Innovation Process from Academic Activities to Industrial Products
Authors: Osaka Tetsuya 
Published: February 2020

Innovation based on electrochemistry, which has built a big business, has achieved brilliant success in the past two or three decades, such as lithium ion batteries (LIB), interconnection, and pH sensor etc. Fortunately, our group successfully developed the magnetic material for magnetic heads of hard disk drives in 1998 [1,2]. The products based on the technology appeared in 2001, momentarily after the related patent was received and the technology transfer was provided to a company. This is a rare example that a technology licensing organization (TLO), Waseda University Research Collaboration and Promotion Center, succeeded in the technology transfer to industry by collaborating closely with the company in Japan. Through the above experience, we were fortunate to obtain the knowledge how to overcome the challenges toward the success in a big business.

Recently, we have being trying to develop a semiconductor-based biosensor towards practical applications in medical fields such as pH sensing, tumor marker detection, infectious diseases diagnosis, and neuropsychiatric disorder diagnosis. In the recent decade, we have succeeded in the development of the SiO2-gate field effect transistor (FET) with a high degree of chemical durability by covering its surface with a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) [3], and have provided a few examples of its biosensing [4–6]. Based on the results, we are now moving into a stage of practical application of the biosensor in medical fields. Our strategy for practical application of the biosensor is to achieve success in even a small market, i.e. a niche market, at the early stage, and subsequently we will lead the experience to create an innovation in a big business.

To accomplish the success above, a new center named “Smart Life Support Innovation R&D research center (tentative name)”, supported by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, science and technology, Japan (MEXT), has decided to be constructed in 2014 in our University (Fig. 1), and it will be effectively used to promote collaboration with universities and industries towards the success. By taking advantage of the facility, we are certainly devoting all our efforts to promote the research and development of the biosensing devices in the future.

Acknowledgement

This work is partly supported by the Center of Innovation Program from Japan Science and Technology Agency, JST, Japan.

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