Laurent Miéville is Past President of the Association of European Science and Technology Transfer Professionals (ASTP.net), an independent organization built around its 600+ members, Europe wide. In parallel to his role in ASTP, Laurent is also Founder and Head of Unitec – the technology transfer office of the University of Geneva and the University Hospitals of Geneva (www.unige.ch/unitec).He oversees a team of dedicated professionals active in identifying, protecting and licensing new inventions as well as negotiating collaborations contracts between the research institutions and the industry.
During his nine years practice in this capacity, he has negotiated successfully more than 200 technology transfer deals including the creation of 20 spin-offs.
He has also been training students in technology transfer and the creation of start-ups as coach for the Swiss national competition “Venture” and in postgraduate training at the University of Geneva and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ).
His previous business experience includes several years spent at Silicon valley’ s based start-up Conductus Inc. (now Superconductor Technologies Inc.) where he was involved in the realization of electronic superconducting devices for medical imagery and telecommunications. In parallel to these activities, he was active as consultant in the evaluation of the commercial potential of new technologies for Glenwood partners, a capital venture firm based in Menlo Park (California).
Apart from Unitec, Laurent also co-founded the Swiss-list (swiss-list.com), a virtual community of about 1’000 Swiss expatriates mostly active in the US and the Swiss Technology Transfer Association (SWITT.ch) where he was a Board member before joining the Board of the Association of European Science and Technology Transfer Professionals (ASTP.net).
He is member of the American association of University Technology Transfer managers (AUTM), the Licensing executive society (LES) and has been invited as expert in Technology Transfer by the European Commission (DG Research) and sits on the governor’s board of the US-based organization Certified Licensing Professionnals (CLP).
Laurent hold several degrees in Physics (MSc, PhD) as well as in economics (MBA) and spent 10+ years in research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Geneva and Stanford University (USA). He is the author of more than 30 published papers in peer reviewed journals.
List of invited presentations
May 28th, 2009, Benelux Venture Forum, Ghent, Belgium, “Effective links with research and big business: Value beyond clusters and networks ?” Panel.
April 7th, 2009, Capital-IP, Paris France ” La valorisation de la recherche, première étape d’un choix de vie profesionnelle ?” Panel.
November 24th, 2008, ACCT, Ottawa, Canada “Presentation of ASTP”.
October 14th, 2008, Roving Seminar, Swiss Patent Office, Bern “IP culture in Universities”.
September 2nd, 2008, Copenmind, Copenhagen, Denmark “Measuring Performance in Technology Transfer”.
June 20th, 2008, Curie Association Annual Meeting, Compiègne, France “Business Model des Structures de Valorisation”
April 11th, 2008, UN Economic Commission for Europe, Geneva, Switzerland “From Academic Research to the Market, New approaches to bridging the financing Gap”.
February 1st, 2008, ASTP Technology Transfer Courses, Vienna, Austria “Post Licensing Management”