Katherine Bomkamp arrived at West Virginia University last year, patent in hand. Not bad for a freshman.

Now the University, through its Entrepreneurship Center and the Office of Technology Transfer, is assisting the sophomore political science major from Waldorf, MD, in taking her invention of a “pain-socket” to the next level by helping her make connections to turn the idea into a business.

It’s just one example of how WVU is fulfilling promises made earlier this year when President Jim Clements and more than 130 other university and association leaders endorsed a letter to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke outlining what they are doing to help further innovation, entrepreneurship and technology transfer.

Many of those institutions are reporting on their efforts Friday (Sept. 16) as President Obama signs patent reform legislation into law. At the event in Washington, Obama also discussed what federal agencies are doing to support research and development commercialization.

WVU’s Entrepreneurship Center, along with its ongoing Business Plan Competition, is one of the ways the University promotes student and faculty innovation and entrepreneurship.

Another area being highlighted is how Universities support technology transfer.

With support from the Benedum Foundation, WVU has initiated Linking Innovation, Industry and Commercialization, an effort to help increase the conversion of research results into products that create new industries, new jobs and a better West Virginia economy.

The initiative will include:

• Site visits for examination of the best practices of key American universities that demonstrate effective technology transfer of research results
• Interactions with private industries to learn more about market needs to help facilitate new collaborations between faculty and private industry counterparts
• Business development events that assist WVU students, faculty and industry representatives in forging new alliances and collaborations for innovation, entrepreneurship and technology transfer.

The April letter to Locke also committed the signers, which included the nation’s leading research universities, to collaborate more with industry.

WVU is building on a long history of working with the energy industry, but is also expanding beyond those traditional connections.

For example, the University’s Center for Identification Technology Research is the only National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center focusing on serving its affiliates in the rapidly growing areas of biometric identification and credibility assessment technology. Its affiliates include government and business groups, including some international ones.

In addition, WVU recently joined the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership a National Academy of Sciences group which provides a forum for university and industry representatives to meet and discuss contracting and intellectual property policy, publication and technology transfer preferences and other issues.

In the energy arena, WVU’s Advanced Energy Institute coordinates energy-related research in science, technology and public policy. Its national advisory board includes representatives from industry, government, finance and legal areas.

And WVU’s College of Law has established the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development. The Center’s goal is “to conduct objective, unbiased research and policy analyses providing a forum for issues to be explored by the various stakeholders, and promoting policies that strike a proper balance between the development of energy resources and protection of the valuable air and water supplies upon which future generations will depend.”

A fourth area being highlighted by the universities are their engagement in local and regional economic development efforts.

WVU has fulfilled this in several ways, led by Clements service on the Commerce Department’s Innovation Advisory Board, where he is the only University president on the 15-member board. As part of those duties, earlier this month Clements convened a forum on innovation and economic competitiveness which drew more than 200 persons to campus to discuss strategies to promote innovation, job creation and U.S. competitiveness.

The forum featured several top WVU alumni and others who have created global companies through their own innovation and entrepreneurship. Attendees included WVU graduates Ray Lane, former Oracle CEO and now a venture capitalist; Anne Barth, executive director of TechConnect West Virginia; Johnathan Holifield, chief executive officer of the Urban League of Greater Cleveland; Gene Irisari, director of government relations at Texas Instruments and chair of the Task Force on American Innovation; and Charles Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Clements will use the discussion to help form his recommendations to the full IAB panel for its ultimate report to the Commerce Department.

Earlier, Clements co-hosted with IAB member Rebecca Bagley, president of Cleveland-based economic development organization NorTech, a gathering in Youngstown, OH, that brought industry and academia together to discuss strategies for a regional innovation system.

Additionally, WVU is a member of the Regional University Alliance the National Energy Technology Laboratory. Other RUA members are Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech.

-WVU-

jb/09/16/11

CONTACT: John A. Bolt; University Relations/News
304.293.6997; John.Bolt@mail.wvu.edu

Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.