THE WISCONSIN ALUMNI RESEARCH FOUNDATION (WARF) is an independent, non-profit foundation chartered to support research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. WARF, the designated technology transfer organization for the University, is a separate entity from the University and partners closely with it. Since its founding in 1925 to manage a University of Wisconsin-Madison discovery that eventually eliminated the childhood disease rickets, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) has been working with business and industry to transform university research into real products benefiting society at large. WARF has served the University scientific community by patenting the discoveries of University researchers and licensing those technologies to leading companies in Wisconsin, the United States and worldwide. In this way, WARF also facilitates the use of University research for the maximum benefit of society.
Over the years the foundation has developed a model of technology transfer based upon true partnership with the UW-Madison and industry, an approach that today makes it one of the most successful long-term benefactors of technological innovation and public welfare in the country. WARF’s vision is to provide the margin of excellence that the University needs to fulfill its role as a twenty-first century leader in research, discovery and innovation. WARF is perennially in the top-ten list of university technology transfer offices and plans to remain a leader in technology transfer.
The official mission of this private, non-profit organization is to support scientific research at the UW-Madison. WARF accomplishes this by patenting inventions arising from university research, licensing the technologies to companies for commercialization, and returning the licensing income to the UW-Madison to support further scientific endeavor. Since making its first grant of $1,200 in 1928, WARF has contributed more than $750 million dollars to the UW-Madison, including monies to fund research, build facilities, purchase lands and equipment, and support a bevy of faculty and graduate student fellowships each year.
WARF plays no role in determining how these dollars are distributed, however; that decision is left solely with university officials. The purpose of this policy is to allow the commercial use of UW-Madison discoveries while avoiding a situation where commercial interests directly influence the research being conducted on campus. The university refers to WARF's annual grant as its "margin of excellence" funding, since the grant can be used to support highly innovative, early-stage research for which no other funding sources are available.
Since its founding in 1925, WARF has:
- Processed approximately 4,400 inventions created by UW-Madison faculty and staff
- Obtained 1,460 U.S. patents on these inventions
- Completed over 1290 license agreements with companies all over the world
- Given $750 million to the UW-Madison to fund research, programs and initiatives
Since 1928, the first year of the WARF grant, the university has used these monies to:
- Support more than 48,500 research projects, including 1,380 in 2003-2004
- Sponsor scores of named professorships, including 31 in 2003-2004
- Fund thousands of graduate fellowships, including 200 in 2003-2004
- Help retain top faculty
- Partially or fully pay for the construction of nearly every research facility on campus, a total of more than 50 projects at last count
WARF today:
- Manages over 700 pending and 840 issued U.S. patents on UW-Madison technologies, as well as 1,860 foreign equivalents
- Offers more than 3,600 technologies for licensing
- Maintains more than 1000 active license agreements, including 350 licenses on human embryonic stem cells
- Has completed over 160 license agreements with Wisconsin companies
- Holds equity in 30 UW-Madison spin-off companies
For over 150 years the University of Wisconsin has been a global leader in life sciences. Researchers here were among the first to study vitamins and minerals in the diet earlier this century, pioneered in the study of cancer in the 40’s, made fundamental contributions to the understanding of immunology, and most recently, discovered the basic biology of stem cells.
The licensing and commercial development of a vitamin D discovery made by UW-Madison professor Harry Steenbock, which eventually eliminated the disease rickets worldwide, is WARF's first success story. Today the foundation continues to cultivate future successes by completing more than 100 license agreements on UW-Madison technologies each year, including patents in biotechnology, small molecule pharmaceuticals, advanced materials, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and microfluidic devices, medical imaging and radiation therapy, information technology, and photonics.
While WARF will keep moving UW-Madison inventions into the marketplace for years to come, its basic philosophy remains best described in a decades-old quote from the foundation's pioneer executive director, Harry Russell, “WARF's job is to earn the money and give it to the university; the professors' job is to spend the money as wisely as they know how.”
WARF distributes the income from commercial licenses to the University, the inventors and their departments. Each year, WARF contributes over $45 million to fund additional University research. The University refers to WARF's annual gift as its "margin of excellence" funding.
WARF's licensing process is designed to achieve two goals: to generate additional "margin of excellence" research funding for the University and to position University inventions to maximize their benefit to society. WARF shares in the development risk by requiring a reasonable license fee, and a royalty is received only after a product or process is sold or otherwise used. Because of WARF's private, non-profit status, it offers its licensees confidentiality, which can be crucial when dealing with new product and process development issues.
WARF assigns each new invention to an intellectual property manager who has technical expertise in the field of the invention. The intellectual property manager works closely with patent attorneys to aggressively secure rights to inventions. WARF also assigns a licensing representative to each case to market the technology to potential licensees. As the licensing representatives are involved with inventions at an early stage, they are well-positioned to optimally disseminate the technology to the public in a way that further supports research at the University.