Unknown Speaker 0:03 Okay, great. Speaker 1 0:10 Angie is in the waiting room on the webinar link. She says she didn't use the other link. She used the webinar link that Michael said, Unknown Speaker 0:27 okay, yeah, I see Michael. If Speaker 2 0:34 you can hear me. I guess I don't have camera. I joined, I'm guessing, as an attendee, is that how the by accident? I don't know. Speaker 3 0:46 So it does look like you joined as an attendee. Let me see I Speaker 1 0:55 Michael, I sent you a link. You can click on any of those links and come in as one of us, and you can change your name so Speaker 3 1:05 and Michael, I did just it said, promote to panelist, excellent. So you should be able to start your video now. And I don't see Angie anywhere. I don't see her on Speaker 2 1:26 she said email here, let me respond please. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 1:31 individual, I'm just telling Unknown Speaker 1:37 her to use the individual. Link, Speaker 3 1:45 and I'll keep an eye out for her. So yeah, she should be here any minute. Great. And welcome to any other attendees that are here at the moment. We'll get started in a few minutes. I Unknown Speaker 2:07 It's all panelists, right now, right? Yeah, Speaker 1 2:11 Michael, the three panelists are not going to be initially talking, right? You are going to introduce and then the students are going to talk. And then, yes, yeah. So what order are the panelists? You're thinking I Speaker 2 2:26 was going to throw it to the students, any any preference? I don't know that anybody. I think I asked the three of them if they had a preference, and I don't recall getting one. Okay. Speaker 1 2:37 Now, about the three panelists, Caitlin and Angie and I So, do you have an idea who you're going to call first? I Unknown Speaker 2:46 would also ask if there is, Speaker 2 2:50 all right, yeah. So I was so, yeah, why don't we do we can do al John and Laron, okay? And then, I mean, RK, did you want to go first? Speaker 1 3:00 I thought Angie was going to go first thing, right? So Speaker 2 3:04 that works. We can have Angie go first. How about Angie Caitlin and RK, have you? Because you have the mentorship committee, so that's another one to leave them with. I think, sure, yeah, that that might be a good cadence. Definitely. Unknown Speaker 3:18 Okay. I Speaker 2 3:25 just finishing up a morning snack, forgive me, and then I'll join back once We're a little bit closer. Great. Unknown Speaker 4:01 Where is Angie. Yeah, I still Unknown Speaker 4:06 don't see her, Speaker 2 4:09 and it's saying Sanaz that can't join, already joined on another device. Here's Speaker 3 4:17 Angie. Oh, beautiful. Great. Hi Angie. Welcome, Unknown Speaker 4:23 hi. Hi Angie, Unknown Speaker 4:27 hi. Unknown Speaker 4:36 Okay. Oh, I think the net had the same problem that I had. Unknown Speaker 4:54 How did you solve it? Angie, Speaker 4 4:56 I had, I had things from Don girl and I went. Went in really, really early to test it, and was fine. And then I came out, but then I saw Michael, Mike's email saying it was Michael's email saying, join using this link. So I want you using the other link, and that's when it starts to you're there for ages. Then it tells you you're already logged in somehow, on some other device. So I think Sanaz is probably trying. She's following Unknown Speaker 5:26 Michael. What is the name? Speaker 1 5:28 Shanaz Shahi, yeah, Speaker 3 5:32 I don't, yeah, I don't see Speaker 1 5:36 Angie Casey has this big power of promoting people from regular panelists. Yes, Speaker 3 5:43 I'm so honored. If I they going through the regular attendee link, I can promote them. Speaker 4 5:52 She hasn't, I think she's used the link that Michael sent. That's what it looks like Donald sent one that was, I can't remember when it was, but it had the individual line, and that's the one that I got through on I can, Speaker 3 6:06 I can try to put that Let me see Speaker 1 6:20 she's not included in that individual link, yeah. Speaker 4 6:24 Oh, okay, so maybe if they could Speaker 3 6:28 log in as a regular attendee, and then I can promote them that way. Speaker 4 6:35 I think that's what she's trying but the thing is, the error message that comes up says that you've already joined the meeting on another device. That's the odd thing about it. When you have Speaker 4 6:54 Archie, I knew you were going to have some nice image for your your backdrop. Thank you. Just making us look bad. Speaker 1 7:02 Just, I just work at a beautiful place. Yeah, I'm Unknown Speaker 7:13 gonna try. Speaker 3 7:25 Angie, I just emailed you a link. Maybe you could try to send them that, see if that comes through. Unknown Speaker 7:37 I haven't got that yet. I'll copy you there. Just Unknown Speaker 8:01 sent it through to hopefully show great Unknown Speaker 8:08 Casey, how many are signed up on that webinar. Speaker 3 8:12 Um, I actually don't have the attendee list in front of me. I can see that there are 12 participants online right now, and I can pull that number in just a moment. Sure. Speaker 3 8:48 And to any attendees online, we'll get started in just two minutes. You Unknown Speaker 9:08 that is not in Is she Speaker 1 9:13 the whole LinkedIn is available from Michael's background. I Speaker 2 9:27 we created for office hours. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Casey. Sorry, Speaker 3 9:30 it looks like we did have 84 people register, nice, and we're up to 20 now. So I'm sure over the next couple of minutes, we'll see that number climb. Unknown Speaker 9:45 Are they always students? Speaker 3 9:49 I can't tell by the registration list. Let's see here. It does not look so no. Looks like director of tech transfer. A professor, lot of directors, so definitely a mix. Okay, great. So let's see. Here it is noon, so welcome everybody on the line to today's webinar cultivating the future tech transfer workforce. My name is Casey annenziata and I am on Autumn educate team and today's staff host. All lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio, and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for the presenter, we encourage you to use the Q A feature on your zoom toolbar. Should you need closed captioning during today's session, the Zoom line transcript feature is turned on and available on your toolbar as well. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge and thank Autumn's online professional development sponsor, Marshall Gerstein. We appreciate their ongoing support. I will now introduce you to today's session. Moderator Michael invernaly, Speaker 2 11:10 hello everybody. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Michael invernaly. I'm the senior licensing manager for Physical Sciences here at the University of Connecticut. Been with the team for about three years, and been with the auto Media Committee for about a year, about a year and a half now, and we decided to organize this webinar to sort of focus on inclusivity amongst students, undergraduates, graduates, postdocs and staff in technology transfer, part of the ethos behind this and things that we'll get into today, right, are the reasons for including those folks, what you can get out of including them, as well as what it means for sort of their future, right? Whether you're working with them in a startup, or whether you're working with them in some other aspect of the career, there's a lot of there's a lot of insight there. There's a lot of know how, and there's a lot of diversity to be had, besides engaging solely with faculty on invention disclosures and IP at the university. So today, we have a series of six panelists. We've got three student, entrepreneurs, graduate students, inventors and entrepreneurs and and then we have three sort of autumn professionals from a variety of backgrounds, and they're each going to go through