Rutgers Office for Research’s Innovation Ventures on Tuesday said it entered into a technology transfer partnership with the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities.
Innovation Ventures will provide information and guidance to eight New Jersey state colleges and universities: Kean University, Montclair State University, New Jersey City University, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Stockton University, The College of New Jersey, Thomas Edison State University and William Paterson University.
The partnership aims to advance these schools’ entrepreneurial efforts for the research conducted on their campuses, promoting a more inclusive innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in the state and encouraging collaboration among researchers within the institutions.
The idea for the partnership came from the NJASCU, of which Kean, NJCU, Ramapo, Stockton, TCNJ, Thomas Edison and William Paterson are all members.
Rutgers Office for Research, primarily through Innovation Ventures, will guide these higher education institutions on processes related to intellectual property, such as patenting, licensing and overall commercialization, to help the schools work to transform their innovations into products, services and partnerships.
“Rutgers research is a key cog in the New Jersey innovation ecosystem, and the university takes that responsibility very seriously,” Michael Zwick, Rutgers Office for Research senior vice president for research, said.
“Innovation Ventures is proud to lead the Office for Research’s efforts in this partnership,” Deborah Perez Fernandez, acting executive director for Innovation Ventures, stated. “Innovation and entrepreneurship are and always have been a group effort, and this joint venture will help foster potential collaborations between researchers across all institutions.”
Increasingly, NJASCU members are becoming more involved in the innovation and entrepreneurship space. Kean was recently designated the state’s first urban research university by the state of New Jersey and hosts the Institute of Life, Science Entrepreneurship, a life science technology accelerator based at the school’s STEM Building. TCNJ features a School of Business Center for Innovation and Ethics. Montclair State, although not an NJASCU member, is a research institution as well and will be part of the technology transfer partnership.
Rutgers and the NJASCU will begin with a one-year trial period to better understand the volume of research and technology transfer that is taking place at each of the NJASCU’s members to gauge the needs of each of the institutions and Rutgers’ capacity to help relative to those needs.
“Rutgers is embracing its role as the flagship research institution of the state of New Jersey, sharing its resources with smaller schools who are growing and developing a larger research portfolio, for no monetary compensation, and for that we are grateful,” added Lepore.
