The University of California Riverside (UCR) and the Organization of American States (OAS) have joined efforts to accelerate commercialization of technologies in Latin America and the Caribbean through the development of the COMUNITT portal.
COMUNITT, as the name implies, aims to build a strong community of technology transfer and entrepreneurship training professionals in the Americas. The portal is being launched during the “National Innovation Week” event taking place in Peru the week of June 21-25, 2021.
COMUNITT offers access to training materials and tutorials on technology transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship topics, as well as an opportunity to engage one-on-one specialized mentoring by the UCR team of entrepreneurs-in-residence. The platform also offers space for peer-to-peer interaction and networking.
Successful technology transfer and startup creation from universities and research institutions is challenging. The early stage of the technologies, lack of capital, and shortage of experienced commercialization experts are some of the challenges faced by tech transfer and licensing professionals.
“COMUNITT offers access to practical information and market-oriented approaches to help technology transfer professionals optimize their operations,” said Rosibel Ochoa, associate vice chancellor for technology partnerships at UCR. Building on the success of the OAS Technology Transfer HUB®, COMUNITT brings the opportunity for the regional community to connect, and embrace growth and challenges together with the assistance of best practices from the UCR team.
“There are high quality innovations and technologies throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, but many countries lack the ecosystem and support to successfully commercialize them. This portal is the next tier of support that our region needs,” said Cesar Parga, chief competitiveness, Innovation and technology section Department of Economic Development (DED)/SEDI for the OAS.
COMUNITT users and ambassadors Alvaro Torres, tech transfer coordinator at ESPOL, Ecuador’s largest public polytechnic institution, and Guillermo Salazar, R+D+i coordinator for UNI, Nicaragua’s National Engineering University, agree.
“COMUNITT will generate high impact at the technological, economic, and social level in Latin American countries,” said Torres.
“We look forward to collaborating with the main tech transfer offices from the Americas,” said Salazar.
Access to the COMUNITT platform is free for members with an option to pay for specialized mentoring. The platform is available at comunitt.org.
This news item is also available in Spanish here.