sort of their their background, their experience. And then there'll be time to sort of do Q and A was we talk about programs and things that we can do to engage with with everyone, everyone, meaning at all levels, right? All levels of education and all levels of contribution to the IP. So with that, I'm going to throw it to Al casani. Speaker 5 12:55 Thank you, Michael. It was a pleasure to be here in this webinar. You and I have been working for the last year and a half. One of the technologies that we commercialized here, it was a interesting tent technology. I mean, you put it under the solar, you put it under the sunlight, and it uses the solar energy for cooling. It's itself. So it's basically an air conditioning system that uses solar energy. Hello, everyone. My name is Al casani. My journey with entrepreneurship started like four years ago, four Five years ago, when I sold an idea to a company, and I stuck with them for a couple years. Then I was like, What do I do next? I said, Okay, I'll do a PhD. Yes, oh, these are smart people that I'm working with have a PhD. So why should i? So I joined UConn, I joined Dr Merricks lab, and later on, she became the president of UConn. One day she we just met, like, probably first or second. It was like second time after I joined her group, and she suggested that I should take an entrepreneurship class. So I took it, then that in that class, it was probably a lot of students in this panel would be interested in that. I think all of the panelists here have taken that class. It was Dr, Danish, Mandy's class, Layla and Sam at bar. They both do this entrepreneurship class, and in that class, you're supposed to make a startup, whether it's hypothetical, whether it's just like something that you want to work on for the duration of the class, for a grade, or you want to pursue it after. It's up to you. But that's one of the. Uh, requirements of that class. So I started my startup in there, and this, it was one of these old ideas they had, and it turned out to be a cool idea that has potential markets. So any also was backed up by my group, because in our research group where I do my PhD, we do a lot of sponsored research for big corporations active in clean energy area, like Eversource, nail hydrogen, big companies. And I realized every single one of these big corporations that are active in hydrogen, green hydrogen, which can be used as sustainable energy carrier, like like sustainable diesel, I would say we can put it in our tracks. Today, Amazon is using that field in their trucks, field, cell tracks. Now I realize all of these customers that we do research for are struggling with high cost of precious metals. And what a coincidence, right? My startup, that idea that I had, could save all of these companies a lot of money under precious metal cost, because we developed something, a technology that could reduce that cost by 90% significant. So I showed that idea outside of the class to our group members, some professors that I worked with, and they all liked it. So that gave me confidence. It turned us into a real company, and today we have five employees. We are having this conversation with a couple of our potential customers. We haven't sold our product yet, but it's going to come soon after we finish our R and D and that's where I send with my company. The other technology that me and Michael and the whole TCS team have developed, marketed and almost commercialized, that was that in technology. So I have two active technologies going on with UConn. One of them is my startup, and one of them is through TCS. They do the marketing for you. They take care of the customer relation. And I believe it was a good working scenario where you can help me to commercialize it, take care of the marketing, customer relation, and I did the lab work. I think it was pretty good. So if there are any questions, I would love to take a couple. Speaker 2 18:11 I think likely we're going to hang on to questions till till the end, just because. But I will, I will make one nuance comment there, right? So you're, you are the sole inventor on the self cooling tent technology. It was actually not something that you invented with your advisor. So your technology is unique in that there isn't a faculty member attached to it. You are as the grad student, the inventor, and then the entrepreneur. And so that's that's sort of one of the maybe it's not really an edge case, but it's sort of a unique case for our office. That's that's not, it's atypical, right? But it's something to be aware of in other institutions, especially smaller institutions, where there might be a lot more independent R and D or there might be less interaction with the faculty. So I thank you, Al and but, yeah, we'll anybody with questions, they'll be in the chat, and we can, we can get to those towards the end. I'm going to let John Toribio take it from here. Thank Speaker 6 19:10 you, Michael, and thanks, Al, for sharing your story. It's, I mean, I've known you, so it's, it's nice to hear it again, still, right? So I'm John toruvio, I'm a PhD candidate at UConn. I'm also an entrepreneur. Myself, with two other co founders, we started company called semi, which is logos up here at the top. Basically, we're developing smart clothing for health and fitness, so the sensors that we can put onto clothing give a bit more information, quite a bit more information than what you can get from typical like watch or like ring type of trackers. So kind of just a little bit about my background and journey. So I'm I was born and raised in the Bronx. Come from a Dominican family of immigrants. So first generation American. I'm also first generation as a scientist, as an entrepreneur. Renewer as a college student, as a lot of things. So there are a lot of things that I have gone through and I'm going through that didn't necessarily have, like an example in my family, so I kind of had to seek a lot of mentorship. I was really grateful to just have mentors along the way, teachers, anyone that I can really just ask a lot of questions to. I was always very curious, and some people might find it annoying, but other people found it really exciting, and those are the people that kind of became my mentor. So for undergrad, I double majored in physics and chemistry, and that alone, I think having that experience sort of set me up to do much better as a PhD student now in chemistry. And even that decision came as something that was encouraged, but to me by my academic advisor at the time, something that I didn't think was feasible to do all at once. She kind of saw that I had the potential for it and really encouraged me, and kind of my motivation to not let her down is kind of what encouraged me to do that. And coming to UConn for grad school, I met my now academic research advisor, Professor Greg saut Singh at like Open House Day, kind of just was telling him about different ideas I had and what my motivations were, which included, like, you know, making some type of wearable that could be used for making more personalized medicine, something that can sort of take the guesswork out of medicine and make treating certain conditions like fibromyalgia a bit more direct and straightforward. And as I was talking to Professor Thompson, just about my ideas about how to do it in terms of the technology, he actually told me that he had developed some technology in the past that kind of aligned a lot with that, and that, you know, as in research lab, we've kind of moved on to other things, but that is still sitting there and is kind of ready to be sort of picked up and carried forward, which is exactly the technology that we've ended up sort of adopting just just a method of putting, like conductive ink onto fabric and creating a lot of cool stuff from it. So kind of just not to really belabor