Credit: Federal Laboratory Consortium
The Technology Partnerships Office (TPO) recently attended the Federal Labs Consortium’s (FLC) annual, national meeting, which was virtual this year. The FLC national meeting is the largest meeting on federal technology transfer in the entire country, bringing together technology transfer professionals from a myriad of government agencies to learn, connect, and further their careers in the world of tech transfer.
This year’s annual FLC meeting brought on subject matter experts who provided in-depth training and education on tech transfer for attendees’ professional growth, shared the best tech transfer practices, analyzed the latest tech transfer trends and legislation, and also provided a platform for tech transfer professionals to network and connect with one another to increase collaborative efforts. The training and educational sessions provided a user-friendly experience that were easily accessible to anyone, from the te
Pixabay
The start of the new year in the Technology Partnerships Office (TPO) brings with it innovative ideas and projects pushing the TPO and NIST mission forward. One of the primary goals of TPO is to elevate NIST inventions that have commercialization potential, put the spotlight on them, and help maneuver them from the labs to the commercial market. In doing so, TPO is able to increase the economic impact of federally funded research and development by accelerating and improving the transfer of new technologies from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace. Through bringing products to market quickly and growing the economy, this allows America to position itself as a global leader in innovation.
The Bayh-Dole Act, passed in 1980, laid the groundwork for requiring increased reporting from the recipients of federal research and development funds. However, it takes a multitude of entities across the federal government to further promote the Bayh-Dole policies and mission. The Technology Partnerships Office (TPO), in an effort to encourage greater compliance with the Bayh-Dole Act, ran the Partners Engaged in Extramural Reporting (PEER) prize competition to improve the reporting of federally funded inventions. The PEER competition called for submissions of innovative ideas on how to encourage and inform the development and execution of program activities and communications all revolving around Bayh-Dole compliance.
Credit: Pixabay
Throughout history, many innovative ideas have been realized and brought to life within federal laboratories across the country. From this, it was discovered that there needed to be policies in place to ensure that federal institutions could properly report out about those inventions. The Bayh-Dole Act was ratified in 1980 to deal with inventions that came to fruition in federally funded laboratories. This landmark act provided an easily managed landscape for government agencies to oversee the discoveries from the multi-million, federally sponsored research and development programs. NIST has six major laboratory programs with a vision to stimulate innovation, foster industrial competitiveness, and improve the quality of life and the Bayh-Dole act plays a significant role in NIST inventions.