About The Center

The Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center was created in 2004 as a program in the Massachusetts Economic Stimulus Bill. Its goal is to support technology transfer activities from public and private research institutions to companies in Massachusetts. To achieve this goal, the Center works with technology transfer offices at Massachusetts research institutions; faculty, researchers, and students who have commercially promising ideas; and companies across the Commonwealth.

The Center:

Facilitates and accelerates technology transfer between research institutions and Massachusetts companies;
Promotes collaboration between research institutions and the Commonwealth's technology industry;
Assists in the growth of Massachusetts companies, including startups, by enhancing technological leadership; and
Supports regional and statewide economic development priorities.

The Center supports the commercialization of research technologies through a variety of programs:

Expert technology reviews provide opportunities for Massachusetts research institutes to have external industry experts evaluate technologies and give advice regarding their commercial potential.

Studies guided by expert advisors utilize business school students to perform market analyses on the potential and viability of new technologies.

The Center provides mentoring to researchers who believe they have a technology that could serve as the basis of a new company. The process includes the development of a business presentation for an expert board of external reviewers.

Commercialization and Entrepreneurial Education seminars and workshops enable researchers to understand the process of commercializing technologies.

The Life Sciences Partnering and Investment Forum is a half-day program for investors and potential corporate partners to meet with companies formed around technologies developed in Massachusetts research institutes.

Mini-grants support technology development. The Center awards up to $25,000 to inventors from Massachusetts research institutions to fund proof-of-concept research or the development of more refined marketing and commercialization plans.

"Our recent study on technology leadership in Massachusetts identified the need to create more technology-connecting activities between R&D and industry in the state. We are confident that the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center will become a major strength in supporting the creation of additional links between our research institutions and our companies."
Bill Guenther

"The University of Massachusetts is proud to host the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center. The state's selection of UMass to host the Center reflects the University's strengths and successes in technology transfer. We look forward to the Center's valuable role in helping both UMass and all research universities in the region fulfill this part of our missions."

Jack M. Wilson

Purpose

The Massachusetts Technology Portal is a single website where one can search easily and efficiently for over 2,000 technologies (as of July 2009) available from 23 research institutions in Massachusetts:

Baystate Health, Inc.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Boston Biomedical Research Institute
Boston University
Brandeis University
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center
Children's Hospital Boston
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Harvard University
Joslin Diabetes Center
Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
McLean Hospital
Northeastern University
Schepens Eye Research Institute
The Immune Disease Institute
Tufts Medical Center
Tufts University
UMass Medical School
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
University of Massachusetts Lowell

The portal was developed jointly with MATTO to provide entrepreneurs and investors with a convenient tool for finding intellectual property generated across a broad spectrum of Massachusetts universities and research hospitals. While many Technology Transfer Offices have search engines for their IP on their institution's website, providing a single portal to the patents produced by our leading institutions enables users to identify the researchers, laboratories and institutions that have the inventions of interest quickly.

Using the MassTechPortal

We have tried to design the portal to make it easy for you to search for technologies that are available for license from a number of institutions in Massachusetts . Please send us feedback if you have recommendations as to how we can make the portal a more useful tool for you.

You may search by one criteria or by several - it is your choice. You may want to start with a more general search and if you get too many responses then refine your search.

To do another search click on reset before you type in your new search criteria.

You may search for technologies in a specific Technology Type - the MassTechPortal uses a list of 44 technology types - a full list of the technology types may be found at the bottom of this page with descriptions of the kinds of technologies that are included.

Each technology is owned and available for license from the posting institution. Clicking the title of the invention on the results page will bring you to a page containing a detailed description of the technology and contact information for the institution managing the technology. Please use the case number listed when corresponding with the institution.

Printing - for best results set paper to print in landscape when printing.

Technology Types

The following are the TechTypes that the Portal uses.

Agriculture, animal health, forestry, agricultural chemicals and related technologies
Environment
Recycling, hazardous and waste management, environmental management system, water treatment, pollution control and prevention, toxins, environmental remediation
Foods and Plant Sciences
Foods processes, fermentation, nutrition, sterilization, storage, animal/vegetable products
Health Care Surveys
Textiles
Transportation
Bioinformatics
Sequence analysis, modeling or drug discovery related software
Biomaterials
A bio-based material is engineering material made from substances derived from living tissues. Examples include polylactic acid, bioplastics, cornstarch etc.
Diagnostics/Biomarkers
Diagnostics, prognostics, biomarkers, patient monitoring
Genomics/Proteomics
Anything Gene like (also see proteomics) - is this necessary? It is something most institutions have a category for so we may need to keep it. Combined this with proteomics because there will be so few
Microarrays
Medical
cell lines, monoclonal antibodies, reagents, animal models, growth factors, clones
Research Tools
Cloning tools (such as PCR), methods, laboratory equipment and machines, software that helps in research
Therapeutics
Potential drugs, small molecule, peptide, antibody, nucleic acid -based therapeutics - with novel composition of matter claims
Tissue Engineering
Vaccines
Vaccines and Vaccine generating/developent methods, tools
Chemical Engineering
Physical
Chemical engineering technologies
Chemistry
Physical