For the second year in a row, the LSU Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization
will showcase breakthrough technologies, inventions and potential commercial applications of LSU researchers to the local and regional business community at an Inventorship Showcase.
The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Lod Cook Alumni Center on the LSU campus.
The showcase will feature the technologies and innovations of faculty, staff and students who have been awarded patents or were named to the National Academy of Inventors Fellows during the 2015 fiscal year.
“Last year was very well attended and this year we are looking to increase the involvement of local industry players that are interested in partnering with LSU to commercialize technology developed at LSU,” says Andrew Maas, director of LSU’s Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization.
In 2015, LSU was granted nine U.S. patents for inventions ranging from vaccines, to medical device implants, to wood preservation materials.
Tuesday’s showcase will not only recognize the researchers behind those achievements, but it will help link LSU’s local and regional economic development partners to ideas being fostered at the state’s flagship university. Several economic development organizations and businesses are sponsoring the event.
Maas has become much more aggressive about linking researchers up with the area’s business community during his nearly two years on the job at the LSU Office of Innovation & Technology Commercialization.
Technology transfer, or the lack thereof, has long been a problem at LSU. Researchers at the University lag behind their counterparts in other states in terms of bringing their inventions and technologies to market.
“As we develop technologies at LSU we need to work with business partners to help pull these technologies into the marketplace,” says Maas, who was honored last fall as one of Business Report’s Forty Under 40. “These business partners and mentors are important to help guide and support faculty as they are attempting to think as a business thinks.”
Get complete event details and register to attend.
—Stephanie Riegel