the point, but to really tie it up is, um, I think in terms of, like, journey and background, I think learning a lot of different things from a lot of very different people. And not necessarily that you have to go to someone and say, hey, I want you to be my mentor. But it's just a matter of, like, keeping up conversations with people and saying, you know, I'm interested in this. I know that you know a lot about this. Tell me more. And just kind of staying curious is how I've kind of fallen into where I've landed and really happy about where we're at. We've kind of been working a little bit back and forth with TCS. It'll be formerly sort of licensing technology pretty soon, and it's a really exciting point to be at. So I'm definitely looking forward to a lot more conversations with Michael and the rest of the TCS team at UConn. But just so far, they've been definitely very helpful. I mean, like I've said, people are people. It's just a matter of sort of asking for help when you need it, and not really being afraid of saying, Oh, it's a whole system that I don't even know how to tap into. I mean, at the end of the day, it's being run by people. So that's kind of just my mindset for a lot of things. Speaker 2 23:36 Thank you, John. That's actually one of the reasons that we developed the background that you see on my screen now is that we launched office hours to be passively able to be engaged, right? So if you are a student and you're afraid to come to the office or or don't want to come, they say afraid, not afraid like where there's a retaliation type of fear, but just an apprehension, or an anxiety about walking into our office or emailing somebody with our title, we put these flyers up everywhere. It's just a very informal pop in ask a question, right? So I appreciate that that that last comment there John and sort of an odd small world situation. The technology that John is referencing is one that I helped develop in that same lab when I was a graduate student at UConn, which is where I got my PhD. And so, yeah, the sort of dormant tech and new applications and length of time before something becomes interesting, right? There's still students working on this stuff. There's still folks developing these things and excited to get to the license Speaker 6 24:40 part. And just to add on to that, I mean, just the fact that Michael, for example, is in TCS, but is very, like, technologically knowledgeable about the technology itself, right? It definitely helps. It's not just like, talk to someone and being kind of lost. If there's something I don't know about the tech. Can ask Michael. We can clarify. We can kind of go back and forth about it, and that's always really helpful. Speaker 2 25:07 Thank you, Joe. All right, I'm gonna throw it to Laurent, last but not least. Speaker 7 25:12 Hello, everyone. My name is Lauren Burroughs. I'm a PhD student here at UConn in chemical engineering, and I'm the founder and CEO of Andres innovations. Andres innovations is a startup that's spinning out of my PhD research. The general gist is that we invented a reactor that's 80% cheaper than the traditional method of producing ammonia, and ammonia is mostly used as fertilizers, but in the future, money will play an important role in marine fuels, hydrogen carriers and other clean tech use cases. Our start, our startup has raised quite a bit of money from grants and had a lot of words and recognitions at MIT Yale and UConn for climate impact and innovation. I'm currently in the Yukon technology incubation program, which is a program that's run by TCS to incubate technologies that were developed at UConn. It's a pretty great program, and it's almost with a lot of universities I've talked to. Not many programs like this exist, and so many people are envious of this program and the lab space that I get from it. I'm originally from the Bahamas. I was born and raised in the Bahamas. I spent the last decade in the US studying chemical engineering, working in very odd places for chemical engineering, like coal plants in Pittsburgh and biomass power plants in California. But after doing that for a while, I left that role to do a PhD. Basically, I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but if you want to be an entrepreneur in chemical engineering, chemical engineering, in the heavy industries, like I'm used to, it's pretty difficult to do that in your garage. So I use the PhD as a way to develop ideas for a entrepreneurial tribe. I think it's an uncommon path, but I think as more people have a desire to do like entrepreneurship in the heavy sciences is probably going to be a more common path. As you go through a PhD, develop very difficult technology and then commercialize that. And I'm in the path of like commercializing that. So I have some grants, I have the lab space, doing some hiring and licensing the technology from UConn that I developed, and so happy to talk about my experiences with the group and answer any questions that come up. Speaker 2 27:29 Thank you. Laurent, so now that we've heard from some of the students, again, at different levels, right, in different times in industry and different times in academia, right, all those journeys are unique. I'm going to throw now to the second half of the panel, which are the tech transfer folks. I think we're going to start with Angie Miller from life arc. Speaker 4 27:53 Thanks, Michael. I'm really pleased to be here. I'm based in the UK. As you can hear, my accent. My background is Advanced Therapy, so I've always wanted to be a scientist, and I did do that for quite some time. For me, it was just that I like learning and I like challenging myself. So I found that after working in the lab for a while, I wanted to use everything that I had and being someone who's more outward facing, it was really compiling my skills and experience with other skills. So it was the business and law aspect that was really attractive for me. I you know, when I left the lab, I completed a master's in intellectual property law, and I haven't looked back since, and that's about 20 years ago. So what I've done for the last 20 years is really work with innovation academic derived technologies, and that's really ensuring that that development pathway from the bench happens, and really liaising with industry to make sure technologies are are developed to the point that they can be licensed or put into spin outs. What I do today at life arc is as a senior partner. I'm within the academic engagement team, so I help to really train those who want to be innovation professionals, or those scientists who want to be more translational and understand the pathway. It's a combination of skills. Obviously it's it's the technical areas that you have to be able to understand. But there's a lot of transferable skills there. And you know, my my view is, I can see that translation researchers are not the same as translation researchers say, 1015, years ago, they have to be more savvy, they have to understand that, you know, it's not just the publication to really achieve true impact. It has to go beyond that. It does mean that there are skills that are not widely publicized, that these individuals need to recognize and be more collaborative and open with their research to. To trust the process so they can have their publications and everything else, but I'll be happy to answer any questions and speak with others after at the appropriate time. I think I'll stop there in the interest of time. Speaker 2 30:18 So Andrew, you can you, I mean, if you would like to talk about what life arc does, right? That the there, I think there's, there's time for you to do that before we go to the next Speaker 4 30:26 Alright, yeah, well, life arc is, it's UK based, although we work globally. We are healthcare charity, so we're quite unusual in that we have