CTCO course in Baku

14 Jan 2008 - 20 Jan 2008

STCU holds CTCO course in Baku, Azerbaijan. This continues the expansion of the successful Chief Technology Commercialization Officer (CTCO) Program first established in Ukraine in April, 2007 and then in Georgia in November, 2007. Under the CTCO Program, the following 13 Azeri institutes signed Memorandums of Cooperation with STCU:

Institute of Physics
Institute of Chemical Additives
Institute of Microbiology
Institute of Zoology
Institute of Botany
Institute of Geology
Inst. of Chemical Problems
Institute of Polymers
Institute of Radiating Problems
Institute of Ecology
Institute of Mathematics
Institute of Petro-Chemical Processes
Institute of Information Technologies

Under this program the institutes have established a new position of Chief Technology Commercialization Officer. A CTCO is envisioned as a focal point and as a resource to pro-actively identify (i) the needs of potential customers and (ii) the possible means to satisfy those customer needs by offering useful technological solutions and improvements, while bringing the institute’s innovative products and technologies to the market.

As a first step of the CTCO program in Azerbaijan STCU conducted 12 full-days of the training course in Baku on December 5-20. The course program was the similar to the one in Ukraine and Georgia, which were conducted earlier this year.

The training was delivered by Elhan Mammedov, Alida Mahmudova, experts of Azerbaijan Bank Training Center, Pavlo Tsybulev - the National Institute of Intellectual Property and Law (Ukraine), and Volodymyr Gusev - the Center for Small Business Development “Kharkiv Technologies” (Ukraine). There were 20 participants (newly appointed CTCOs), 2 STCU’s staff and 2 representatives of State Agency on Standardization, Metrology and Patenting of Azerbaijan joined last session of training on Intellectual Property rights.

During the course Nina Formby representative of European Patent Office (www.epo.org) made presentation about EPO. She attended the course together with representative of State Agency on Standardization, Metrology and Patenting of Azerbaijan and a lawyer from London Intellectual Property Court. Participants of course had an opportunity to ask them questions and CTCO’s used the opportunity very effectively.

One important result of the course is that Chief Technology Commercialization Officers initiated creation of the Centre of Commercializing and Technology Transfer in Azerbaijan. Academician Arif Mamed oglu Gashimov -Vice President of National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan personally has visited training place and participated in one of the sessions. During this meeting the main results of the training were discussed. Mr. Gashimov expressed his satisfaction for the subjects of the training course, activity of participants and has supported idea of creation the Centre of Commercializing and Technology Transfer in the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan.