‘WisBusiness: The Podcast’ features Jeanine Burmania, WARF

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has seen the pandemic influence research happening on campus over the past year.

“In support of that, we actually put together a challenge that we called our Accelerator COVID-19 Challenge where we actually provided funding to campus to help innovate in this space and develop new technologies that ranged from respirators to different diagnostics,” said Jeanine Burmania, senior director of IP and licensing at WARF in the latest “WisBusiness: The Podcast” episode.

Earlier this year, WARF announced a surgical shield design is available for a royalty-free commercial license. The shield is meant to protect doctors in the operating room from COVID-19. It’s currently still available. The royalty-free license is one way that WARF is working to provide personal protective equipment and new technologies related to therapies and diagnostics during the pandemic.

But WARF is still seeing technologies outside of the COVID space. Every year, WARF has up to 60 license agreements ranging from research models to agricultural software. Some interesting things in the pipeline this year include 3D metal printing technology and a new method for making sparkling wine.

Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison: