Leveraging Today’s Royalties
for Tomorrow’s Research

What do African writing systems, stem cells, 18th-century privateering, and cosmogenic isotopes all have in common? No, they are not the topics from last night’s Double Jeopardy. They are a few examples of the 22 subjects being studied by faculty who were awarded OTL Research Incentive Grants in 2005.

Over the past 35 years the Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) has received over $1 billion of income from licensing inventions developed at Stanford. Every year, a portion of licensing revenue is reinvested in research across the university through a variety of programs administered by the office of the Dean of Research. To date, OTL has given over $37 million to the OTL Research Incentive Fund in support of 376 faculty projects. OTL also has provided 35 Graduate Fellowships to assist students. And it has encouraged technology development through 68 Birdseed Grants.

Faculty Grants
OTL Research Incentive Grants are awarded to junior faculty – assistant professors or associate professors within their first three years at Stanford. These grants are important because they provide flexible seed funding for innovative research initiatives, allowing researchers to test ideas that may qualify for major grants at a later date.

The proposals are evaluated independently by two faculty members, most of whom are prior OTL grant recipients. In 2005, $528,217 was awarded to 22 projects proposed by 25 faculty members. The range of the grants was $11,200 to $40,000.

Student Fellowships
The Stanford Graduate Fellowship Program in Science and Engineering began in 1997. It provides tuition support and stipends to outstanding students who are pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering and the sciences through 339 endowed fellowships. Thirty-five of these have been funded with licensing revenue from OTL.

Each year, approximately 100 fellows are selected by a Faculty Committee from candidates nominated by their department after admission. The three-year fellowships allow promising graduate students the freedom to choose a research project based on mutual interest rather than availability of funds.

Invention Development
Through the “Birdseed Fund,” the Dean of Research provides small amounts of money (typically up to $25,000) to fund prototype development or modest reduction to practice experiments for existing, unlicensed technologies.

The rate of licensing of Birdseed funded inventions is about the same as unfunded inventions (20-30%). However, without this funding, many of these inventions would likely have remained unlicensed.

Profiles
This issue of Brainstorm is dedicated to profiles of Stanford research made possible in part by the OTL royalty stream. Look inside and you will find (some of the) great ideas of tomorrow funded by today’s royalty stream...