High-level training aimed at two important groups of target users: entrepreneurs and researchers, from Italy and America. That’s what will be offered by the Italian Trade Commission (the Agency for promotion abroad and internationalisation of Italian businesses) in Philadelphia in the United States on the subject of technology transfer. The dates are set for June 12 and 13 for the training course that promises to be truly complete as it will be carried out in collaboration with the non-profit Sbarro Health Research Organization and Innova Consulting Group, a company that operates in the services industry for technological transfer.

The choice of Philadelphia, and the American market in general, was not random: with a series of activities aimed at encouraging technical-scientific collaboration and the creation of a spin-off company, the Italian Trade Commission intended to take stock of the need of Italian researchers working in the area to develop technological, scientific and commercial relationships with Italy. In this sense the seminar is a launch trampoline for the creation of a spin-off of the company within Italy and its objective is to uphold Italian technological know-how in the United States.

The non-profit Sbarro Health Research Organization, chaired by professor Antonio Giordano, an expert in cancer genetics, will host the works and will fund clinical researchers, molecular biologists, geneticists, physicists and bio mathematicians studying the molecular mechanisms of cancer. Moreover, Sbarro Health Research Organization, has important partners in Italy, and actually collaborates with the Department of Human Pathology and Oncology at the University of Siena and has contacts with “La Sapienza” University, with the University of Naples Federico II with the non-profit HFH (Human Health Foundation) and with Crom (Centro di ricerche oncologiche – Centre for Oncological Research) in Mercogliano.

Furthermore, it is forming the first Italian incubator in the USA specialising in support for innovation and technology transfer between Italy and the United States. Sectors with strong technological investment such as molecular biology (Sbarro’s area of interest) will lead the way in the seminar. In this sector, as in others with a high degree of specialisation, Italian knowledge is considered to be among the most advanced in the world and ties in well with the latest technologies developed in the USA. This is the starting point for the “transfer” of know-how and technology that makes the company’s most important incubators “virtuoso”.

The works will take place in two very different sessions: the first will give space to actual training, with active participation by the speakers, and the second will feature moments of comparison between the participants. Diverse experiences in research and spin-off will be compared, analysed and assessed to discover what should be “imported” or “exported” depending on the points of view.