Technology transfer
100 Technology Transfer: A tool for “Return On Investment” in the economy and in research
Technology Transfer (TT) is not an end in itself. In Switzerland, it is an important tool for the universities and the Institutions of the ETH Domain, to which PSI belongs, for contributing to the economic development and wealth creation of the country through innovation. In some ways, TT contributes to a “Return On Investment” (ROI) in the economy, which, in turn, through taxes, provides the government with funds to reinvest in research, thus completing a virtuous circle. To improve the transfer process especially with Swiss companies and in particular with SMEs, new marketing instruments have been created which will be of great help to industrial scouting networks, constituted nationally of CTI Innovation Mentors and regionally by Industrial Coaches from several local bodies, for directing SMEs to PSI. To this end, as examples of successful collaborations between PSI and Swiss companies, in the next pages are highlighted the witnesses of the following two enterprises: Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd. (based in Basel, Switzerland) is a fully integrated research and development company, focusing on the development of innovative pharmaceutical products for the treatment of bacterial and fungal infections, and cancer; Tofwerk AG is located in Thun and develops time-of-flight mass and ion mobility spectrometers for industrial and scientific research. In addition, examples are given where technologies developed within PSI’s own research projects are being spun-off into industrial usage: The first is a licensed technology in the field of medical diagnostics, “Differential Phase Contrast”, and the second is the
PSI scientist Bernd Pinzer preparing an experiment at the TOMCAT beamline at SLS on the origins of Alzheimer’s disease. (Photo: Markus Fischer/PSI)
“Neutron Imaging for Nuclear Energy” process and the “Fast Neutron Imaging Detector”, developed for nuclear energy research but also applicable in many other fields.
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