August 15, 2011

Wellspring Worldwide, the global leader in innovative software for managing technology commercialization, and VIVO, an NIH-funded research-discovery platform, announce the launch of Flintbox Researcher Profiles. The launch reflects a partnership between Flintbox and VIVO to provide a more holistic presentation of a university’s capabilities, portfolios, and expertise. Researcher Profiles automatically connect inventions developed by faculty with their publications and sponsored research projects, creating full faculty profiles on Flintbox.com and participating universities’ own web pages.

Flintbox is Wellspring’s Open Innovation Platform where over 500 organizations, including the world’s leading universities and research institutes, already advertise available technologies, conduct click-through licensing, identify interested partners, and interact with potential licensees. The Flintbox-VIVO partnership encourages corporate-university partnering and improves licensing opportunities by creating a network of connections among faculty and their collaborators. 

“Speaking with corporate R&D staff and technology transfer professionals, it was clear that integrating faculty expertise and licensable technologies was the critical need in the market. We listened, and we are excited about the resulting launch with VIVO,” said Dr. Matt Hamilton, Wellspring President.

VIVO matches researchers, publications and grants from sources including PubMed and the NIH through semantic web algorithms. VIVO is hosted by Flintbox or can be installed at universities and research institutes to reveal areas of research and scholarship across disciplines. Principal Investigator, Dr. Michael Colon stated, "VIVO has received a tremendously positive response from the academic community and we look forward to the new capabilities and services that Wellspring can provide to our users".

Membership on Flintbox.com is free to universities and research institutes, and VIVO-based Researchers Profiles are created automatically for all member organizations. 

To find out more about VIVO, please visit www.vivoweb.org.

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