Sea Grant — The MIT Sea Grant Marine Industry collegium: A partnership of industry, government and academia

Abstract

The Collegium has fostered interaction and technology transfer between MIT and the Marine Industry for five years, resulting in early utilization of the fruits of marine research at MIT and valuable guidance for MIT Sea Grant in addressing needs of industry.

For maximum technology transfer to take place effectively in an academic/industry program, a number of conditions have to be met. This paper discusses three of the most important conditions. First, industry people must be aware of the interests and research capabilities of the faculty and of the resources available to the university. Second, successful technology transfer is a person to person interaction between people of common interest and roughly equivalent technical background. Third, and very important, technology transfer is communication from the recipient, or user, to the source of technology. Along with these three conditions is the need for early involvement of industry and government user in the research activity.

The Collegium is a unique arrangement to accomplish these conditions. This paper describes the program at MIT.