Merrick School of Business Partners with NASA to Assess Technology Commercialization
June 24, 2010
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
An exclusive partnership between the University of Baltimore's Merrick School of Business and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will consider the commercial potential for advanced technologies and processes—some of which has been patented by Goddard, and some of which is in a patent-pending phase—developed by the center and awaiting further exploration.
UB's "Lab to Market" program—an application-based, skills-focused approach to opportunity analysis in innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization for products and technologies that have not yet been introduced in the market—will be brought to bear on this initiative. UB graduate students and faculty will work with officials from Goddard to explore the potential of an array of high-tech products. Goddard and UB will both benefit from any successful marketing and licensing agreements that may stem from the agreement.
"Goddard has developed hundreds of products and processes with significant commercial and partnership potential," said Darlene Smith, dean of the Merrick School of Business. "UB will leverage its close understanding of the marketplace to assist the center in bringing these products to a state of commercial viability—great ideas that otherwise might take years to be discovered by a diligent patent expert. This approach brings the market and the inventor a few steps closer together, and that can make a real difference in the technology-driven world that we live in."
The agreement, which will kick off this fall, formalizes a relationship between Goddard and UB and provides a framework for communicating and sharing information. It will restrict UB's access to Goddard's patented technologies and to basic, non-enabling information on Goddard technologies that are not yet patented. Goddard personnel will work with UB faculty and students, and the center will receive formal reports, assessments and commercialization plans from the University. Potential partnerships between the center and UB also will be explored.
Students involved in the program will work in teams and be expected to develop their ideas for commercializing the technology and processes presented by Goddard. Potential business plans, licensing agreements and research paths will be part of the graduate coursework. If a product meets certain expectations for commercialization, further work on it will be conducted by the student and faculty in cooperation with officials from Goddard.
The University of Baltimore is a member of the University System of Maryland and comprises the School of Law, the Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts and the Merrick School of Business.