Crowell Testifies Before Congress on Tech Transfer

WASHINGTON, D.C. — W. Mark Crowell, the University of Virginia's executive director and associate vice president for innovation partnerships and commercialization, spoke before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology today in the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education hearing, "From the Lab Bench to the Marketplace: Improving Technology Transfer."

Crowell, who has 23 years of technology transfer experience, was one of six witnesses representing academia, industry, venture capital, and government and private agencies invited to provide testimony at the hearing, which took place from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. EDT on Capitol Hill.

Technology transfer refers to the process by which early-stage academic research discoveries are further developed by commercial entities into actual products or services.

Crowell called for enhanced federal funding by the National Science Foundation and other agencies to support proof-of-concept and translational research initiatives to "accelerate innovation, to enhance wealth creation and to advance societal good."

"There is nothing more important than long-term investments in research universities, because research universities are the innovation engines of the United States," he said. "Given the degree to which universities are increasingly acknowledged to be the platform for innovation for America and the world, we believe that this enhanced federal investment in proof-of-concept research is essential to our national innovation ecosystem," he said.

According to a recent report by the Science Coalition, Universities conduct the majority of basic research in the United States — 55 percent in 2008 — with business and industry conducting less than 20 percent of this research.

Crowell highlighted several U.Va. activities as examples of best practices for technology transfer, translational research and entrepreneurship, including the U.Va. Venture Summit, U.Va.-Wallace H. Coulter Translational Research Partnership, U.Va.'s "True Confessions of a Faculty Entrepreneur" seminar and networking series, and business plan and concept competitions at the Darden School of Business.

"The University of Virginia is committed to an innovation agenda that seeks to create and leverage pathways, partnership, resources and strategies for translating its intellectual capital into products and services that benefit society, generate economic growth and wealth creation, and enhance the research and educational experience of its students and faculty," Crowell said in his prepared testimony.

Over the past five fiscal years, U.Va. researchers have reported the invention of 885 new technologies, 302 (34 percent) of which the U.Va. Patent Foundation licensed to companies and institutions in a rate well above the national average. Many of these deals have led to the creation of start-up companies, approximately 80 of which have spun out of U.Va. over the past two decades.

View a PDF of Crowell's prepared testimony here.