Tag: ORA

Blog posts to be included in the ORA Newsletter blog site

Tackling the Terms of Technology Transfer

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

As with any field, technology transfer comes with its own special language. But there is no need to worry when you face an article filled with confusing acronyms. Keep this glossary handy for when you need to break down the different types of agreements used throughout the technology transfer process. MTA & DUA MTA stands for Material Transfer Agreement and DUA stands for Data Use Agreement. Collaboration is critical to research and technology development. So, colleagues may want to protect the research tools that they share with each other. MTAs and DUAs are formal contracts that define the proper use Read More …

From the Director: Looking back and looking ahead at the end of FY23

Posted onAuthorJessica Beach

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 …

Bayh-Dole Coalition Honors Emory Professor Behind Groundbreaking HIV and Covid-19 Treatments

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

ATLANTA, GA (August 21, 2023) — Emory University Professor Dennis Liotta has been featured in the Bayh-Dole Coalition’s new “Faces of American Innovation” report for developing chemical compounds used in life-saving medicines. The Bayh-Dole Coalition is a diverse group of innovation-oriented organizations and individuals committed to celebrating and protecting the Bayh-Dole Act, as well as informing policymakers and the public of its many benefits. On September 13, Dr. Liotta and four other leading innovators will receive the inaugural Bayh-Dole Coalition American Innovator Award in Washington, D.C. “This is a wonderful honor, and I am humbled to receive it,” said Dr. Liotta. Read More …

contractConnect: Submit your agreements online

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

Save time and paper: With Emory contractConnect, you can now submit your Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) or Data Transfer/Use Agreement (DUA/DTA) online! Emory personnel no longer must download, fill out, scan, and send PDFs. Instead, you can submit your MTAs and DUAs directly via the forms found on Emory contractConnect. Automatically and seamlessly upload any number of supporting documents, save your submission as a draft to come back to, and get all the signatures you need on this user-friendly portal. All questions from the previous PDF version of the questionnaires are found on the system, and records are automatically created Read More …

11 ways to get involved in entrepreneurship at Emory

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

Emory University is one of the central entrepreneurial innovation hubs in the US. The school achieves this legacy through the resources it offers to its students, including classes, school-sanctioned events, and extracurricular clubs. There are so many ways for Emory student, faculty, and staff to hone their entrepreneurial spirit – start with this list. Extracurricular organizations 1. Emory Entrepreneurship and Venture Management (EEVM) The most popular entrepreneurial organization for undergrads on campus, EEVM’s mission is to assist student entrepreneurs and foster a business spirit at Emory. One of its most well-known activities is HackATL, a weekend-long business hackathon that has Read More …

From the Director: The future of university TTOs are integrated innovation ecosystems

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

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 …

Angel investing vs. venture capital: What’s the difference?

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

It’s no secret that you need funding to launch a start-up, and angel investing and venture capital are two of the most common sources. There are significant differences between these types of funding, and the right fit depends on both the characteristics of the inventor (you) and the terms of investments. What is an angel investor? An angel investor is someone that provides a large amount of their own money to an early-stage startup. Some angels invest independently, but often investors will join angel networks in which they pool funds to make larger investments. In exchange for this monetary support, Read More …

Emory’s Female Founders Forum promotes underrepresented innovators

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

This is the first installment of a series featuring the Female Founders Forum at Emory (F3@E). This year’s cohort members include Drs. Rasheeta Chandler, Elaine Fisher, Louise Hecker, Rebecca Levit, Cassandra Quave, Sarwish Rafiq, and Chunhui Xu. Out of the estimated $283.3 billion venture capital (VC) allocated in 2022, start-ups with all-women teams received just $4.5 billion – less than 2% of the total funding. F3@E is one step that Emory University is taking in response to this disparity. An initiative created by Deborah W. Bruner, Senior Vice President for Research, in partnership with Emory’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), Read More …

From the Director: March-in authority to control drug prices ultimately hurts Americans

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

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 …

15 Good Minutes: Samuel Sober

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

The singing of Bengalese finches led Samuel Sober, PhD, to a breakthrough technology for understanding how the brain controls movement and the processes of sensorimotor learning. “Songbirds are the best model system for understanding how the brain controls complex vocal behavior, and one of the best systems for understanding control of motor behavior in general,” says Sober, Emory associate professor of biology. This breakthrough comes after decades in the neuroscience field. After getting his bachelor’s in neuroscience and behavior, Sober pursued a doctorate in neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. His doctoral thesis researched human motor planning and Read More …

Funding Opportunities for Women-Owned Start-Ups

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

Women-owned businesses are on the rise: According to 2022 census data, their average earnings increased by 27% from 2021, they employ 10.9 million Americans, and they had an estimated $432.1 billion in annual payroll. But despite these impressive numbers, women-owned businesses still lag behind their non-women-owned counterparts in an important area. While women-owned businesses were more likely to take funding compared to men in 2022, they got less money. In 2022, male-owned businesses received 41% more in funding than women-owned enterprises. Since a lack of funding can prevent a start-up from getting off the ground, these facts put women-owned start-ups Read More …

