MERLIN organized the last plenary event at Foro Transfiere in Málaga, February 12th to 13th. Foro Transfiere is the most important fair about technology transfer in Spain, with presence of most of the Spanish universities and research centres. Our participation at the Foro Transfiere comprised two main activities: a booth for our participants and a panel discussion about how to encourage researchers to commercially exploit their research results.

Booth for MERLIN participants

A representative from each partner organization attended Foro Transfiere, together with 6 participants from MERLIN activities delivered in Spain and Poland. Being a technology transfer event, Foro Transfiere was a good opportunity for some of our participants to show-case the business idea developed as part of their participation in MERLIN. A brief description of the participants invited to Foro Transfiere follows:

• A participant with a bio-tech company that develops cosmetic products based on bee venom.
• A participant who just created a company for commercializing the results of his PhD Thesis: 3D printing of ceramic materials with a similar composition to human bones for developing bone scaffolding that help on bone regeneration.
• A participant who has designed a windmill that can be integrated in buildings for generating eolic energy. He developed this idea and initial designs as part of his Master Thesis at the University.
• A participant who designed, in the context of a larger research group, a pyrolysis reactor that can be used to recycle plastics and obtain raw materials. This was the result of his PhD Thesis.
• A participant who has created a company for providing e-learning services to medical services.

Panel entitled “Breaking the mould, unleashing the next generation of researchers“

The objective of this panel was to discuss how to promote, at a European level, the exploitation of research results by the researchers who generate them, in order to strengthen the European Digital Single Market, and to make Europe a leader in the technological vanguard. The panel included representatives of several actors involved in the process: the European Commission with the Innovation Radar initiative; a researcher participating in the MERLIN project; and two persons related to Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs): one working for Cambridge Enterprise, and another one who created a company to advise TTOs.

Participants

• Moderator: Ms. Irene López de Vallejo, Digital Ecosystems director @ BluSpecs S.L. (Spain)
• Mr. Luuk Borg, Senior Policy Officer @ European Commission (Belgium).
• Mr. Leszek Broniarek, researcher and founder of BBH Biotech (Poland) and participant of MERLIN activities in Poland
• Ms. Nuria Fernández, co-founder of UN-EM (Spain)
• Mr. Phil Keenan, member @ Cambridge Enterprise (United Kingdom)

Check more photos of the event at our Flickr album.