sure you expected, Unknown Speaker 49:53 right? Yes, some? Right. More a little more cautious or full, comfortable. or Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah. Got it. All right. Um, okay, Sammy. I'm not sure if we still if we have any questions, but you Unknown Speaker 50:13 all covered so much, Unknown Speaker 50:15 I think we covered a lot. Unknown Speaker 50:16 I was gonna say there's a lot of content. So I'm sure everyone is processing. Sarah, if that was all that you had Ken and cat, if you have any final kind of words of wisdom that you might want to impart for our audience, on what this journey has been, like coming back into office while you're in that phase, or preparing for that phase, otherwise, we can we can give everyone some time back this afternoon. Unknown Speaker 50:42 Yeah, well, it's hard to believe it's been a whole year. I remember when I first heard word that we're closing the campus, I was like, for a week, Unknown Speaker 50:49 two weeks. Unknown Speaker 50:53 So So like with everything let's try to to take to get with us as we move forward to leave Tibet behind. Unknown Speaker 51:01 Yeah, and I think especially in the world of tech transfer, right. This has been like, the exemplary year where we've seen kind of the peak of what is possible in terms of going from really basic research the whole spectrum, we see the pipeline, we've seen it play out in front of us in a year. So again, yeah, learning lessons learned and taking them forward. And just seeing what has been possible and, and hopefully applying those to those lessons to the future. Unknown Speaker 51:33 Sarah, any final thoughts on your end before I close this out? Unknown Speaker 51:36 Just thank you so much to our speakers. We really did cover a lot and I think, yeah, cats note of 2020 and into 2021, being quite exemplary for tech transfer and I think will serve as a model for future years and future entrance to the tech transfer world. I think ending on that note is a great way to end. Unknown Speaker 52:03 as a whole. I just want to say on behalf of autumn. Thank you so much to all three of you, Sarah, cat and Ken for such an informative discussion in a very timely discussion as these vaccine rollouts, do continue, and thank you to all of our attendees for joining today. As a reminder, a recording of the webinar is available for viewing within a couple of days the event is included in your registration. And please if you can take a moment to complete our webinar evaluation which will pop up when you close out of this screen to help us serve your needs in the future. And with that, I will say thank you again for joining us and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Transcribed by https://otter.ai