Tech Transfer: From Prototype to Product

Established in 1982, Tech Transfer continues to make its mark. In fiscal 2006 there were 10 start-up companies created from the “germs” of research at the UW, compared to just three in 2005. Most of those companies are located in the Puget Sound region. There were also 153 commercialization agreements completed in 2006, versus 109 the previous year.

One of the newest UW inventions arrives in selected retail stores this month—the Ultreo toothbrush. It is the first power toothbrush to successfully use ultrasound technology. In one minute it can remove up to 95 percent of the plaque in hard-to-reach areas. The toothbrush is also a symbol of the UW’s interdisciplinary research. Born in the UW Applied Physics Lab, it was fine-tuned through two UW departments, neurological surgery and pediatric dentistry, and brought to the marketplace through Tech Transfer.

UW Tech Transfer also licensed the technology for researchers at the UW’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who created a startup company to deliver online, rich-media content and software to train the nearly one million employees in the construction paving industry. The company, Pavia Systems, Inc., is now selling modular, customizable training systems to construction paving companies around the world. Professors Joe Mahoney and Steve Muench, and Senior Research Engineer George White, created the content and delivery system.

The length of time required for laboratory research to yield a start-up varies from project to project. Oren Etzioni’s tool to predict whether airfares will rise or fall turned into the start-up Farecast in a matter of months.

“Many times the kinds of technologies we have are very early stage, and there can be a very long time between an idea and making and selling a product,” says Jim Severson, vice provost for intellectual property and head of Tech Transfer. “People also think that all we do is engineering, School of Medicine and computer science projects, but we’re much broader than that.”

Severson cites LegSim, a product that emerged from the UW’s political science department. In LegSim, students participate in a virtual Congress and learn through role-playing how new laws are made. With the help of the George Lucas Learning Foundation, LegSim will be the core of a new Advanced Placement Government curriculum at Bellevue High School.

One of the UW’s more recent efforts to support projects that pipeline from the University to the world of commerce is the Technology Gap Innovation Fund, started in 2004. So far more than $1.8 million has been awarded to 37 projects. The fund is a resource for UW inventions that are commercially promising but need a way to make the monetary leap from academic research to full-fledged commercial product or service. The money is used to test or refine innovations or create prototypes in anticipation of licensing.

The commercial world can expect to see UW Tech Transfer refine its processes to make working with the University on patents, licensing agreements and copyrights even more effective than it is today. “Technology transfer is part of the UW being a tier-one research institution,” says Severson. “It’s a service to the faculty and supports the research mission of the university for the public good. We are the vehicle to get these ideas into a stream of commerce.”

—Julie Garner
See http://depts.washington.edu/techtran/