In an effort to continue the push for “Communi-Versity,” Brett Cornwell, associate vice chancellor for Texas A&M University’s Office of Technology Commercialization, delivered an address to Prairie View A&M University faculty and staff regarding technology transfer in the Julius W. Becton auditorium Friday.
The event featured several alumni, Mayor Frank Jackson, and members of PVAMU’s faculty and staff, including Vice President of Institutional Relations Lauretta Byars and Research Scientist Raul Cuero.
Throughout the address, Cornwell mentioned several examples of how research projects from Texas A&M University were brought from the lab to the industry to provide inspiration to PVAMU’s effort to make similar efforts.
Cornwell said, “What we do is gather the technology here for the people that we think we will sell them to, something I’ve been doing since 1994 with NASA. It’s not necessarily me making a decision on what is commercial-ready and what isn’t, it’s me talking to the industry and letting the industry make that decision.”
He also listed several instances where PVAMU and TAMU have teamed up to push the effort for Prairie View’s commercialization. Cornwell shifted the attention of the project to focus on attracting alumni back to the university who may have business interest in the opportunities that are coming along. By adding a business side to the alumni-university relationship, Cornwell believes the relationship can be enhanced.
He used the example of Texas A&M University’s Aggie Alumni Angel Network, one of the nation’s first alumni-based networks of accredited investors.
Cornwell was joined by members of Texas Engineering Extension Services, the group responsible for conducting interviews with PVAMU researchers to decide which research projects are capable of entering the field.
While TEEX is currently in the process of producing a report for January 2011, they have conducted eight interviews at PVAMU thus far.
The information from the interviews, along with surveys, will all be compiled in the TEEX’s January report, which will look at the community vision and opportunities coming out of the university to develop an official — in Economic Development and Market Intelligence Program Director at TEEX Joan Quintana’s words —- “plan of action.”
Quintana said, “In the case of Prairie View, Texas, the biggest asset is the university. We are deliberately coming into the university talking faculty and researchers to trying to understand opportunities to grow research, expand educational opportunities, and looking at traditional economic development.”