About
Departments & Centers
Industrial Cooperation
The Department of Industrial Cooperation arranges all fee-for-service work and industry-sponsored collaborative research, matching companies with the appropriate UMaine expertise and facilities.
We help UMaine achieve its goals of research and public service, while avoiding conflicts of interest with the private sector and ensuring that the university is compensated for private use of its state-supported resources. We provide professional and responsive support in the form of contract review, drafting, negotiations, contract execution, and project management. The office strives to streamline research agreement negotiations and management. We also handle any related non-funded agreements needed for each project – confidentiality agreements, material transfer agreements, etc.
Research Commercialization
The Office of Strategic Partnerships, Innovation, Resources and Engagement (SPIRE) at UMaine serves as the primary link between the university and commercial interests. UMaine’s rapidly growing research base has fueled over 150 patents and patent applications from the work of faculty, staff, and students. OIED works to commercialize these results through collaborative research and licensing of intellectual property to companies.
Current licenses, license options and license negotiations include technologies in the areas of cellulose nanomaterials and production, energy storage, carbon nanomaterials, biomaterials, biomedical diagnostics and implants, composites and composite structures, chemical products, sensors, molecular imaging and software.
License terms vary by technology, but generally include license issue fees, running royalties, minimum royalties and performance milestones. A discounted royalty rate is often granted for products produced in Maine.
Advanced Manufacturing Center
Are you a business, entrepreneur, inventor or researcher struggling to transform your ideas into tangible proof of concepts, prototypes, or commercialized products?
The AMC can create a custom solution that is right for you. We make it easy.
Whether you have an idea for a new product or process, need help with funding, or need to prototype and commercialize, we will walk you through the process. With a dedicated full time staff of mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, machinists, and technicians in a 30,000 square foot state-of-the-art design and manufacturing facility, we offer the services you need to accelerate growth and add value to your newest innovation.
Director: John Belding
Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research
The Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research (CCAR) was founded in 1999 by the University of Maine as an aquaculture research and development facility, to address industry needs at industry scale. Located on Taunton Bay in Franklin, Maine, the CCAR’s extensive facilities include marine hatcheries, where juvenile fish, invertebrates, and sea vegetables are propagated for research and industry. Our Team is experienced in raising a multitude of species, including tilapia, salmon, flounder, California yellowtail, Atlantic halibut, eels, marine polychaetes, and sea urchins. The Center also serves as an aquaculture business incubator, where entrepreneurs can get help with their business plans, find a site for their operations, secure investment capital, engage in research and development, design full-scale commercial aquaculture farms, and utilize our hatchery services. The CCAR is a resource for new and established companies, students and faculty, and fisherman trying to rebuild natural stocks.
Director: Steve Eddy
Foster Innovation Center
The base for UMaine programs and services that support entrepreneurship, business development and commercialization of university research, the center offers academic courses in innovation open to both undergraduate and graduate students and is home to a student business incubator. It also is the birthplace of an innovation curriculum that has been adopted by companies and other universities globally. The Foster Center provides courses, training, coaching and consulting to students, faculty and staff, community startups and established organizations, helping them develop the skills needed to effectively create, test and actualize ideas.
Process Development Center
The Process Development Center (PDC) offers a broad range of technical services and resources for clients, both in traditional pulp and paper and in emerging process technologies and materials science.
One of the top suppliers of cellulose nanomaterials in the world, the PDC provides nanomaterials to researchers and application developers at hundreds of businesses, laboratories, and educational institutions in over forty countries.
Whether trailblazing new nanotechnologies, performing sophisticated chemical analysis, or providing innovative pulp and paper solutions, the PDC remains at the cutting edge of chemical engineering and material science.
Director: Colleen Walker