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The road from research lab to marketplace, for innovations from solar cells to bar code readers, winds through a little-known office in UNC Charlotte's Grigg Hall.
The Office of Technology Transfer helps harness the brainpower of an increasingly research-oriented university. It's among the nation's most successful programs among universities with similar research budgets.
Since it opened in 2000, the office has received 462 new inventions, spawned 26 start-up companies that created 162 new jobs and filed 57 patents.
Universities moved to fill the void as U.S. companies spent less money on research in recent years. A 1980 law let universities patent their work, attracting entrepreneurially minded faculty members.
Early on, said Associate Director Ruth Burnett, faculty had to learn that their intellectual property should be protected. "We had to educate them that a patent is the ultimate research paper," she said.
Younger students and faculty, she said, are more sensitive to the need to protect their work.
At the same time, industries went to universities to get their technology problems solved.
UNCC was created as an applied-science school and is known for working with the community, but an unusually high 20 percent of its total funded research now comes from industry. The university was designated a "research-intensive" school two years ago.
"That's going to make a real difference in the local economy as businesses find out about us," said technology-transfer Executive Director Carl Mahler, a chemical engineer and attorney who's been at UNCC two years.
The university is known for a wide range of research, from advanced semiconductors to biotechnology, motorsports to nanotechnology. Among recent innovations passing through the technology-transfer office: new material for making smaller computer chips; car suspensions that make alignments unnecessary; improvements to solar cells; biofuels; coatings for artificial joint implants; tools that measure nano materials.
Because the university is publicly funded, a company that pays for research may get only an option to license a commercial product that's developed.
"We want to get the stuff out to the benefit of society," Mahler said. "But at the same time, the property is owned by the state of North Carolina and we can't just give it away."
UNCC's most successful startup, Digital Optics Corp., was sold to San Jose, Calif.-based Tessera Technologies for nearly $60 million in 2006. Digital Optics' founders, former university researchers, developed improved bar-code readers.
Grigg Hall, which houses the Office of Technology Transfer, also serves as a business incubator by renting space to start-up companies.
"It looked like a great place to start a company," said Rosanna Stokes, a native Charlottean who is president of Dot Metrics Technologies and had previously worked in business development for General Electric.
Supported by federal and state grants, research director Jennifer Pagan and research leader Paolo Batoni are developing LED-ultraviolet water-disinfection systems. The compact, energy-efficient systems could run off solar panels.
"It's been a good meeting of the minds," Pagan said, who likes the freedom in a small company to develop a product from prototype to commercial introduction. "The rewards it gives you back are well worth it."
UNCC faculty members down the hall sometimes serve as subcontractors. The technology-transfer office helps with patent filings.
"We have access to brainpower that's just down the hall," Batoni said.
