Attention students: This fall, STC.UNM offers inventors and entrepreneurs seminars that teach business and marketing skills.
Lisa Kuuttila, president and CEO of STC.UNM, said that seminars, which are free but require registration, help students evolve and understand how to start their own businesses or market their own inventions.
“So you have an idea now? What do you do with it?” she said. “What are some of the options for commercialization? How do you go about it? What are the considerations? I think this is a topic that students are interested in.”
There are six seminars slated from September to November, the first starting Thursday at noon in the SUB’s Acoma room. All of them focus on teaching students how to create a game plan for their invention or idea. Some of the topics, like Kuuttila’s “Commercializing Your Intellectual Property: What Are the Options?,” are intended to be straightforward, but some will dabble in creative thinking, such as the seminar on Oct. 21, “Repurposing Drugs for Commercialization,” a talk about using HIV drugs to fight cancer.
Kuuttila said the seminars are informative and diverse.
“Innovation is the key to everything that we do in the University community,” she said. “We try to address different aspects of commercialization, which involves everything from intellectual property protection to commercialization, startup companies’ investment in venture capital — all of that.”
STC.UNM, a nonprofit corporation owned and operated by the University, was formed in 1995 by the Board of Regents in order to assist faculty and students in transferring their ideas and inventions into the marketplace.
STC.UNM works closely with the Research and Technology Law Group in office management and administration. STC.UNM puts on seminars every semester.
“One of the overarching goals of the seminars is really to increase the awareness about commercialization as a possibility,” Kuuttila said. “Education and research really do go hand-in-hand with translation of that knowledge base and the things that are being developed at the University into something that is commercial and public benefit.”
Besides a wealth of knowledge, Kuuttila said STC.UNM will provide free box lunches at each event.
