UC innovations impacting industry were recognized at the 2021 Intellectual Property and Tech Transfer Day

The awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 6, in recognition of research findings that have successfully made their way to the market over the last year. Additionally, Alvaro Ossa, Director of Transfer and Development, presented an annual account of the office’s activities, highlighting its major milestones of the past year.

2020 Tech Transfer Milestones 

Twenty-one licensing contracts were signed amidst the challenges of 2020. These will pave the way for UC-created innovations to make their way across Chile and abroad. This is precisely the case of the ABCDE Manual for Administering Psychological First Aid, which was transferred to Brazil and is in the process of being translated into Portuguese. This Manual is already in use by SENAME, the National Prosecutor’s Office, Chilean Fire Department, UC CHRISTUS Health Network, Magallanes Health Service, and the Chilean Safety Association, among other institutions. 

This brings UC’s tally to a total of 112 transfer agreements entered into with companies, and public and private organizations, 34% of which are free licenses and 66% are licenses with royalty payments.

In 2020, two spin-offs licensed new UC technologies. The first one is Biothervax, a company that will be in charge of facilitating the market arrival of the respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, developed by the Biological Sciences research team led by academic Alexis Kalergis. The second one is Training Competence, a company that develops medical skill training and simulation products, from the research findings of Julian Varas, a professor of medicine. 

To date, UC has created 28 spin-offs, which have in turn created close to 400 highly specialized direct jobs, with annual sales exceeding USD20 million in 2020.

In addition, during this last period, Catholic University was awarded close to US$6.5 million in financing for 40 R&D projects, from public and private agencies.

Regarding achievements in Intellectual Property, in 2020 UC filed 95 patent applications and 44 patents were granted, surpassing the university’s 200-patent historic milestone. Moreover, INAPI recently recognized UC as the number one institution in Chile in terms of patent applications on the national ranking of patent applications for the sixth consecutive year.