The Center for Technology Transfer

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The Center for Technology Transfer

• A source for ideas for Senior Design

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What is CTT

• The repository of inventions made at Penn
• Covers all of the schools
• Averages over 350 new inventions per year
• CTT licenses Penn technology to established and
  new companies

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What do we get?

• Penn discoveries are primarily healthcare related
• New targets for treatment of disease
• New markers for diagnosis
• New therapeutic molecules or biologicals
• New medical devices for surgical interventions or
  treatment
• SEAS disclosures are clustered in robotics and
  controls security materials.

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Who owns what?

• Penn owns all of the intellectual property
  created by faculty, staff and consultants hired
  by contract provided that their invention
  relates to their position at Penn
• Undergraduate students own their own inventions
  UNLESS they are being supported by a faculty
  member obligated to assign their work to Penn

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Some examples

• Students come up with an idea for a terminator
  like robot. They develop the idea as part of
  their Senior Design project. Faculty provide
  guidance and input to the project. The students
  own it.
• Students come up with an idea for a Terminator
  like robot. They develop the idea as part of
  their Senior Design project. Faculty provide
  guidance and input to the project. Faculty also
  provide hardware and software they developed with
  funding from the military, and perhaps even some
  money for parts. Penn owns it.

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IN GENERAL

• If you are working on a Penn Owned Invention or
  Technology, Penn owns any IMPROVEMENTS OR
  IMPLEMENTATIONS to that technology that do not
  constitute an invention and has the right to use
  data in your project to commercialize the
  invention.
• If, in the process of working on a Penn Owned
  Technology, you make a related invention Penn
  owns the invention BUT you are entitled to your
  share of the proceeds under the patent policy.

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The reality of invention
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So whats in it for me?
Industry Academia Sole (or student) inventor
Company pays for patent University pays for patent Inventor pays for patent
Company commercializes patent University finds partner to commercialize patent Inventor commercializes patent
Inventors get a thank you and career enhancement Inventor gets a thank you and 30 of the revenues Inventor gets from 0 to 100 of revenues
Students can request that they assign their
inventions to the University. In that case, the
University is under NO OBLIGATION to accept the
invention, and the student agrees to abide by the
general rules of the patent policy. http//www.upe
nn.edu/almanac/volumes/v51/n22/pdf_n22/patent_poli
cy.pdf
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Penns Patent Policy
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Examples of Technologies
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A portable temporary anesthesia system

• A disposable system for the temporary anesthetic
  delivery of Sevoflourane, a potent greenhouse
  gas, to patients undergoing short medical
  procedures.
• Requires mechanical design and development and
  computation of adsorbent volumes and CO2
  scavenging.

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A combination ultrasound imaging and therapy
system for cancer
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Nanoetching for Fabricating Atomically Smooth
Graphene Nanoribbons

• To draw on graphenes electronic potential, a
  method to control the width and specific
  crystallographic orientation of the graphene
  sheet that confines the flow of electrons in
  specific crystallographic directions.
• Requires process development to scale the method
  to obtain the necessary confinement effects in
  graphene ribbons due to the formation of rough,
  non-crystallographic, edges during processing.

Johnson et al. Nano Lett. 2008, 8, 1912
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Gadolinium based MR contrast agent

• A nanoparticulate system comprising of porous
  polymer vesicles which have shown to enhance the
  signal generated by the encapsulated Gd ions
• The bench scale process requires a complex
  synthesis requiring many washings, sonications
  and filtrations which makes it difficult to
  reproduce at large scale.
• Requires process development (batch/continuous)
  to reproducibly generate 150 nm porous
  polymersomes with encapsulated Gd ions

Tsourkas et al. Langmuir 2008, 24, 8169
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New endo-therapy system

• Endoscopy is an image based system
• New procedures have increased the need for more
  tool space
• A complete rethinking of endoluminal device
  design.
• First demonstration bladder cancer