no allegiance to anyone. You know, the funds that we have are based on our success. We have a 2425 year legacy of helping to uplift and develop, basically academic derived technologies. So we provide, we do this in multiple ways. So you know, it could be managing the intellectual poverty, we fund, we invest. We have an investment arm as well. We are a not for profit. So we're a charity, a UK charity, but we do everything to ensure that that technology that has promising prospects of impact in humanity is taken forward for us. We also have our own labs as well, so it's a very unusual structure that we have, and then we have a huge investment in really ensuring that future leaders, whether they are entrepreneurs, whether they're researchers or innovation professionals, have the appropriate skills. So I lead to fellowship programs for STEM stem trained individuals who want to gain those additional skills that I mentioned before and really help innovate technologies further. I also work a lot with researchers, and this is really just ensuring that researchers have a wider appreciation and understanding of that innovation space that they work in. It's not just the research, really, for that research to be impactful, it has to become a product, and that does mean working with other sectors, but also trusting the development pathway that you have to follow. Speaker 2 32:20 Thank you, Angie. I'll still go to Caitlin long. Hi Speaker 8 32:26 everybody. Thanks for having me today. So I'm Caitlin long, and I am the director of technology transfer and Innovation Commercialization here at Alberni University's opaque Institute for Economic Development and entrepreneurship. So Alvernia is a very small university nestled in reading Pennsylvania. So if you've heard of the Reading Railroad, that's us, but again, very small town about an hour outside of Philadelphia. And what's unique about the opaque Institute and how we utilize students is that we are very small office. I'm proud to co chair the small office committee at autumn. But our office actually services most of the community, so we are not just responsible for commercializing faculty or student works, but we really in the mission of alverni as a Franciscan University, we help community entrepreneurs as well. So how do we do that? With a very small staff? There's about five of us who work full time, and we have now recruited over 80 undergraduate fellows. We call them. They are the best and the brightest that we pull into work in our office, as well as about 12 graduate assistants who serve as project managers, and they almost act as many consultants when it comes to an entrepreneur, and we hold their hand from ideation through commercialization. So depending on what their major their interests and passions are, we pair them with these entrepreneurs, to help them in different facets of their business. So it's not just specific to tech transfer. We kind of help in that holistic view of entrepreneurship, but much of it, we do educate around intellectual property and how to move that forward. So how did we get there to that many students and and how, how, is their experience? So we actually utilize Federal Work Study dollars that's, you know, specific to the US, but we are able to, you know, pay them at a small fee, but they're able to give up to 20 hours a week to our office as their work study and they are getting a robust experience that is a huge resume builder and preparing them for the real life workforce. So they're able to help as a freshman, and even now, we're recruiting from high school in our tech transfer office. So as you know, 1718, year old, they're already getting exposed to all the important. Pieces of IP and how to move that forward. So for me, you know, I kind of came to tech transfer a little bit later. I actually had a medical background and transitioned. So I always kind of think about what, how would my life be a little bit different if I knew about tech transfer from those early formative years. Now I don't regret anything about my pathway, of course, but I I'm very passionate about trying to educate these young, entrepreneurial minded students about the power of what we do and that they can get involved at a younger stage. They don't have to wait until their PhD level or postdoc or even after that, to become a tech transfer professional. So I have them signing up for the autumn society. I have them coming to the conferences. So if you see me, you will likely see a couple people following me around. Those are my students. So we are really passionate about getting them involved. Speaker 2 35:59 Thank you, Caitlin, I'm glad you had mentioned that. Right? We were just on the small office call the other week, and it's, it is a great way to engage and it's a great way to educate. All right? RK, Unknown Speaker 36:10 Europe, good Speaker 1 36:12 afternoon, guys. I'm RK in I'm a senior director of business development and technology transfer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This is a research laboratory in Long Island New York. It's a not for profit, small institution, but big in its spread of innovation. So we have eight Nobel laureates come out of Cold Spring Harbor, and it's something that we're all proud of, and including a very interesting trivia so the only woman Nobel Laureate in science who got it solo. Can anyone name that person? Put it on chat if you can. So think about it, and I will let you know if you can't answer as soon enough. So I have been here at Cold Spring Harbor for the last seven years. I've been in technology transfer for 10 years. Before that, I was in a post PhD. Oh, awesome. This. I got it so Barbara McClintock, so that's amazing. Still, the only women Nobel laureate to ever receive a science Nobel solo? So yeah. So I've been over 10 years after PhD in science, doing postdoc research, and also a scientist, researcher, independent research, but not grant funded. But yeah. So I decided science is my passion, but I need a career as well. So I combine science and business, and that's what I do in technology transfer. It's the business of science. I really love it. So to complete it, I got an MBA in my last job at University of Illinois. So I am an Illinois graduate as well. That's a proud thing. My PhD was in Arizona, so I have something similar to what John tribe was mentioning. I was a scientist and I didn't have somebody like Michael sitting around 20 years ago, tech transfer was not that great. Autumn was not that big, so we didn't have these kind of webinars to spread around the news and also like beautiful zoom backgrounds, like what Michael has. So yeah, so I was thinking, I have to pay for patents, and I was dreading to go and meet with a patent attorney to talk about my science, because I had no idea what was patentable, but, yeah, I never did that. Had that conversation, but I, I mean, really, it's, it's great to see John, Lauren and Al, continue with their passion in science and go ahead and build their companies. Good luck to you guys. So at Cold Spring Harbor, I try to do outreach among the students. We don't have undergrads, we have grad students. We have postdocs and techs who are thinking of grad school or thinking of medical school and things like that. So I try to do outreach efforts with them. So we also have amazing affinity groups at Cold Spring Harbor. I am volunteering with one of them. It's called diversity initiative for the advancement of stem so it's short as DS, so I am part of that organization as a social media coordinator. So what I do is I started something with another person who left for she was a postdoc. She just got a faculty job at the University of Helsinki. See she's finished, so she decided to go home, but now I'm continuing her effort to interview people who are texts or postdocs or students who just