After nearly 20 years with the organization, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Managing Director Carl Gulbrandsen will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from In Business magazine.
WARF is a private, nonprofit group that encourages research at UW-Madison by providing patents on new discoveries and licensing them for commercial use, according to its website.
Gulbrandsen has served as managing director since 2000 and has launched several initiatives to advance discovery according to a university release, including the UpStart program, which offers free classes for minority and women entrepreneurs in Madison, and 4490 Ventures, a fund for information technology startups in Wisconsin.
Gulbrandsen also guided the program Discovery to Product (D2P), which its website says provides resources for “innovations coming from campus dorm rooms and laboratories.”
The stem cell bank WiCell Research Institute, the WiSys Technology Foundation and the Morgridge Institute for Research were some of Gulbrandsen’s other projects, according to the release.
Peter Tong, president of the WARF board of trustees, praised Gulbrandsen’s work, calling his accomplishments “transformational.”
“Carl is a top chief executive,” Tong said in the release. “He has put a superb team in place that helped make WARF one of the top technology transfer organizations in the world and a leading innovator in investment management.”
Set to retire in 2016, Gulbrandsen has seen WARF gift UW-Madison $895 million since his first year as managing director. He will be honored in the February issue of In Business, as well as at a Feb. 16 reception at the Overture Center for the Arts.
