Coburn named director of tech transfer

Coburn

ark Coburn, acting director of the University's Office of Technology Transfer during the past year, has been named the permanent director and associate provost.

"Mark has enjoyed our confidence since he joined the University more than three years ago," said Provost Charles Phelps. "We're happy to have him as permanent head of technology transfer, which is of broad and rapidly growing importance to the institution's core missions in teaching and research.

"In addition to the important direct links between industry and the University that directly help our teaching and research goals," Phelps added, "the revenues and royalties from patent licensing also immediately translate into further resources that augment our ability to carry out our basic missions."

In the past five years, "invention disclosures" from University faculty tripled from the prior five years. In the last academic year, companies paid $13.5 million for the rights to selected University projects in both engineering and biotechnolology, compared to $2.9 million for the previous fiscal years.

Coburn joined the University in April 1997 as director of the Office of Research Project Administration (ORPA), which assists faculty and staff researchers in procuring and administering funds from governmental and other sources for research. He became acting director of the Office of Technology Transfer in November 1999.

Before coming to Rochester, he had been director of the Office of Sponsored Projects for the University of California at Santa Cruz. On special assignment, he had also coordinated business and technology management planning for the University of California's Monterey Bay Education, Science and Technology Center, which conducts industrial and academic research in environmental and marine sciences.

He also had been deputy director of the University of Southern California's Department of Contracts and Grants and a grants financial analyst for the National Cancer Institute.

He holds a B.A. in zoology from Miami University in Ohio, and an M.S. in technology management from Pepperdine University.

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