4 Federal Grant Options for Small Businesses and Start-ups

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

Ask any entrepreneur, and they’ll tell you that money is a top concern for their small business. Profits are essential, but grants specifically for small businesses can also be a gamechanger for their long-term success. Grants – monetary awards designated for a specific purpose – help small businesses in more ways than one. They can bring in more cash flow, offer visibility and credibility, and make businesses more likely to receive other forms of funding. For U.S.-based companies, there are several small business grant options, starting with the government. Does the government provide small business grants? Yes! The United States Read More …

15 Good Minutes: Stefan Sarafianos

Posted onAuthorAsher Alt

Stefan Sarafianos is the rare researcher whose expertise spans structural biology, biochemistry, and virology. He recently led the groundbreaking development of a SARS-CoV-2 subgenomic replicon system, including mutants, that can be used for high-throughput screening and characterization of SARS-CoV-2 replicase inhibitors at a lower biosafety level—considerable benefits for pursuing studies such as drug discovery and inhibitors assay. Many of us are familiar with the bedeviling question: “Do you want it faster, cheaper, and better? Pick one.” In the case of the replicon system Stefan Sarafianos has developed, researchers studying SARS-CoV-2 are able to benefit from all three and add one Read More …

What does that Venture Capital Term Mean? – Part 2

Posted onAuthorJessica Beach

Venture capital (VC) is a form of financing that is private and provided by investors, investment banks, or other financial institutions to startup companies and small businesses, particularly those with long-term growth potential. Often seen as the “engine of economic growth”, venture capital investors provide funds to early-stage companies or start-ups in exchange for equity or ownership stake. To help introduce you to the world of Venture Capital, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most common terms in this field. You can find part one of this blog here. Common Venture Capital Terms & Concepts Securities and Exchange Read More …

What does that Venture Capital Term Mean? – Part 1

Posted onAuthorJessica Beach

Venture Capital (VC) is a form of financing that is private and provided by investors, investment banks, or other financial institutions to startup companies and small businesses, particularly those with long-term growth potential. Often seen as the “engine of economic growth”, venture capital investors provide funds to early-stage companies or start-ups in exchange for equity or ownership stake. To help introduce you to the world of Venture Capital, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most common terms in this field. Common Venture Capital Terms & Concepts Venture Capitalist (VC): A venture capitalist is the first term that is Read More …

Six Things to Know about Design Patents

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

Patents give inventors intellectual property rights by excluding other people from creating, using, or selling an invention for a set period of time. In return, inventors publish an enabling disclosure for the invention, which provides basic technical information about the invention to the public. There are actually several types of patents including plant patents, design patents, and utility patents. Most people think of utility patents when they think of the types of intellectual property that is protected with a patent. For example, machines, software, or manufactured items. However, design patents also play an important role in protecting the inventor’s right Read More …

Six Things to Know About Trademarks

Posted onAuthorJessica Beach

Understanding trademarks and the rights they afford you, as well as understanding how to avoid trademark disputes, are essential to your success and the success of any of your brands or companies. This blog will give a brief overview of 6 essential things to know about trademarks and trademark laws to help aid your understanding of this subject. Trademarks are different from patents and copyrights: Trademarks, copyrights, and patents all protect intellectual property, but they all protect different types of intellectual property. A patent protects functional inventions, copyright protects original artistic or literary work, and trademarks are reserved for brand Read More …

OTT Presents: The 2022 Annual Celebration Awardees

Posted onAuthorJessica Beach

Each spring, Emory’s Office of Technology Transfer hosts an Annual Celebration of Technology and Innovation. We are excited to announce the 2022 awardees! We took time to interview several of this year’s awardees to learn more about their technologies and their reaction to winning an award. Innovation of the Year – KeyStrike: Securing Communications from an Untrusted Computer; Ymir Vigfusson, PhD Can you introduce yourself? “I’m an Associate Professor in Computer Science at Emory University and a co-director of the Emory SimBioSys lab, where I work on large-scale networked systems, computational epidemiology, and information security. Alongside academia, I’ve co-founded multiple Read More …

15 Good Minutes: Eric Wagner

Posted onAuthorLinda Kesselring

For Emory Orthopedic Surgeon Eric Wagner, MD, research isn’t just a side pursuit. Despite maintaining a busy clinical practice, Wagner has managed to make research into what he calls a “second career.” Wagner and his partner, Michael Gottschalk, MD, currently have over 45 ongoing projects, with topics running the gambit from managing opioid addiction to helping tendons heal. Wagner has published over 185 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and his work has had a substantial impact in improving patient outcomes from orthopedic procedures. “We take some complex surgeries where patients don’t traditionally do as well and try to make them better Read More …

15 Good Minutes: Erik Dreaden

Posted onAuthorJessica Beach

Erik Dreaden, PhD is an assistant professor in Emory’s department of pediatrics and department of biomedical engineering, a shared department between Emory and GA Tech. The Dreaden Lab has been working hard to create an exciting light-responsive immunotherapy technology. This unique technology works to target cancer cells using light. The goal of this developing technology is to improve current cancer therapies and immunotherapy. Dreaden’s interest in the field of cancer grew over time, as cancer has been a large part of his life. His father battled melanoma and colon cancer, so it has personally impacted his work and touched him. Read More …