Andrea Foglia has been interested in technology since childhood. Precisely for this reason, as the head of USI Transfer explained, after graduating in Biotechnology, Molecular Biology and Intellectual Property Law, he chose to devote his professional life to supporting and promoting the work and discoveries made by the many researchers active at USI and its affiliated institutes.
"USI Transfer is the technology transfer office of the Universitą della Svizzera italiana (USI) and its affiliated institutes," explained Foglia. "Our goal is to protect intellectual property, meaning the protection of discoveries that are made within the university and its institutes. We are involved in consulting, coordinating patent application filing, and transferring discoveries to wider society, e.g. by negotiating agreements with manufacturers, so that everyone can benefit from the innovations that originate at the university." When we talk about intellectual property, we refer to something intangible: "These are schemes to protect ideas, which can be of various kinds: patents protect technical innovations, while copyrights cover photographs, songs, but also software. Then there are trademarks and logos, but also design and know-how," Andrea Foglia explained. The first concept of protecting intellectual property rights dates back to 1474: "It goes back to the Republic of Venice, and has evolved considerably since then. The principle behind the patent is to make the discovery public in exchange for protection by the government (20 years from the filing date), so everyone can benefit from the innovation. An interesting case is that of the forceps, an instrument used in the past in the case of difficult births, which was handed down from father to son for generations because the inventors did not have the possibility of filing a patent application. Having an intellectual property protection system, on the other hand, allows the whole community the opportunity to benefit from a discovery, while guaranteeing the inventor’s rights are protected’.
The work within USI Transfer includes a part of the analysis on the feasibility of protecting ideas (assessment of inventions) created within the world of USI. Then there is a significant part of legal work, which includes drafting and finalising contracts. Furthermore, another fundamental aspect of the work concerns networking: members of USI Transfer regularly meet and collaborate with colleagues from other Swiss universities both to standardise procedures and to discuss specialist issues, exchange opinions and share expertise.
Recalling one of the first projects he dealt with upon his return to Ticino, Andrea Foglia referred to the creation of an algorithm for identifying fake news in social media, developed and patented at USI and subsequently licensed to a USI start-up ( Fabula AI , a company founded by a group of researchers led by Professor Michael Bronstein ) acquired by the former Twitter, now X. ’In the young people I meet you can see the desire for discovery, perhaps more than years ago. This is also because there are more tools at their disposal. At USI, in addition to the USI Transfer service, we have an incubation service for start-ups, the USI Startup Center, as well as targeted training courses, such as Heidrun Flaadt’s CaseBiomed course,’ he concluded.
The full interview with Andrea Foglia in ’Tra le righe’ is available at the following .