got a publication. I'm interviewing them for what they are planning to do with their publication, what their next step in career is. So that's a great thing to advertise what they do. So I'm sure they will develop into somebody like John or al or Laron in the next few years. So that is something I really enjoy. And also meet up with people. We have this thing called meetings and courses at Cold Spring Harbor. So we have a wine and cheese every Wednesday at Cold Spring Harbor. As part of that, all employees are free to attend. That's a great place to meet other students, postdocs. So like what Michael is doing with this office hours. I did this impromptu meetups with these students. That's how I develop what tech transfer does, those connections with them, and also I help them with their career. So one of the things that DS does is we do a graduate student workshop. So this is for undergrads thinking about grad school. So they we help with their applications every year. So that's something, another thing I'm proud of, to be part of ds. So as part of autumn, I also do two other things, which is a mentorship and also be part of this thing called Better World project. So mentorship is very important. So I had a mentor who helped me get my current job. So that's a relationship I'm still maintaining after seven years. So being the recent Chair of mentorship at autumn it's a great endeavor. It's so popular that Angie thought we should help Angie's efforts at the life arc fellowship. So life arc is an amazing organization that developed fellows in technology transfer. So the author mentorship committee is helping Angie's life Ark fellowship with matching the fellows with mentors all around the world. So that's something I'm very excited about but also autumn, mentorship itself is something that has grown from about 20 matched pairs to now about 60, and we are hoping it will grow about 100, because it's not just about budding people getting mentorship. I think mentorship needs to be lifelong. It's a give and take as well. So I want to be a mentor for a lot of people, but I want to be a mentee with somebody more experienced than me who's able to give me some advice, but I also think I can provide them with something that they will get enriched out of being a mentor as well. So that's something I like. So finally, I want to highlight something called the Better World project. So anybody in the audience thinking they have a fantastic story to tell about their tech transfer success in their office, they should think about putting up their story as a better world project story. So I have it in my LinkedIn profile today, so go to it. You can just search RK and R I N in LinkedIn, you will see my name. Go to my LinkedIn post. That is next week. Is the deadline. So please try to think about your success story. John Toribio, think about you can put it, but it has to be a product. So maybe in a few years you can think about convincing Michael to put your story, yeah. So think about that guy. So it's a great way to advertise tech transfer success. Talk about, boast about your success stories and yeah. So that's that's about it, Michael. Speaker 2 44:01 Thank you. RK, yeah, no, I would absolutely encourage all three of you honestly once, once we get to commercialization, all three of those stories would be a good story, right? Better energy production, but you know, cheaper ammonia production, biometrics and the self cooling tent, which would you know In, certainly in arid regions, right? That's also a Safety, Health and Human wellness. Ultimately, that's the impact of that kind of a tent. But I'm going to have to steal your snack idea. I think we get more people at our office hours if we, if we brought food and things. But it's, you know, definitely a good idea. So thank you. I want to thank everyone for that feedback, and I'm going to sort of give a bit of a roundup right across all the things that were talked about. There's at least five good reasons to engage with the student entrepreneurs, right? And we've sort of heard all of them, but I'll give a quick, sort of summary, right? One of. Which is from an EDI perspective, it's good to engage at all the levels of inventorship and contributorship, because odds are, you know, your faculty member may or may not be diverse, but all of the inventors combined, there's diversity there, right? There's different genders, there's different races and backgrounds, creeds and expertise, right? And so just from a from a numbers perspective, right? You should be engaging with these folks, because the it, it does two things, and maybe these are the next two reasons. But I'm not going to stick to a hard list of numbers, right? One of them is their insight and an invention disclosure and their know how is going to help you know more about the tech, even if the faculty is a great explainer, faculty are often a little bit more busy, and so not only will you get that sort of impact and input, you'll get the metrics of the EDI, but you'll also get a better patent at the end of the day, because now you have a student, or somebody who's very close to this looking at what is going into that application and maybe reading sentences a little bit more carefully than the faculty member might have time to do, right? And so you, you, you know, there's a, there's an upside on not only metrics, but future, future technologies there. And sort of, as Caitlin mentioned, and as we touched on, in a few different ways, it's also education for these folks, right? I was lucky enough to be in a lab that patented when I was a grad student, but I still didn't know what the tech transfer I don't know what tto stood for. I didn't really understand who this person was. It was just their job to do the thing, and I worked with them, right? But over time, and in my first startup, I was licensing that tech from them seeing this from a lot of different angles, a lot of different perspectives. So the sooner you're educated, right? Whether you're a high school student interested in STEM, an undergrad, a grad, a postdoc, right? There's there's, you know, you can invent something at any stage of your life, but knowing about this, not only as a way to work within your university as a student, but also as a potential career path shows up, right? And that was something Caitlin mentioned as well. And then there's a lot of other programs and fellowships. I'm going to throw a few in here. I'm going to link to life arc, and then the fellows that they do and invent together. There's a GEM fellowship that specifically for underrepresented graduate students. There are resources out there to help fund them, if, even if, your office can't necessarily do paid internship, right? But we also use interns effectively to sort of train and engage and give them exposure to this right? Most of the time they want to work in a lab, but there's always a subset of folks who are interested in patent law or interested in the business development side of things, or maybe they're getting an MBA, and they want to understand technology a little bit better, and it's not even what they're studying, but understanding this will help them. Will help a business person on the sort of MBA track as much as it'll help a PhD, because you still need to understand those things to work in a startup where everybody's wearing many, many, many hats. I think, I think that's a good number of them. I don't know if I hit five or not necessarily, right, but a lot of good reasons to engage at all those levels, I think. And so again, different, different, different ways of interacting. All the three folks that are entrepreneurs on this panel have been engaged with our office in one way or another, whether as an inventor, a sole inventor, or someone who's going to license the technology as an inventor who's been in industry