Careers for NIH scientists in technology transfer & business development in 2017

Authors

• SM Ferguson
• JW Thomas

Abstract

What is technology transfer / business development and what are the career opportunities in the field? What are the skills required and how does one acquire them? How can an intramural scientist start a non-traditional career such as this? These are the questions to be answered in this presentation from two former NCI bench scientists. In terms of background, the field of technology transfer itself is still relatively new and can trace its origins and rapid growth to the economic developments legislation of the early 1980s, a time when the US was looking to enhance its global competitiveness. The need for translating the ideas that have originated from academic labs into useful products (and the people to handle these tasks) is still with us and has only grown since then. The technology transfer profession employs more than 10,000 professionals in the US with a fairly large number practicing their trade in the greater Washington, DC area. Career information is available from the sites of number of professional organizations such as www.autm.net , www.federallabs.org or www.lesi.org along with formal training programs for scientists at NIH such as www.faes.org .

Scientific Focus Area: Research Support Services

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