Colleagues off the Court: Duke and UNC Champion Research and Innovation on Capitol Hill
Even though he dons a darker shade of blue these days, Daniel Dardani embraces a more color blind view of how governmental support of research impacts the North Carolina Triangle region: “Whether we’re Duke, UNC, NC State, we all live and benefit from the research outputs of our world-class universities,” he said.
Dardani, the Director of Physical Sciences and Digital Innovations Licensing and Corporate Alliances at Duke’s Offices for Translation & Commercialization and External Partnerships, recently visited our nation’s capital along with colleagues from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to speak with North Carolina Congressional representatives. They were there to advocate for technology transfer initiatives and the critical role of federal funding in university research.
Dardani shared success stories from the Duke research and innovation community – such as the newly-approved brain cancer drug with roots in Duke research – and highlighted the Duke Quantum Center and related start-up company, IonQ. He was joined by members from UNC Chapel Hill’s tech transfer office who delivered their own impact stories of therapeutics and clinical research drugs originating from their labs that either made it to market or are still on their way.
“North Carolina is based on an innovation economy and federal funding is a key part of that,” said Melissa Vetterkind, Associate Vice President for Government Relations, who also led the Duke delegation. “Our universities are doing amazing work in translating knowledge into societal impact.”
Dardani and Vetterkind’s visit was part of an annual Hill Day organized by AUTM, a nonprofit organization of over 3,000 technology transfer professionals representing hundreds of institutions promoting technology transfer from universities for the benefit of society. This year marks the 50th anniversary of AUTM and the 45th anniversary of the Bayh-Dole Act, which established the modern tech transfer framework for university inventions.
Over 70 university teams scheduled more than 100 meetings in one day in early March to more clearly articulate and demonstrate to lawmakers how university research leads to real-life innovations, from gene-editing technologies to high-definition televisions. The importance of fighting for strong, sensible IP laws and advocating for unabated investments into university research pipelines was a key message delivered to Congress.
“The results of the work that’s being done at our universities are impacting their districts,” said Vetterkind.
Dardani, who serves on the Board of Directors for AUTM, emphasized that technology transfer has a decades-long proven track record for turning federally funded research into real-world products and services that matter to society. “These innovations save lives,” said Dardani, citing the example of the underlying technology of the mRNA vaccines which helped curb the COVID pandemic being invented at University of Pennsylvania.
AUTM, which hosted its annual conference right before the Hill Day, featured a plenary conversation with Senator Thom Tillis (R–NC) and Representative Jake Auchincloss (D–MA-04).
Sen. Tillis, who currently chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, reaffirmed the importance of supporting university research and tech transfer efforts – noting that the country’s Founding Fathers were inventors and enshrined the concept of intellectual property in the U.S. Constitution.
Rep. Auchincloss agreed and emphasized that the way the U.S. government and universities have partnered on research and tech transfer has kept the country as the preeminent leader of science and technology for decades. Our allies – and our competitors – are emulating these innovation structures around the world, making it all the more important to continue to support university research and tech transfer.
At the AUTM conference, more Duke representatives attended and shared best practices with their counterparts at other institutions. Galo Mejia, Assistant Director for Software and Engineering at OTC, was invited to speak on a panel about how institutions are licensing de-identified patient data to industry.
As medical innovations, especially with artificial intelligence approaches, become increasingly more data-intensive, Duke has leveraged its historic medical data expertise to become a cutting-edge leader in this new field of data licensing.
But that’s just one facet of the inventive work happening on campus and at the health system. From first-of-their-kind treatments for rare pediatric diseases to industry-leading quantum computing technologies, Duke’s innovations continue to make a lifechanging impact on society.
With strong and unabated federal support and appropriation, the collective outputs from North Carolina’s world-class universities must remain vibrant and poised for future breakthroughs to support the area’s innovation ecosystem, regional economy, and prospects for job growth and development.