and is also going to do, you know, a company. And so I think that just sort of, again, speaks to why we're doing this webinar, why we're trying to get that out there. And I guess a nuance of educating early is also just to bolster, you know, Autumn's membership as well, right, to have more folks right interested in this profession in general, or knowing that it is a path, not just that education, but that that right? If you don't want to be a faculty member, or you don't want to be an entrepreneur, but you want, sort of, as Angie said, take your brain and use it for 100 things instead of one, because maybe that works better for you. This is certainly a career that speaks to that sort of thing, right? You're, we're, we're we're almost all sort of in startup offices within our own institutions, and so we're wearing those hats, and we're working on all those different projects together. So I didn't prepare any questions specifically for the panel to prod discussion, but I think maybe before I throw to the other group. Do you have any questions for each other based on what you've heard? And I just threw into the chat a couple of links that are, that are, I think, useful, helpful. I Speaker 1 49:49 have a quick question for Al, because, as you said, he's a student inventor and a solo inventor. So I had us some experience like that. At when my first job, there was a student who came in with an invention, and he said he's the only inventor the PI doesn't have. And the PI tried to put a protest about this. So what is your experience? Because is it clear that it's your technology, and even with that, there is not much pressure for the tto to help, because if it's a student inventor, there is not much output for the tto unless there is a license on the product. Because for a faculty have some power about this. So they will force the tto to patent and things. So like to hear your experience, how it went. Michael chatter Diaz, if he was going to say something not good about you, I'm pretty sure you he's not going to Speaker 5 50:53 Yeah, great question. I was lucky enough that my PhD advisor fully supported this Rudenko was, she initially gave me the the initial confidence that you need as a student to be like, hey, I want to like, patent this, like the first place and going on. So we had to prepare samples for one of the customers that was interested in this. Again, Dr Merrick was very supportive of this. They provided me with the lab with the equipment needed for getting the job done, and we succeeded in making those samples so it's it's all very dependent on how lucky you are regarding the amount of support that you get. But yeah, I guess I was lucky for this scenario. Speaker 1 51:54 And also, yeah, people like Michael are important as well to back you up be a champion in the tto, because that's also a necessary luck ingredient to have somebody to back you up. Yeah, Speaker 5 52:08 yeah, absolutely, yeah. I, like I mentioned, I've been working with Michael for over a year and a half for that tent technology. And yeah, it's been quite a journey. And yeah, it's like links of the chain that all lead to, like work, hand to hand, so that you can actually commercialize technology. And it requires a good customer relation, like being knowing that business language, how to talk to the customers had to talk to the business people and how not to be boring and sound sketchy to them, because they come from a different world that is now similar to what we see in academia. You know, whatever poster they present, everybody is going to most of the times, everybody is going to be agreeing to, when it comes to the money that you have to spend and you have to make profits out of it, that's going to be a different story. So I think we did well regarding the 10th right? Michael, you want to add something? Speaker 2 53:19 Yeah, man, I was going to say, right? We marketed this. We we worked together on the nuances coming in of the solo inventor, and it really was outside of most of the of his PhD research, right? And so that was really how the line was able to be drawn, clearly, right? It had nothing to do with the main stuff that he's focusing on in radkas lab. And so these things were separate, and we marketed it. And then in order to actually do a material evaluation agreement with a company, we had to also go through a few nuances to kind of put that paper wall up in the lab and make sure everybody was okay with certain work being done here, given that UConn was supporting the IP. And so, yeah, there's always intricacies that need to be settled, right? That's our challenge, as a tto at any institution, is to navigate those paths. And I think we've done a good job, right? We've got a call with them next week. I'm like, the fingers crossed that they get and run with it. Speaker 5 54:17 Yeah, awesome. Angie. A couple million dollars, I'll be happy. You'll be happy. Everybody's hope, right? That's the hope. Unknown Speaker 54:28 Sorry, Angie, go ahead. I see the hand up. It's Speaker 4 54:30 just that. I was just thinking, you know, you've got, we got the attendees here on this webinar, and we're talking about researchers being more translational and being more entrepreneurial. And then obviously, you've got some that have that that that real training as a scientist, or whatever technical background, who are not using it in the lab or as it was initially intended. One of the questions I just want to fling out there to see, you know. So are, are the undergraduates and graduates being provided with the appropriate training and knowledge? Because the thing is, so far, just just listening to a lot of the conversations, a lot of the knowledge, and you said that you weren't aware of, you know, some of you were saying you didn't have someone like Michael. Others were, I wouldn't wear patents or anything like that. Shouldn't at this stage now where innovation and this whole translational piece is not new. Shouldn't that be part of the undergraduate program? Shouldn't it be like it shouldn't be where, if you go out your way, you might get this. Shouldn't it be bread and butter alongside all the technical skills? For me, as you can see, that I believe that it should be but the thing is, I'm just throwing it out there. I did like to know what others think, because the thing is, otherwise, it's always going to be serendipity, or if you're surrounded by the right individuals, should there be mentorship offered all along? I offer a lot of mentorship to my fellows and everything, but I never had a mentor, and it's really where now I would expect that, basically, it's easier to have the support, but I think it should be there along these programs that are being delivered, rather than an add on, or if you've got enough bandwidth or the opportunity arises that You get that. Speaker 2 56:20 So I agree. I definitely agree it should be part of it. I'm also cognizant of the level of power our given offices might have to do that sort of coursework, right? We could recommend it the bandwidth to reach out. I mean, reaching out is the easy way. That's the passive way, right? We get a list of inventors. There's students on it. We can reach out to them too, right? That's the lowest level of effort. One thing that we've tried to do is give departmental seminars to graduate and undergraduate courses. We have a senior design class that often engages with industry, right in the engineering department. But not every school necessarily will have an engineering department or that kind of relationship with industry, but those students are exposed to it early, and we give little snippet talks to them and like we're available if they have questions on IP or if there's a sponsor. But yeah, I there are some. There are probably other universities that do it a little bit better, that have that undergraduate