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First Portuguese institution in Brussels's restricted circle of technology transfer

19th March 2019

The TTO Circle gathers some of the largest European research institutions such as CERN, ESA (European Space Agency), Fraunhofer, Tecnalia or TNO, aiming at sharing the best practices and knowledge in technology transfer in order to develop joint activities and a general approach regarding the international standards, thus professionalising the activity and promoting it for the European markets.

The technology transfer of the academic research context for the companies has a very European style and is becoming more and more similar to an emerging industry – there are several high value technologies, but the landscape is highly fragmented with a lack of critical mass and wide disparities in terms of performances and practices. Studies have identified the lack of scale as one of the major issues of this area. It’s precisely this paradigm that the European Union wants to change. For this reason, it’s important for the European Commission to bring together the technology transfer offices and the major research institutions so that they can be pioneering the improvement of this area.

“Only 31 research institutions are part of the TTO Circle, all of them being large-scale institutions with a solid and well-defined strategy. INESC TEC met all these conditions - it’s the largest institute operating in the engineering area in Portugal and is also one of the institutions with the greatest number of patents submitted at a national level over the last few years. In 2018 alone, 28 patent applications were filed in the areas of digital and electric signal processing, medical technology and security in wireless communication networks. We were also the national institution that filed more patent applications within the European Patent Organisation in 2018. Currently, we are developing several spin-offs based on proprietary technologies”, explains Catarina Maia, Head of INESC TEC’s Technology Licensing Office and the representative of the institution in the TTO Circle.

Over the last three years alone, eight patents were granted to INESC TEC’s inventions – two of them are related to voice analysis, five are related to digital and electric signal processing, and one is related to power electronics. The patents were granted in the USA (3), Japan (2), Europe (2) and South Korea (1). Looking at the last three years, four spin-offs were created – MitMyNid, LTPLabs, Ubirider and InSignals Neurotech.

The establishment of this network, which aims at influencing some European policies and promoting the best practices of technology transfer, emerged due to the need of the European Union to create more innovation, to harness its knowledge base, to enhance its economic position and to tackle the great social challenges of this century in order to boost its global competitiveness.

“The establishment of the TTO Circle proves that the innovation is at the centre of the political agenda of Brussels. The technology transfer will allow to face the most critical social challenges that we come across at a European level such as health, energy security, climate changes, among others”, concludes INESC TEC's representative.

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For more information:

Joana Coelho

Communication Service                                                                                                                                   

INESC TEC

FEUP’s Campus

Rua Dr Roberto Frias

4200-465 Porto

Portugal

T +351 22 209 4297

M +351 919 119 271

joana.d.coelho@inesctec.pt

www.inesctec.pt