{"title":"An Initial Look at Federal Offices of Research and Technology Applications.","authors":"Nicole Gingrich, Michael Hall, Isaac Patterson","doi":"10.6028/jres.125.033","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In <i>Science-The Endless Frontier</i>, Vannevar Bush wrote that reaping the potential benefits of science conducted at federal laboratories requires the discoveries made in the laboratories be transferred to society. In federal laboratories, Offices of Research and Technology Applications (ORTAs) are tasked with transferring laboratory-developed technologies to the market, allowing society to reap the benefits provided by scientific investments. In fiscal year 2016, the Technology Partnerships Office of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted a first-of-its-kind survey of the ORTAs of more than 50 federal laboratories to obtain information on their organization and operation. We present descriptive analyses of the responses to this survey in two topical areas: organizational characteristics and technology transfer characteristics. We disaggregated the data across the dimension of budget size to describe similarities and differences in responses across the budget categories. Among the relationships we observed, we found that ORTAs with larger technology transfer budgets report higher frequencies of conducting internal technology transfer activities, such as patent prosecution (e.g., drafting patents, filing patent applications, and responding to actions from the patent office) and market analysis. Additionally, we provide context to the data by summarizing the relevant research on ORTAs at universities, and we present potential inferences that may be drawn from that body of research and applied to the data on ORTAs at federal laboratories.</p>","PeriodicalId":54766,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10878689/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.6028/jres.125.033","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2020/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"INSTRUMENTS & INSTRUMENTATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In Science-The Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush wrote that reaping the potential benefits of science conducted at federal laboratories requires the discoveries made in the laboratories be transferred to society. In federal laboratories, Offices of Research and Technology Applications (ORTAs) are tasked with transferring laboratory-developed technologies to the market, allowing society to reap the benefits provided by scientific investments. In fiscal year 2016, the Technology Partnerships Office of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted a first-of-its-kind survey of the ORTAs of more than 50 federal laboratories to obtain information on their organization and operation. We present descriptive analyses of the responses to this survey in two topical areas: organizational characteristics and technology transfer characteristics. We disaggregated the data across the dimension of budget size to describe similarities and differences in responses across the budget categories. Among the relationships we observed, we found that ORTAs with larger technology transfer budgets report higher frequencies of conducting internal technology transfer activities, such as patent prosecution (e.g., drafting patents, filing patent applications, and responding to actions from the patent office) and market analysis. Additionally, we provide context to the data by summarizing the relevant research on ORTAs at universities, and we present potential inferences that may be drawn from that body of research and applied to the data on ORTAs at federal laboratories.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology is the flagship publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It has been published under various titles and forms since 1904, with its roots as Scientific Papers issued as the Bulletin of the Bureau of Standards.
In 1928, the Scientific Papers were combined with Technologic Papers, which reported results of investigations of material and methods of testing. This new publication was titled the Bureau of Standards Journal of Research.
The Journal of Research of NIST reports NIST research and development in metrology and related fields of physical science, engineering, applied mathematics, statistics, biotechnology, information technology.