coursework. I know, I don't know if UConn has undergraduate coursework besides the senior design, but yeah, it should be. It should be a part of the curriculum, right? I would argue it should be a part of the graduate seminar series every year. We should, okay, yeah, here's all the basics. Speaker 4 57:36 I think where those that are doing it, should shout about it a lot more and really talk about the impact. And then I think then you will get more actually engage in that. And I think it will be much easier. I think it would be there are so many professions that someone with an undergraduate undergraduate degree can go for, but there are so many ways also that they can pivot, and it's unless these core scales, the core knowledge is there. They will never know. I mean, someone attending this webinar, they will definitely have insight that they didn't have before. Not everyone is a la, Ron or John, you know, or Al. It's really where these are individuals that really had something that sparked them to go forward a bit more, a lot of that wanting to and they never, they never, they never really get there. Speaker 8 58:33 So I completely agree with what you guys are saying, and I do wish it was embedded more in our curriculum, and we certainly are striving to do that. But it can't just be us. We really have to have that full university bias. But for our office specifically, someone had asked in the comments about, how do we train all of these students effectively? So at baseline, the students will get like, an IP 101, training that they have to complete, among other trainings, depending on what area they're specifically working with. So in the overall opaque Institute, since it's all things entrepreneurship, some students are specific to what we call creative services. So they might be more marketing type of brain, so they're working on that stuff. Then we have a finance team, so they may be working more so with financial projection budgets, etc. And then we have more of my tech transfer fellows who are anyone from the College of steam so stem in the arts, Health, Science and College of pre law. So before they even touch a client, they will go through some more in depth IP training. So we've recorded them, because we can't be everywhere at once. So we've now recorded them, and have a process that they are required to watch the videos, sign off on them, we talk about it, and then, of course, they get more training on the job, because they're not really going to learn until they're actually meeting with those clients, understanding the science, understanding what kind of IP they do have. Have, and then, of course, how to commercialize it. So that sounds like an overly simplified way of doing it. It's taken a lot of time to build up, but we certainly do the train the trainer model as well. So once I have a graduate assistant who now really understands this whole process, they're able to impart that mentorship and knowledge onto their undergraduates, and then even the more senior undergraduates can impart that knowledge to the freshmen who's just brand new to the school. So we kind of have that down the line. And then, of course, the staff is always there to support so it's taken a couple years to really build that up. We started maybe with like 10 fellows, and now we've gradually increase every year. But that's kind of how we have started to do more training. But I agree, it can't just be in our little in our little bubble. Yeah, Speaker 2 1:00:55 yeah. Having a training document for our interns is important too, right? Or at least somewhere to start lists resources, right? And then they have to see it once, or at least, that's how I learn, right? It's easier to learn a little bit when encountering the thing. Speaker 4 1:01:11 But I think even even technologies that you've you know, the reason why I knew about innovation was because when I was in the lab, some of my colleagues, we made a novel discovery. So we had, we had some technology patented, so you're there in the lab, so you see the process of the evaluation, protection and, you know, partnership, I think it is where one of the best ways for someone to really understand and resonate is, if someone you can you connect with. So you can see that they are similar age study and a similar subject at similar level. And you see, you know, you follow the journey that they've gone through. I think you learn so much just by watching that and hearing and hearing what they say, the challenges that they you know, the uncertainty, the confusion, the excitement, I think that's one of the best ways to really appreciate what does it all mean. One of the few gifts of COVID was the fact that it impacted everyone, and to see technology that was academically derived worked alongside industry and become a product that really saved so many I think everyone, at one point understand, understood innovation and appreciated it. Unfortunately that knowledge and appreciation is gone now, because, you know, everyone's moved on, but it's, it's success stories and real examples that really resonate with everyone in our everyday lives, that really make a difference. So the better word project is it's another good way to do that. Talking about the journeys these the impact that these technologies have, the fact that they, you know, the individuals, the teams that are involved, I think it's these are some of the ways that are the best training for individuals, because the theory is the theory, and it's quite dry, but when it's applied, that's when it's it becomes real and it becomes alive. Oh, Speaker 2 1:03:06 absolutely right. I imagine all of us had the experience of a good or a bad STEM teacher, right? One that could engage you on a boring subject, and one that could not, my orgo Professor brought in slightly, shall you say spoiled fish to show that when you squirt the lemon on it, it neutralizes the odor. The odor was it a mean, you had to know that. And I'll never forget. I mean, that was just, you know, what a lovely, what a lovely day in the in the lecture of all that was so, Speaker 1 1:03:33 yeah. So today, Nobel is coming in, like 10 days. So today there was a post on LinkedIn by a Nobel laureate who said he didn't like his teacher in high school, and the teacher felt likewise, and the teacher failed him, and this was a chemistry Nobel laureate, and the high school class was a chemistry class. So yeah, so you can have bad teachers and still end up excelling in the field. So, yeah, yeah, passion, Speaker 2 1:04:02 passion is key, right? And, and the repetition, right? Angie, like you've said, it's, it's a constant cycle, right? There's new students every year. And if you don't constantly hit that message, right, Coca Cola still plays, pays for advertising, right? You couldn't. You could argue that everybody knows what Coca Cola is, and most people do. I think it's still the most recognized logo on the planet. They're still paying for ads, right? Why? Well, that's one of those reasons, and I think that's another reason. The Better World Project is a reason to attract people to the field, right? That seeing that impact makes you care more if you have an aptitude for chemistry or bio or medicine or the arts, right, or helping neurodivergent individuals learn better, right? That the technologies are not just in those, what we would call hard science or whatever that term is used. And AR just had asked also, what are some of the technology transfer aspects that you would spotlight to attract students or to attract people? And I'd say that's one. Of them, right, the work that we do can be seen in the world when it when it comes to fruition, right, in a way that isn't always true in other professions, but also that it is a profession for the student, right? It shows you, I could be a patent attorney. I could be a Patent