The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an institution which boasts Albert Einstein as one of its founders, has earned over $US20 billion in commercialisation revenue over the years.
“There is something in the DNA,” says the university’s president, Menahem Ben-Sasson, who will speak at the University of Sydney on Monday at a workshop on commercialising medical and science research.
Professor Ben-Sasson said there were several reasons for the success of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s success in research and commercialisation.
One is that it offered incentives to its researchers to commercialise.
“We count patents for promotion. We count publications like any other institutions, but we also count patents as part of the portfolio of a professor to be promoted,” he said.
Researchers, and departments and faculties, are also rewarded when technology is commercialised.
Another is the links which the university has with the companies which develop its technologies.
Read the full article by Tim Dodd at the Australian Financial Review.