Transferring Technology

 

Commercialization of intellectual property is a major opportunity for both the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the community — offering the promise of increased economic development for the commercial sectors of Alaska and a return on investment for UA research dollars.

 

UAF, recognizing these benefits, boosted its capacity to move its innovations, technologies, and intellectual properties out of the lab and into private businesses.

 

In 2012, UAF created the Nanook Innovation Corporation to assist UAF inventors in getting new technologies into the hands of businesses. NIC is a nonprofit supporting organization of the UAF Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization, whose sole focus is transferring inventions generated from research conducted at UAF. In this new way of doing business, UAF assigns its intellectual property to NIC, which has the responsibility to get it into the hands of business through licensing.