After years of being bashed as an underachiever in the tech transfer arena, Harvard is taking major strides in matching its success in research commercialization with its academic reputation. The turnaround comes courtesy of Isaac Kohlberg, senior associate provost and chief technology development officer, who was hired in 2005 after building Israel’s Tel Aviv University into a tech transfer powerhouse and ramping up the TTO at New York University. In two years on the job at Harvard, he has overhauled almost everything about the office, from its staff to its organization — changes that have brought 70% annual increases in industry-sponsored research. Here a quick rundown of how he did it:

• Combining two separate tech transfer offices-one at Harvard Medical School, and one on the main campus-into a single university-wide program.
• Refocusing staff beyond technology licensing to full-blown business development, and supporting that focus by hiring a new team business development directors. To reflect the broader, more active mission, Kohlberg renamed the department, from the Office of Technology Licensing to the Office of Technology Development.
• Reorganizing staff according to areas of practice. Life sciences, the primary focus, has five full-time directors of business development, with another three directors overseeing deals in engineering, materials, and information technology. Complementing the directors are five in-house lawyers: two IP attorneys, and three transaction specialists. Total staff size has grown 50%.
• Launching the Technology Development Accelerator Fund, which in one year has already completed its first round of investments, putting a total of $1.3 million into six projects spanning cancer, diabetes, and HIV. A recently announced second funding round that will support another seven to eight projects. Kohlberg projects another $1.2 million, or an average of roughly $150,000 per project. That’s enough, he says, to “really take a project…across the development gap” and advance early-stage efforts to the point where they are ready for commercial funding. Two more accelerator programs are in the works for 2009, focusing on bioengineering and applied and material sciences.
• Landing large-scale research partnerships with BASF — a $20 million deal — and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, another multimillion dollar sponsorship (exact terms were not disclosed). Kohlberg hinted that another major corporate deal could be announced as early as this month.

The biggest change, he notes, is the organization’s overall shift in approach. Staff don’t just think in terms of transferring technology, he says, but look to assist faculty in getting research support, starting companies, and developing research agreements, strategic alliances, and industry collaborations. “We look at the relationships with industry in a more holistic way,” Kohlberg says. “What my team does now [is] really provide to the faculty a broad spectrum of services.” Go to: Xconomy

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