August Recess a Chance to Teach Lawmakers about Tech Transfer

Mike Waring
AUTM Advocacy and Alliances Coordinator



  
With the second half of 2025 already upon us, it’s easy to look at the summer as a chance to recharge and disconnect from our work. Vacation time is important, particularly given the stressful year it has been for universities dealing with the challenges they face these days.
 
But August is also the month when Congress leaves D.C. for its own time away. And many lawmakers and their staff will be spending time back home visiting constituents. This is a chance to get policymakers out of Washington and onto our turf to see what universities do to help their regions grow and prosper.
 
Check with your federal relations officers to see if lawmakers or congressional staffers plan to visit your campus or institution. If so, this may provide you with opportunities to demonstrate to those individuals the great work you are doing to create new businesses and new technologies to spur the local economy.
 
At a time when your university is fighting for important federal research dollars, this is an excellent way for your tech transfer operation to show its mettle as a catalyst for economic development. You can point to the many successes you have achieved and why it is so very important not to cut research budgets when Congress appropriates the fiscal year 2026 federal budget later this year.
 
By now, all of you are aware that President Trump’s FY26 proposed budget calls for massive reductions in research expenditures. More than half the budget at NSF. Forty percent of NIH.  The list goes on. Not to mention the proposed 15% cap on indirect costs that is now in litigation.
 
If these cuts do indeed come to pass, our nation will find itself unilaterally disarming our ability to maintain world leadership in science. And your university will see harmful impacts on an entire generation of future scientists and local economic growth.
 
If lawmakers or staff are coming to your campus, see if your federal relations folks will include a stop at your tech transfer office on their itinerary. Better yet, take them to meet one of your startups that is based locally and creating jobs. Put faces on the work you do to make America a stronger nation.
 
Tech transfer has a great story to tell. Let’s all look for ways this summer to tell that story of policymakers who need to hear it.