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Text Box: Howard Community College serves as the lead institution in a three-year Technology Assessment Program (TAP) grant awarded by the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). HCC’s partners include Howard County Public School System, Howard County Economic Development Authority, regional US funded research labs (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Naval Research Laboratory.) The main focus of grant is to: teach students how to take a technology invention from origination through

Text Box: application in the entrepreneurial setting. provide experiential education that increases teamwork, critical thinking, and decision-making. Link students with inventors, mentors, and entrepreneurs. enhance collaboration between private and public sectors and improve access to technology transfer for regional businesses. Technology Assessment Program is designed to facilitate the transfer of inventions from research lab to commercial applications. TAP will provide a window on the innovation enterprise and how it supports the economic development of a region. It

Text Box: also will reduce the time, effort and budget limitation that tech transfer offices experience in assessing new technologies. Long-term, the region will realize new jobs, new product lines and new companies evolving from the TAP-funded assessments. Finally, the partners will promote the potential value of TAP for implementation in other communities. Academic course ENTR 915 -“Technology from Invention to Marketplace” will be offered for first time in Fall 2006.

Text Box: Who ever you are… whatever your focus, TAP Newsletter is for you and welcomes you to the exciting world of technology transfer. More then 700 laboratories and research facilities with development expertise conduct over $100 billion in research and development annually and employ more than 1000,000 scientists and engineers. From medicine to transportation to communication, these research facilities investigate everything that is known and exact knowledge from the previously unknown. Their science has the capacity to enrich our lives by making them safer, more convenient, and more fulfilling. The effort, desire, and creativity of these sciences are unparalleled. But all of this work is for nothing if the “genie” is not let out of the bottle. It is essential that the fantastic developments happening behind laboratory doors be transferred from the theoretical to the practical. To capitalize on the nation’s investment in federal research, the expertise and technology must be brought to the marketplace. This Newsletter is designed to help you to recognize the importance of the Technology Assessment Program, which begins this year at HCC and is supported by NSF Grant.

Text Box: “Technology transfer is like gardening: no one can build a rose, but a good gardener can produce a better one by tilling the soil well, selecting the right seeds, getting the bugs out, and doing the right kind of fertilization, watering, and pruning.” David L. Jaffe, AZTech Brochure,

July 2006, Volume 1

Funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant No. 0538751

Letters From Our Students	2
What Has Da Vinci Never Done	2,
WIN A PRIZE	2
New Course– ENTR-915 Do You have a Great Idea...	3 3
Mom Ready To Buy	3
Spotlight on TAP	4