Tag: United States

2025 marks 100 years since the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) became the first-ever tech transfer office. It’s been a very successful first century for the non-profit organisation as we heard last week, but that does pose an interesting challenge: how can WARF keep innovating and make sure it not only survives but thrives for another 100 years?

The organisation is certainly not resting on its laurels. WARF today is split into six verticals and much like you’d expect, many of them are groundbreaking. There is, for example, WARF Therapeutics, a drug development accelerator run by just a handful of people that has already brought tens of millions of additional grant funding to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Today’s guests are Erik Iverson, who became CEO of WARF in 2016 and brought with him a deep passion for life sciences, having earlier worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Access to Advanced Health Institute.

Also joining the show is Mike Partsch, WARF’s inaugural chief venture officer who brought with him not only venture capital experience but also a deep understanding of tech transfer and spinouts: he founded the first-ever biotech spinout out of Penn in 1990 (which successfully IPO’d a few years later).

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The story of technology transfer begins with Harry Steenbock’s discovery of how to create vitamin D- fortified food. Steenbock, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, established the first-ever university tech transfer office not only to license his own invention to industry but also to support his colleagues present and future to do the same.

This year, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) celebrates its 100th anniversary. But while WARF has forever changed how universities go about creating real-world applications for their research, it wasn’t all smooth sailing: because WARF was created decades before the Bayh-Dole Act (which gives US universities the right to exploit their IP), there were several run-ins with the government, regulators and industry both at home and internationally.

Kevin Walters wrote his PhD on the history of WARF and now serves as the organisation’s public affairs associate. He explains why all of this could only have happened in a state known for its dairy industry and how Steenbock’s childhood days on a farm meant he managed to do something that paediatricians did not.

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