ITTN - Moving from "Mind to Market"

The Integrated Technology Transfer Network program (ITTN) was launched in July 2005 as a collaboration between the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship (IECE) at Cal State San Bernardino, and Morgan State University . The program offers an advanced study and mentoring program in entrepreneurship, technology transfer and commercialization to science, engineering, and math students and graduates from historically black colleges and universities.

In response for more rapid development and commercialization of technologies, the ARL views the ITTN program as an opportunity to train scientists about the entrepreneurial process and hopefully gain access to talented future scientists that bring the entrepreneurial mindset into the ARL, government labs, or use their science and entrepreneurial knowledge to meet the Army's technology needs or commercialize existing Army technologies.

Each year the ITTN program selects up to 15 fellows to identify and facilitate the commercialization of technologies in the commercial and government sectors. The fellows are selected from a national pool of promising young scientists that are all graduate students with degrees in chemistry, biology, environmental science, physics, and engineering. Fellows receive a support package to participate in the 12 month program totaling over ,000 which includes tuition, living stipend, books, computer, and housing while in residence at California State University San Bernardino and the ARL during the summer commercialization project.

The ITTN program is focused around the belief that scientific knowledge can be used to identify promising technologies but commercializing and sustaining new technologies requires a different skill set. The program exposes fellows to the needed entrepreneurial and technology transfer skills and processes by leveraging existing science, engineering and math knowledge within a business and entrepreneurship curriculum that teaches fellows to create a favorable environment for innovation and technology transfer - in essence helping them learn how to move from "Mind to Market." As a part of this experience, students work on existing technology transfer and commercialization projects, interact with entrepreneurs and research mentors, and participate in challenging seminar coursework on technology entrepreneurship. All coursework taken by the fellows is graduate level, and leads to a ertificate in Technology Entrepreneurship. At the completion of coursework, fellows are assigned to a prestigious summer research project at ARL and work directly with technology commercialization teams on key emerging technologies.