Tales in tech transfer

I was pleased to see Toni Feder’s piece in the February 2021 issue of Physics Today on technology transfer (page 24 ). I have held tech transfer positions in industry and academia for more than 20 years. Tech transfer has been a very satisfying career for me. Moreover, it is a field that is particularly well suited to my background as an experimental physicist.

When speaking to physics students about my career, I like to tell the story of my time as a member of a team that included experienced engineers. We were fortunate enough to be inundated with projects across a broad spectrum of technologies. Although I was self-conscious about my lack of deep technical knowledge compared with my colleagues with traditional engineering backgrounds, I was very pleased to hear the way our boss would describe our team: “When we have a silicon invention, we give it to our silicon expert. When we have a photonics invention, we give it to our photonics expert. And when we don’t have any expertise in an invention, we give it to our physicist.”

I have found that the strong fundamentals and “outside the box” problem solving that I developed in my physics training have enabled me to come “up to speed” quickly across a broad range of inventions that run the gamut from nerve-regeneration devices to pollutant-capture technologies to high-performance concrete compositions and beyond. That flexibility is a vital skill for a tech transfer professional.