The science and technology departments in east China’s Jiangsu Province have innovated their systems and mechanisms since the start of 2023 so as to have stimulated innovation vitality, and accelerated the transformation of scientific and technological achievements.
The Biomedical Membrane Laboratory of Nanjing University of Technology has developed the first domestically independently developed blood exchange membrane, which is a key core material for ECMO in vitro artificial lung.
In 2023, the patent rights for this product have just been transferred from the university to the research team for large-scale production.
In the past, universities had ownership of scientific and technological achievements in universities, which was limited by factors such as state-owned asset management systems, resulting in low market conversion efficiency and limited incentive effects.
Thanks to the pilot implementation of the job-based empowerment reform for scientific and technological achievements, research teams can pay a certain amount of fees to their schools based on intangible asset evaluation before taking patents into personal ownership.
It is under such an innovative mechanism that Professor Cui Chaoliang's team at Nanjing University of Technology has obtained full patent ownership and successfully introduced social capital to initiate market-oriented operations.
“This kind of empowerment reform makes our achievements more direct and faster to be transformed, and our achievements are more easily recognized by investors, so that the research team can better grasp the best opportunity for the development of achievements in the marketization process. At the same time, it also motivates us to pay more attention to the industrialization prospects of research in future scientific research,” said Cui Chaoliang, Professor at the School of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Technology.
Allowing researchers to fully enjoy the benefits brought by technological achievements has greatly stimulated their innovation enthusiasm. At present, four pilot units in Jiangsu have been empowered with 90 job-based scientific and technological achievements, with a contract amount exceeding 200 million yuan.
At the same time, Jiangsu has also explored the launch of the "Concept Verification Center" in a bid to open up the "initial kilometer" of scientific and technological achievement transformation through a new scientific research organization.
The Suzhou Medical Device Research Institute of Southeast University recently passed the validation of the "human organ chip" technology by the concept validation center before transferring patents to relevant enterprises for more than 30 million yuan, which has led to the application of this achievement in multiple units such as the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Jiangsu Provincial Cancer Hospital.
Compared with the traditional achievement transformation model, the concept validation center gathers experts from various fields of industry, academia, and research to intervene in the innovation process at the earliest stage. From feasibility analysis in the early stage, to sample development in the middle stage, and finally to achievement transformation in the later stage, the concept validation center provides full process support to accelerate the transition of new technologies from the laboratory to the market.
“The concept validation center was specifically involved in the entire process of primary transformation of research and development achievements by providing a professional technical platform and deploying professional technical personnel and achievement transformation personnel responsible for the provision of professional services throughout the entire process,” said Ge Jianjun, Executive Vice President and Executive Director of Organ Chip Project at Suzhou Medical Device Research Institute of Southeast University.
In 2023, the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Science and Technology issued guidelines for the construction of concept validation centers and carried out application organization work throughout the province in a bid to build over 20 concept validation centers in emerging industries and cutting-edge technology fields within three years.
“Through the construction of a concept validation center, we can better optimize and integrate elements such as talent achievements, market, and capital, further facilitating the ‘initial kilometer’ of technology transformation, and improving the innovation ecosystem through front-end empowerment,” said Zhang Lijun, Director of the Cooperation Department of Suzhou High-tech Zone Science and Technology Innovation Bureau.
Targeting major strategic tasks and tackling key core technologies in industries, Jiangsu has provided special funding support for the transformation of provincial scientific and technological achievements to 85 enterprises in 2023 by focusing on promoting the effective and rapid transformation of major scientific and technological achievements so as to achieve greater breakthroughs in strengthening and supplementing the industrial chain.
The latest statistics show that from January to November 2023, Jiangsu recorded 73900 technology contract registrations and a transaction volume of 381.3 billion yuan, with an expected annual transaction volume higher than in 2022, setting a new historical high.
“The only way for Jiangsu to achieve high-quality industrial development is to promote the close integration of technology and economy, accelerating the transfer, transformation, and industrialization of scientific and technological achievements. In the next step, Jiangsu should further stimulate the position of enterprises as the main body of scientific and technological innovation, stimulate the endogenous driving force of enterprise scientific and technological innovation, and on the other hand, deepen the reform of the evaluation system and mechanism of scientific and technological achievements so as to promote scientific researchers in universities and research institutes to closely integrate scientific research work with economic and social development,” said Zhong Weijun, Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Southeast University.
