Engineering professionals throughout the Texas A&M University (TAMU) System met in Washington, D.C., at the 3rd annual National Innovation Summit and Showcase, June 16–18. The National Innovation Summit is the world’s largest showcase of industry-vetted new technologies that are ready for commercialization; the summit is in support of the White House and Congressional call for innovation commercialization initiatives.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) was represented by Assistant Agency Director Dean Alberson and Senior Research Engineer Paul Carlson. According to Alberson, the Summit provided an opportunity to not only attend one-on-one meetings with industry representatives from around the world, but also colleagues throughout the Texas A&M University System. In addition to TTI, representatives from the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) and the Texas A&M System Technology Commercialization Office attended the summit.
“Even though there were 50 or so universities represented at the summit, Texas A&M was the only educational entity that brought their engineering staff,” said Alberson. “There was a good cross-section of TAMU system engineering. We don’t spend nearly enough time talking with our system colleagues, so the cross-pollination of discovering how different agencies could potentially collaborate was a great by-product of the summit.”
Texas A&M Engineering also had an exhibit booth at the showcase allowing for industry representatives to connect with and learn more about each of the agencies that were present.
“There is a lot of potential for follow up, particularly with our system colleagues, TEES and TEEX,” noted Carlson. “I’ve never attended an event where we had representatives from all the major TAMU system engineering agencies. That to me was probably the most beneficial part of this meeting; the connections we made with our peers.”
Companies or individuals interested in learning more about the state engineering agencies or the Technology Commercialization Office within The Texas A&M University System should contact Dr. Dale Cope at (979) 458-7477, dalecope@tees.tamus.edu, or Ande Brenckman at (979) 458-7552, andreabrenckman@tees.tamus.edu.