News and Events > The 1st Annual Boulder Technology Transfer Spring Awards

The 1st Annual Boulder Technology Transfer Spring Awards

March 19, 2004

Boulder, CO - The CU Technology Transfer Office held its 1st annual spring awards to honor exemplary achievements by administrators and students on the Boulder campus. The awards took place on March 19, 2004 from 11:30-1:30 in the UMC Aspen rooms.

Highlights of the luncheon included a welcome by Phil Weiser, chairman of the CU Committee on University Discoveries, posters describing relevant research presented by numerous Boulder faculty members, and a summary of campus technology transfer activity presented by Ken Porter, director of the Boulder campus TTO. In addition, awards for a student group and an administrator were presented by Phil Distefano, executive vice chancellor and provost.

Excerpts from the awards presentation

For the student award winner, Netdog, "NetDog was a business plan written based on technology developed by Dr. Antonio Carzaniga and Dr. Alex Wolf in the Computer Science Department. Jay White, David Parkhurst, Chris Cahill and Chip Fuller won second place in the December Business Plan Competition at CU. NetDog was then selected to represent the western United States in a national competition that was sponsored by the Licensing Executives Society. They also won second place in that competition, which was held in San Francisco. Jay White has continued working with Dr. Wolf and Dr. Carzaniga this semester to explore commercial applications for their technology beyond the network security application that was the basis of their business plan. Because of her effort beyond the business plan class, we would like to recognize Jay White and the NetDog team for Exemplary Achievement by Students in technology transfer at CU-Boulder."

For the administrator award winner, Larry Nelson, director of the Office of Contracts and Grants, "I don't have data going back to 1970, but the year before Larry took over as Director we received close to $34M in sponsored project awards - in 2003 we received $250M. Larry Nelson makes a critical contribution to the success of technology transfer on this campus by achieving the dual goals of helping faculty while protecting the university. Larry's dedication and expertise in this effort aid the campus immensely!"

The TTO prides itself on supporting research on campus and helping professors and students commercialize their technologies. In the past two years the technology transfer office has made significant advances in the number of inventions submitted and also the utilization of these technologies by industry. The campus is now on a trajectory to develop a technology transfer operation commensurate with its lofty standing among all public universities.