Congratulations and Thank You for All We Accomplished Together in 2023

Almesha L. Campbell, PhD
AUTM Board Chair
Assistant Vice President for Research and Economic Development
Jackson State University

Colleagues, I greet you with best wishes for a productive and successful 2024 as well as some reflections on what we accomplished together in 2023. I am proud of our collective efforts to promote and advocate for tech transfer and the publicity those efforts have received. I must publicly recognize and thank all the AUTM volunteers, committee leaders, task forces and incredible staff for the work that they do to elevate our association.

Connecting with Members
At last year’s Annual Meeting in Austin, I pledged to help increase AUTM’s international engagement and increase industry engagement, and work to ensure a sense of belonging for all AUTM members. To meet these goals, I and other Board members traveled to the Canadian, Central, Eastern and Western Region Meetings as well as AUTM University. At these events, we connected with Members, listening and learning from them, and afterward sharing their ideas and suggestions with the entire Board. These conversations broadened appreciation of our Association and Membership, and fostered inclusive consideration of varying perspectives by the Board. I thank all of you whom I have met and engaged with; your stories inspired me, and I am humbled by your support and kind words. Many thanks also to those who participated in the three Roundtable Discussions we conducted with the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. Your feedback was extremely valuable to the NSF and should pay dividends for the tech transfer profession going forward. 

Importance of Industry
A few months ago, the Board voted to have one of its Director seats be designated for an industry representative. This was an important step in acknowledging how much our industry Members bring to the Association and to tech transfer. We hope this decision will strengthen our Industry/Academia Connect and Collaborate sessions and increase the value of AUTM Membership value for our industry colleagues. I also want to congratulate those who were elected to join the 2024-2025 AUTM Board. We look forward to working with you.

Global Engagement
I am very proud of the strides we have made internationally. AUTM has been invited to several high-level conversations and events and continues to support technology transfer organizations globally. Many thanks to our international Members and our International Strategy Committee for charting the course and serving as linkages between AUTM and the international technology transfer community. At the International Leadership Summit (co-hosted by AUTM and the World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO]) in Santiago, Chile, AUTM Members offered advice and expertise to the Chilean government and other organizations as they prepare to implement a tech transfer policy modeled after the Bayh-Dole Act. (A report on the Summit will be published and shared with our membership). I was also invited by WIPO to participate in their Global Innovation Index (GII) Retreat and had opportunities to dialogue with Director General Darren Tang and Deputy Director Marco Aleman on future directions and visioning for WIPO, and partnership opportunities with AUTM. Attendees at the Interpat Innovation Summit in Brasilia, Brazil, also shared positive feedback on our Association, and I continue to be in awe of the strides we have made as a profession.

Capitalizing on the CHIPS Act
A theme of the AUTM-WIPO Summit in Chile involved challenges facing knowledge/technology transfer in the next 10 years. These include the changing role of the TTO, especially given new funding opportunities that are allowing us to scale up our operations and adequately staff our offices. We applaud all our Members in the US whose institutions have been awarded grants authorized by Section 10391 of the CHIPS and Science Act, such as the NSF Engines Type 1 and Development Engine Awards and the NSF Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program. We are proud to see the number of AUTM TTO directors involved in leading these initiatives, as well as those serving as mentors for ART awardees. I look forward to hearing the resulting success stories from you and helping AUTM share those stories with the world.

Defending Bayh-Dole
Finally, the AUTM Board’s Day on Capitol Hill helped to highlight and celebrate tech transfer as critical to US innovation and competitiveness strategy. However, we must continue to have a strong patenting system protected by the Bayh-Dole Act to operate effectively. Reinterpreting the Act as a tool for arbitrary price setting would make successful commercialization even more difficult, which is why AUTM is providing feedback to NIST’s Request for Information Regarding the Draft Interagency Guidance Framework for Considering the Exercise of March-In-Rights. We encourage our Members to do the same. The AUTM Board appreciates the expertise and dedication of the Public Policy Legal Task Force and the Public Policy Advisory Committee on these and other public policy and advocacy efforts.
 
I look forward to seeing you at the Annual Meeting in San Diego and eagerly anticipate a productive year ahead! #TechTransferPride