Agent. One of my colleagues when I was a grad student now is a patent examiner at the USPTO, right? He never got his JD, but he got a PhD and learned enough to be a patent examiner. Right? Those roles, in addition to working in industry or being a startup, or working with a startup, or starting a startup, or being a faculty member, right? I think that's another attractive reason. It's you've learned more, you can think a little bit better. And even if you just want to go into business development or something else, or if you want to be an MBA, you still at least have this understanding that you may not have had before. I think I see one more recruitment starts the high school level. Oh, that was Caitlin answering, Speaker 5 1:06:02 yeah. One final thing that I would add is that it's also important that we educate our professors about entrepreneurship as this happened to me, a lot like they see this as a distraction or something that is not the mainstream, so like, they'd be like, we don't like this. Let's just stick to the mainstream. But seeing this as a another path of success and supporting it could be really beneficial for people like us, and it would definitely encourage more people to join this path and boost the economy the air layers they can Speaker 1 1:06:48 that's an excellent point. It's always a work in progress, but there are going to be some faculty who are going to resist any kind of differentiation from basic research. So that's some people are really committed to that, but there are other stories where basic research people do for 20 years and suddenly that has some application that can change the world. So yeah, keeping open mind, but I agree we should always try to educate faculty about entrepreneurship? Speaker 4 1:07:22 Yeah, I It's, I think, one of the easiest things to do, because potentially, a long process and faculty plays a role. They're the ones you know, for example, are going to be going to be stem aspect. Think it's really where the best way to ensure that everyone realizes that you have a role in innovation is that the actual development pathway, whether it's a diagnostic, whether it's a drug or whatever that you know, that is outlined so you can see that it's a tag team sport, it's not one individual. The Academic has a place, you know, faculty has a place, the innovation professional industry, and whether that's licensure or it's it's a spin out. You know, there are roots that have the those steps have to be crossed some, some way or another to really reach that product. So I think, really, anyone who enjoys science, you just say to them, why and why do they want to do it? It's not just for enjoyment. Usually, there is a larger picture that they want to make a difference in the world, and you have to ask them, how are they going to do that? But the basic researcher, it may be just working on that isolated whether it's a channel or something else, but someone's going to use that knowledge and apply it so that it will become more translational, and it will impact some sort of, some sort of other aspect, and improve, really lead to a product or an improved way of doing something that will impact humanity. And I think that's the higher picture that basically everyone should be aware of, and faculty should be aware of, but it's really where, understanding that you don't just choose one or the other, it's it really is where it's the bigger picture, it and it's all connected. I think that's, that's the key thing. And I just saw where Kennedy mentioned that it's very inspirational to go into schools. We do a lot of STEM outreach, and it's one of the kids are very bright, much brighter than the adults that they become later on. But there, that's where it's the reality. I mean, some of them, as soon as you get them talking about science, you realize that they've read a lot more than most adults. And it's really where bringing the science or whatever the technology is to life and making it real, so that they understand that they use science every day. They use these, these mechanisms that we talk about every day. It's not in isolation. I think putting it into context is the key. Really, Speaker 2 1:09:56 more interdisciplinary now than ever, right? So, yeah, that connectivity and the. Understanding and a global perspective is helpful. And, yeah, Autumn academic, right? University Technology managers, right. So that's education is in our blood in some way or another, right? And so, yeah, and getting and I recall UConn, I don't know if we still do them, but a middle school science bowl and invention fairs and other local stuff, right? And Caitlin, you mentioned you serve as a region and area, right? Other, not just one institution, essentially. So being engaged at that level with those things maybe isn't something our office can do. But I mean, I would volunteer at one of those if they asked me to be a judge at an Olympiad again. Or do things don't Speaker 4 1:10:40 need to be us. You go and do it. I do it. It's we. I go into the schools. It's like, my daughter's school, I was there. It's like, I'm not only Angel's Mom, I'm a scientist, but also I work with innovation, and it's really where I think they need to see that, you know, you you're not boring, you're not dry, you don't have square heads. It's you don't, you know, you have normal interest. I'm there. It's just for sports day to win. But also, when it comes to science, it's there I'm excited as well. It's they need to see the fact that it's real people that do this. Speaker 2 1:11:15 One final question I wanted to get to that was asking any take on recruiting internationals into tto coming with a passion, or how ready are they to work with candidates going through worker authorization pathways, right? I know that I work with a diverse group of folks, but I think they're all technically citizens, right? Unfortunately, that's something that's a US employment law question more than it is one for us. No, Speaker 4 1:11:40 I think it's a global one. It's a challenge globally. It's, I think it's become more difficult because some of our fellows have gone to the US and got their TT really gone into a tto role, but it wasn't easy to do. It's the will is there. It's, it's, really, is, if they can do it. But it's not just the US, it's also Europe. Because, as you know, UK is not part of the European Union anymore. So it is where, even for someone from France to work in in the UK and vice versa, it's a challenge. I do think each country, if they really want to have the best skills, they need to recognize where that's coming from. And it's not going to be just homegrown, but also individuals will go wherever they're going to get the roles and also the career path, not just that one role, the salary, the support, and where they feel that they belong. Because the thing is, with everything, it's one thing having a diverse pool of individuals, but you want them to really feel as though they belong there as well. All Speaker 2 1:12:52 right? Well, I want to be respectful of time. I know we're a little bit past the hour, so I'm going to say thank you again to our amazing panelists there. Everyone did a great job. A lot of good insights here. Thank you to everyone who attended. I know a bunch had to drop off. The recording will be available, I believe, as usual and a little bit. But thank you everybody. This was fantastic. I appreciate your insights. Speaker 3 1:13:15 Thank you, Michael, yes. Thank you everyone. On behalf of bottom like Michael said, the recording will be available in the Learning Center within one week of today. Please complete the webinar evaluation, which will open immediately when you sign off the session, and we hope to see you again soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care, everyone. Bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai