Date and Time
May 13, 2011
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
RSVP required by 5PM May 12

Speaker
Dr. Robert Kneller - Professor at Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), University of Tokyo

About the seminar

Dr. Kneller's talk examines how national systems of industry-university cooperation impact innovation by comparing the Japanese system with that of the United States. Dr. Kneller has spent 13 years with a major science and engineering research center at the University of Tokyo. His talk shows how the Japanese system favors exclusive transfer of academic discoveries to established companies. It also examines other factors affecting science and engineering entrepreneurship in Japan. The talk references recent research showing that, at least in pharmaceuticals, new companies are more likely than old to pioneer the early development of novel technologies, especially those arising in universities. Japan's experience is relevant to current debates in America related to university management of intellectual property, entrepreneurship by faculty and students, appropriate ways to encourage industry-university collaboration, and the importance of peer review in allocating government university research funding.

About the speaker

Robert Kneller is a visiting professor at the Stanford Medical School and a professor at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo.

He worked at Tianjin Children's Hospital and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine from 1986 to 1987 before joining the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1988. At NIH, he was a cancer epidemiologist and was also responsible for negotiating collaborative agreements with industry to develop NIH anti-cancer therapies. In 1997, an Abe Fellowship enabled him to study the Japanese system of university-industry cooperation at the University of Tokyo. Since 1998, he has been a professor with that university's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology. His research focuses on university-industry cooperation, the role of start-ups in innovation, the discovery and commercialization of biomedical technologies, and conflicts of interests associated with academic entrepreneurship. More information about Dr. Kneller is available at his website.