Last week, Andras Havasi, Nicola Camilleri and Marie Mifsud, members of staff from the Knowledge Transfer Office (KTO), delivered a 1-day training programme on technology transfer to Early Stage Researchers (ESR) through the TRANSIT Summer School programme following the success of last year’s PROTECT project.
TRANSIT (Training Network Sustainable Technologies) is a European Training Network that joins the forces of 6 academic and 7 non-academic organisations across 8 European countries to provide high level interdisciplinary training to 10 Early Stage Researchers within a highly-ambitious training and research programme. Alongside leading institutions and companies in the food industry, such as Wageningen University, University of Reading, Unilever, and Nestle, TRANSIT trains young scientists who will be capable of creating transformational change to drive utility of sustainable food technologies through interdisciplinary action by integrating microbiology, food processing technology, cost benefit analyses, quantitative microbiology, and consumer sciences.
For the second ever TRANSIT Summer School, the training was held on location at the University’s Valletta Campus. KTO’s Andras Havasi opened the session with an introduction addressing the concept and context of technology transfer, its evolution through the years, its scope, and what it means for ESRs.
The day continued with Marie Mifsud delivering a talk on Intellectual Property management followed by Nicola Camileri delving into the legal side of technology transfer. Andras then gave some insight into how to exploit research results, including industry-academia collaborations, licensing, and spin-out companies.
Apart from our own team delivering talks, we also invited guest speaker Sholeem Griffin (CTO, De Novo Cell) to elaborate with Marie on one of UM’s spin outs, De Novo Cell. A second case study, this time on a licensing case (MaltaHip), was delivered by independent technology transfer expert, Ing. Michelle Cortis, RTTP.
The day of training concluded with Andras hosting an interactive exercise on ‘How to sell your research’.