KTH staff systems engineer working on behalf of the professor’s private companies – a violation of university rules. Now, principal researcher is a reminder for the same mix of businesses. At the same time control of ancillary activities are reviewed at the school.
Joakim Lund Berg, professor and head of the Gene Technology at KTH, and stem cell Professor Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute, the past years received large research grants to study gene expression (how the RNA makes proteins) at high resolution at the cellular level using a special technique. At the same time, they have built the company Spatial transcriptomics, ST AB.
As a New Technology earlier told the Royal Institute of Technology in the spring started to investigate the company business, an alarm from a KTH employee systems technologies.
President Peter Gudmundsson now give Joakim Lundeberg a written reprimand – a so-called remembrance. Professor misbehaved when his work in research and work in the company of which he is principal owner not been clearly separated.
– A small part of the research will be used to commercialize research results, but we have now seen that some confusion of research and corporate operations took place, said Peter Gudmundsson.
in the pm as the basis for the objection, stating KTH Administration Anders Lundgren many indications that the KTH staff systems engineer working on behalf of company to develop a product, the software, which the company intends to use commercially, for analyzing gene expression. This has been done without KTH received any compensation.
In the spring, there has been discussion of who has rights to the software, KTH techniques developed. The company’s name is inscribed as the owner of the program code, but company representatives do not see today any claim to it.
Read more The rules for its own company must be followed
According to KTH own institution the right to the result of systems technicians at work, because they are not covered by the exemption for teachers – the exception gives teachers and researchers at universities ownership of their own R & D results.
in parallel with the university’s own investigation has new technology examined the case on KTH. For example, we have gone through a large amount of emails to and from genetic engineering professor. There testify two systems engineers that their development is justified by the needs of the company.
One of them says to the New Technology:
– I was working on changing a first version of the software to meet the needs of the company’s first client.
the techniques adopted first KTH knew of their work for the company.
“I thought KTH felt that what I did was ok,” writes one of them in an email.
But in the KTH investigation denies the company representatives repeatedly technicians’ tasks. Mikael Samuelsson, CEO of ST AB, said in e-mails to new technologies: “They have never worked for the company.”
Read more KTH investigating researchers sidelines
in March this year he wrote to Lundederg and see unemployment:
“the important thing now is that the Court (editor’s note: systems engineers) do what they have already done for the company firmly to academic users.”
the e-mails also show that the company intended to offer systems technologies rants. They also participated in meetings on testing of customer solutions, data storage and commercialization.
In the minutes of a meeting, it says that the meeting participants may not talk openly about corporate matters and not to use the word “customers”. It is written by another partner, a scientist at KI.
Despite the differences in the investigation material and the company’s internal e-mail, so says Joakim Lund Berg that the company did not have the intention to improve reality.
“we really do not mörkat companies work – on the contrary, we have tried to be clear information meetings and it also appears in the project funding we received to validate, verify and utilize the developed technology.”
Joakim Lund Berg is disappointed by the principal’s decision.
“We have striven to clearly separate the business and academic research.”
He now hopes that the University will make the software available free via open source.
“We would love to do software produced by TA personnel (ed note: systems engineers called technical administrative staff) available to the public, today there are only with us and our partners.”
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