TenU launches Future Leaders Programme
The first round will start in the 2021 Autumn Term. The Programme will offer a diverse cohort of technology transfer professionals a unique opportunity for international exchange.
The TenU Future Leaders Programme was conceived as the first project within the Memorandum of Understanding for US-UK Research Cooperation signed by the US National Institute for Standards and Technology, NIST, and UK Research and Innovation, UKRI, in November 2020.
David Sweeney, Executive Chair of UKRI Research England, said in a statement: ‘I am delighted to support the Future Leaders programme, building on the success of the TenU collaboration and wider links to the international tech transfer community. The programme provides an opportunity to deepen our links with NIST, our US counterpart, and to continue to demonstrate that UK technology transfer operates at the global cutting edge. Developing a future cadre of diverse and globally aware leaders of TTOs is a very exciting prospect.’
Mojdeh Bahar, Associate Director for Innovation and Industry Services of NIST, added: ‘We’re excited to support the inaugural cohort of the Future Leaders Fellowship as part of the NIST-UK Research England Memorandum of Understanding executed in 2020. This program will enable the sharing of best practices from government and university technology transfer offices in both the US and the UK, providing new opportunities for innovation growth.’
The first round of the Programme will pilot a new training model with TenU and partners with a view to rolling it out across the international tech transfer community in future iterations. Initial participants include Cambridge, Columbia, Oxford, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Edinburgh.
The hybrid cohort-based Programme was conceived with flexibility and inclusion as founding principles, taking stock of lessons learned during the pandemic regarding hybrid working. In order to ensure diversity, the Programme offers a Diversity Fund, as well as a selection process designed with diversity and inclusion in mind.
It is expected that the benefits will extend to the international technology transfer community: on completion of the first round, TenU, with contributions from the participants, plans to launch a report presenting emerging trends in technology transfer and recommendations for future rounds of the Programme. Future rounds are hoped to extend well beyond TenU and across the international tech transfer community.
The first pilot round of the Programme is generously funded by UKRI Research England.
“This programme aims to offer budding technology transfer professionals the opportunity to gain critical insights into how university tech commercialisation operates across the world. The content will be directly relevant for building a tech transfer career and will also establish strong networks to enable the future flow of information exchange across different innovation ecosystems.”
Robert Wooldridge, Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation, Carnegie Mellon University, one of the participating offices, said: ‘Carnegie Mellon has a long history of participating in training of, and collaboration with, international institutions in the area of technology transfer. The university has benefited from other programs in the UK, Portugal, Turkey, Algeria and Qatar. Hence, we were immediately intrigued when we first heard about this program being organized by TenU. It’s brilliant – and a privilege to be invited to participate with other top research universities and their technology transfer offices.’
