Office of Technology Transfer celebrates 10 years of turning Rice research into reality

Office of Technology Transfer celebrates 10 years of turning Rice research into reality

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

“My dad was always telling me to get a patent, but I just thought, ‘They’ve already patented everything on beer cans!'”

That was back when Nila Bhakuni, following in the professional footsteps of her father (who has 17 patents), was a research and development engineer for the aluminum manufacturer Alcoa. Now she finds herself surrounded by the minutiae of dozens of potential patents, piled in color-coded stacks around her desk in Allen Center.

Inspired by groundbreaking research by Rick Smalley — seen at Unidym, a Houston-based company that makes polymer sheets based on his work — Rice’s Office of Technology Transfer is about to enter its second decade. PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIDYM

It is as it should be. Bhakuni, as director of Rice’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), is at the very center of a whirlwind of information, all part of the process by which Rice-born technologies become real-world products.

She mused recently about how wonderful it would be if one particular technology that passed through OTT became a cure for cancer — a distinct possibility, with human trials of nanotech-based treatments developed at Rice already under way.

Such a breakthrough would be a fitting tribute to the progress the office has made in pushing discoveries from the lab to the factory in its first 10 years. Inventions handled by OTT range from the sensational — ever hear of buckyballs? — to the sublime, but every one of them has the potential to make the world a better place.

Office of Technology Transfer
Learn more about Rice’s Office of Technology Transfer
Founded on the back of the late Rick Smalley’s pioneering discoveries in nanotechnology, OTT is about to enter its second decade with plans to bring more attention to the marvelous research going on at Rice, and then to push it out beyond the hedges.

Bhakuni explained OTT functions as a kind of clearinghouse for Rice’s early stage research. Its primary function is to facilitate the patenting of technologies developed at Rice, then to help market and manage the process of licensing them – and collect the fees.

It’s complicated and expensive.

Patenting a new idea can take years, and it costs at least $30,000 just to file with the feds. Then there are ongoing maintenance fees to protect one’s intellectual property, said Bhakuni, in her fourth year at Rice after stints in technology transfer at Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard.

”Most patents are black holes,” said Jim Tour, who knows firsthand the value of OTT’s assistance. Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry at Rice, used OTT’s services in co-founding NanoComposites Inc., a Houston company that processes nanotubes into a variety of materials remarkable for their strength, flexibility and durability.

”Few technologies generate the income it takes to pay back what was spent on patenting them,” said Tour. ”Once in a while you get a blockbuster, but that’s very rare. Otherwise, why would anyone buy this raffle ticket?”

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIDYM

A Unidym worker holds a carbon nanotube- based polymer film that uses technology developed at Rice.

If not for OTT, he said, ”professors will often leave to exploit the technology they want to develop. This way, they can have a role and maintain their professorships.”

As risk begets reward, the potential benefits to the university are enormous. The likes of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University pull in hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees, often on the success of just a few mature technologies. And while Rice earned about $1.2 million in fees last year, it was more than double the annual revenue when Bhakuni arrived.

”Technology transfer offices usually follow an exponential curve,” said James Coleman, Rice’s vice provost for research, who feels the university is well-positioned for the future. ”The initial slope of success is not that high, but the slope rises sharply once momentum builds. Our first 10 years have brought us right to that point where I expect to see the sharp increase in the slope of our success, and I’m really excited.”

Plus, said Coleman, fees and revenues are only part of the picture. ”In some metrics, Rice is viewed as a truly outstanding technology transfer office. For example, we were in the top 10 of all universities in the number of startup companies created based on Rice technologies when normalized to our size, and we have been recognized as having the best portfolio of nanotechnologies in the country.”

He said cooperation among faculty researchers, OTT and the Rice Alliance, which holds events to put researchers and their discoveries in front of venture capitalists and industry, is a real strength. And that kind of interaction is picking up speed as Rice pursues its strategy to become an elite institution in the realm of commercializing ideas.

NanoSpectra Biosciences Inc. is an excellent example of Rice’s forward-looking vision in action. The Houston company is hot on the trail of a method to deliver cancer-killing AuroShells right where they’re needed in a patient’s body. The technique is based on nanotechnology research led by Rice professors Naomi Halas and Jennifer West. ”The trial we’re in now, which is focusing on head and neck cancers, allows us to treat up to 15 patients, and we expect it to be completed by early 2009, depending on enrollment,” said CEO J. Donald Payne.

”NanoSpectra would not exist without the Office of Technology Transfer,” he said. ”They were instrumental in the formation of the company and really helped carry it through those difficult early years.” Payne said OTT continues to provide support by protecting the patents and, as a shareholder, helping to refine the company’s mission. “Once we’ve proved the technology works in humans and move to the marketing phase, we expect to work further with Rice to expand the development portfolio.”

Wade Adams, director of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, appreciates OTT’s ability to take patent pressures off his plate. ”You can tell I’m a big fan,” he said, explaining that OTT ”gives us more time to do the things we really need to focus on, which is the research.”

It’s telling, said Adams, that by 2005, ”the number of patents submitted by nanotechnology alone gave Rice the most valuable patent portfolio of all other universities in the country. It’s really remarkable when you consider that No. 2 was the entire University of California system. Think of how big they are and how well-funded their system is – and yet the quality of our patents is second to none.”

That reputation helped sway Bhakuni in her decision to move south. “What was attractive about coming to Rice was the great quality of researchers, especially in nanotechnology,” she said. ”And there are some interesting things here that are under the radar, especially in computer science and engineering.”

To that end, she’s bulking up her staff. She’s hired an engineer and plans to hire biomedical and electrical specialists to guide researchers in those areas through the process of patenting discoveries and/or starting companies.

Patents are only part of OTT’s portfolio. The department has been increasingly successful in guiding industrial research contracts to Rice labs. As Coleman noted, Rice President David Leebron’s Vision for the Second Century and the new Collaborative Research Center have raised the profile of a ”really excellent faculty.”

”We’ve already seen that the ability to get some very large research contracts has improved over the last year,” he said.

Though OTT will sometimes say “no” to a researcher, Bhakuni said there are also times the office will pony up to patent an idea that seems unlikely to return the investment, just because “it’s the right thing to do” — an especially important concept when part of Leebron’s vision is to raise Rice’s ability to help solve the world’s problems.

“What I want for this program is for the rest of the world to see what I see, which is that the technology and research here at Rice are comparable to any other top research institution or university,” Bhakuni said. “I’d like us to be known on a national and international basis. And I think it can happen.

”Maybe that means we make a ton of money, or maybe it means we have just a couple of well-known products that really make an impact. And there is that potential, with NanoSpectra — maybe they’ll be able to kill cancer pretty well,” she said. ”It would really be marvelous.

”I’d love for them to say Rice was the catalyst.”

For a list of technologies currently available for licensing, visit OTT on the Web at http://rice.wellspringsoftware.net/.