Colleges & Businesses Work To Bring "Tech Transfer" To The Shore - WMDT 47 News - Delmarva's Choice

"Universities and laboratories do a lot of research. But it's not like they take that research and do anything with it. So it just sort of sits on the shelves.The U.S. taxpayer spends billions of dollars every year, funding these federal labs and universities in doing research. So, to have that technology sit on the shelf and not get to market, is a real crime," Executive Director at the Eastern Shore Entrepreneurship Center Mike Thielke said. 

And that's where Tech Transfer comes in. It's an initiative to get manufacturers and businesses to take technology and innovation and commercialize it, bring it to the market and find ways to turn it into a product or a service that people want to buy. 

David Landsberger and his company Bel-Art Products developed a collapsible wheelchair wheel that's based off the innovation of a student at the London School for design. He found the design on the internet, contacted the student, licensed the technology, then brought the product to the U.S. "This is one way that somebody can have a really good idea or find a good idea, invest in a dream, think a little bit outside the box, engineer it, and then get a company out of it and make jobs and make themselves money at the same time," he said. 

In an effort to spur this kind of economic growth here on the Eastern Shore, four local community colleges are teaming up with the Eastern Shore Entrepreneurship Center for a five week course on tech transfer. "It's really about teaching individuals about the process so that they can then go and figure out their own solutions of how they want to utilize that process and incorporate it into their business," Thielke said.