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work into the hands of companies and thus into the Nadine N. Aubry and panelists Kenneth G. Furton,
hands of patients, NIH scientists have developed Paul R. Sanberg, and Tobin L. Smith all agreed that
clear workflow patterns and procedural paradigms tremendous progress has been made, but they also
for doing so efficiently. Because the NIH is not a all acknowledged that we still have a long way to go
company, they depend on licensing their technol- before technology transfer activities are equally val-
ogies and therapeutics or establishing Cooperative ued with traditional scholarly pursuits. Vital to that
Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) change will be increasing the visibility of academic
that allow them to partner with industry and/or aca- innovation, getting support from key organizations
demia to move the research and commercialization such as the Association for American Universities
of products forward. These processes have paid off, (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-
as the National Cancer Institute—just one of the 27 grant Universities (APLU), and communicating the
institutes and centers making up NIH—had 62 new importance of the technology transfer office beyond
patents, 54 new CRADAs, and 132 new licenses in a profit motive. As they noted, through these activ-
2016 alone. ities, we can educate university leadership, faculty,
The session’s final panel “Honoring Innovators and community stakeholders on the importance of
through Local NAI Chapters,” featured Karen J.L. technology transfer activities, especially as regards
Burg, University of Georgia faculty member and NAI their impact on the economy and their importance
Board of Directors member, moderating a discussion for motivating students to join the next generation
on the unique ways in which local NAI chapters are of innovators.
carrying out the important mission of honoring aca- In keeping with the theme of bettering society
demic invention and thus changing the culture of through invention, the third session’s oral presenta-
academia. Panelists Vikki Hazelwood, Todd S. Keiller, tions centered on impactful technologies developed
Stephen D. Russell, and Jan D. Thornton each shared by two NAI fellows: Mark S. Humayun of the Uni-
what their institutions are doing to support invention versity of Southern California and Hany Farid of
through the vehicle of their NAI chapters, including Dartmouth College. Humayun’s talk focused on his
offering annual ceremonies and special recognitions work on advanced implants for ophthalmology, spe-
to honor inventors, changing faculty evaluation for- cifically his Argus II system. In many blind patients,
mats to include patenting and licensing activities, and their photoreceptors are damaged, so the Argus II
getting students involved in chapter events. Burg’s system uses special glasses outfitted with a camera to
follow-up article in this issue serves as both a précis capture images and transmit them as electrical pulses.
of the panel discussion and an introduction to a new Those pulses then stimulate the retina’s remaining
T&I feature, the NAI Chapter Spotlight, which will nerve cells to send perceptions of patterns of light to
highlight best practices in the establishment and the brain to allow the patient to see. Humayun and
running of these critical innovation engines. his research team are still working on improving
the acuity of vision possible with the device as well
SESSION C: HIGHLIGHTING THE SIGNIFICANT as color information and have even started work-
IMPACT NAI FELLOWS AND MEMBERS HAVE ing on implants to deliver drugs to the eye. Farid’s
CONTRIBUTED TO THE BETTERMENT OF talk chronicled his uses of technology to battle the
SOCIETY internet scourges of child pornography (CP) and
On Thursday, April 6, 2017, the second day of the radicalization materials. In the case of CP, a large part
conference opened with a thoughtful retrospective of the problem of combating these images is iden-
on how far we have come in having entrepreneurial tifying them correctly among the billions of images
activities equally valued with the traditional research, uploaded. To overcome this problem, Farid and his
teaching, and service performed by faculty for tenure team figured out how to identify images on the inter-
and promotion, something that has been champi- net as CP by using a technique called robust image
oned by the NAI and chronicled in articles in PNAS hashing, which allows the identification of the unique
(1) and Technology and Innovation (2). Moderator digital signatures of images despite any modifications.