NZ Biotech community gathers for MWC Commercialisation workshop

Organised by MWC Early Career Steering Committee members Mr Rakesh Banerjee and Ms Abigail Bland, the workshop was targeted at ECR’s keen to learn about the IP process as well as the organisations and opportunities available to develop commercialisation potential in their own research.

The event, held at the University of Auckland, kicked off a comprehensive programme with a panel discussion on the commercialisation process from university technology transfer companies and guest speaker Dr Jeanette Wood (Chair of RocketVax in Switzerland and MWC Scientific Advisory Board Member).

Left to right: Mr David Christensen (Otago Innovation), Mr Jeremy Jones (Wellington UniVentures), Dr Sean MacKay (Massey Ventures), Dr Jeanette Wood and  Ms Evelyn Body (Uniservices, UoA).

Attendees where then exposed to the many faces of the New Zealand commercialisation industry with specialist talks from national commercialisation programmes (KiwiNet and Return on Science), intellectual property lawyers Blue Penguin IP, and investment company Bridgewest Ventures.

The Auckland based event had 40 attendees, where ECRs were able mingle with industry experts and learn from the experience of MWC investigators who talked to their experiences with commercialising research.

Workshop attendees, speakers and panelists mingle over lunch.

Feedback from workshop attendees was very positive, with attendees rating the event 4.3/5 stars. ECRs felt that they had ‘got all the information [they] wanted to know’ from the day and supported the running of similar workshops in the future to provide opportunities for more investigators and ‘help strengthen networking’ with industry colleagues.

MWC thanks all of our speakers and panelists involved on the day, and those working behind the scenes, for making the event a great suecess.