Biomedical Frontiers: Fall 1996, Vol.4, No.1
CIE Gets Wired

Columbia's technology transfer office--Columbia Innovation Enterprise or CIE--is now on the World Wide Web (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cie). The new site features customized pages for corporate and faculty users and makes it easy to retrieve information quickly and efficiently. "We view the site as a tremendous technological tool," says Jack Granowitz, CIE's executive director.

"We view the site as a tremendous technological tool."

The web page's "guide to CIE for corporate users" provides information about CIE, a list of available services, contact information, descriptions of technologies available for licensing, and more. "Before, when a company wanted information on available technologies, we would send them a list, they would check off the items they were interested in and send it back to us, and then we would mail them the information. The whole process took about a month," says Granowitz. "Now it's instantaneous." The special page for staff and faculty has similar time-saving features: For instance, this section of the CIE web site contains information on what constitutes a patentable invention, how to protect an invention, basic patent requirements, and the role of CIE. Inventors can download an invention report form directly from the site.

CIE executive director Jack Granowitz.

The new CIE home page (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cie).

Another CIE innovation is making its debut through the CIE home page: the Office of New Media Development (ONM). Launched at the end of 1995, ONM's official mission is to further the use of new media technology in support of the research, instructional, and outreach enterprises at Columbia by extending CIE services in the area of new media development and by providing an interface between faculty researchers and the commercial new media sector. For faculty, that means ONM can provide in-house expertise in the use of new media and electronic publishing for research dissemination and can provide industry contacts and market information for faculty whose new media projects may have commercial potential. The ONM web pages will provide online guides for faculty developers, including pointers to resources and tools and information about intellectual property and copyright issues in new media. The web pages also will showcase faculty new media and research pages. "We want to lower the hurdle for researchers to publish on the web and help them effectively participate in new media opportunities," says ONM director Kim Taipale. "And we want to make it easy for outside users to tap into the wealth of information and resources available at Columbia."