With more and more universities making a push to commercialize their research, five academic technology-transfer associations from around the world have formed a new organization that will set standards of professionalism for people working in the field.
Backers of the new organization, the Alliance for Technology Transfer Professionals, said it is designed "to help further professionalize and promote technology and knowledge transfer" on a global basis.
"In the same way that other professions require that members demonstrate that they have the necessary skills to be recognized as professionals," the new alliance "is now doing that for tech transfer," said Kevin Cullen, a director of the group and director of research and enterprise at the University of Glasgow. He is also a board member of the Association of European Science & Technology Transfer Professionals, which held its annual meeting in Paris last week, where the alliance was formally announced.
Through the alliance, the European association and four other organizations—the Association of Technology Managers in Taiwan; the Association of University Technology Managers, based in the United States; Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia; and PraxisUnico, in Britain—will develop internationally recognized standards, and training in them, for technology-transfer professionals. The new organization, equally owned by the five associations, will be the body that handles certification for the "Registered Technology-Transfer Professional" designation.
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