Category: From the Director

As one fiscal year closes, and a new one begins, Todd Sherer, Associate VP for Research, Executive Director of Emory OTT, reflects on what the office has achieved and what we’re looking toward in the future. Thinking back on Fiscal Year 2023, what accomplishments stand out to you most? Three big things stand out. One is Emory’s crossing the billion-dollar threshold in sponsored research. While OTT doesn’t directly submit grants and contracts, we do help to enable research through our processing of material transfer agreements (MTAs) and data use agreements (DUAs). We also provide consultation on research grants, and contracts, Read More …

Todd Sherer, PhD, is the Associate VP for Research and Executive Director of the Emory University Office of Technology Transfer. Here, Todd shares the importance of innovation ecosystems: what they are, how they influence technology transfer, and where we go from here. Thirty years ago, if you’d called the innovation ecosystem together at Washington State University – whose technology transfer office (TTO) I was working in at the time – I would have been the only person in the boardroom. Happily, this isn’t the case anymore: I recently had a meeting with at least eight different programs across the university Read More …

Todd Sherer, PhD is the Associate VP for Research and Executive Director of the Emory University Office of Technology Transfer. In this article, Todd reflects on the Bayh-Dole Act and provides a lesson on march-in authority as outlined in the law. Before the bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act was passed in 1980, no federally funded drugs, vaccines, or products were commercialized and brought to market. This was because the government, not the inventing organizations, took ownership of the patent. At a time when American industrialism was threatened, the Bayh-Dole Act strengthened U.S. competitiveness. In the past, activists have tried to challenge Bayh-Dole Read More …

Todd Sherer, PhD is the Associate VP for Research and Executive Director of the Emory Office of Technology Transfer. In this article, Todd Sherer discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the technology transfer industry and on the Emory Office of Technology Transfer specifically. Humankind has longed for better ways of doing things for centuries.  More recently, this phenomenon to make products that solve problems, as well as to create jobs and wealth, has been termed the “innovation economy”.  The demand for technology innovation is global, and there is always the desire to make people healthier and happier. However, Read More …

Many people are unaware, but most universities, including Emory, have formal intellectual property (IP) policies. At first glance it might seem counterintuitive to the university mission of creating and sharing knowledge, but the policies are written in a way that both encourage scholarly activity and the open exchange of ideas while balancing the potential to commercialize new inventions. What these polices say is that if one happens to make an invention that could end up as a new product then the institution owns the invention – but in return, as part of the deal, the institution fronts various costs associated Read More …