NRC unveils record royalty payment at awards dinner

The National Research Council (NRC) took advantage of its annual Outstanding Achievement Awards dinner to announce the largest single royalty payment ever received by a government agency for royalties on sales for an invention. The NRC received $2.6 million from Baxter Healthcare Corp, Deerfield IL, for sales relating to a Meningitis C vaccine developed by the NRC, which represents the initial payment of royalties which are expected to total many more millions of dollars.

The vaccine was developed by a team of researchers led by Dr Harold Jennings of the NRC's Institute for Biological Sciences (IBS), which was honoured at the awards dinner held February 21 in Hull PQ. The Meningitis C vaccine is one of a family of vaccines developed by the IBS in conjunction with industrial partners. Approximately half of the royalty payment will go to the IBS with the rest shared amongst the researchers. Work is ongoing to apply the NRC vaccine technology to Meningitis B and other diseases.

The awards made at the annual achievement diner are too number to list here (see www.nrc.ca for full list), but some were particularly noteworthy. For example, the event marked the first announcement of the Herzberg Memorial Prize and Fellowship, which went to Dr Klaus Muller-Dethlefs, inventor of Zero Kinetic Energy photoElectron spectroscopy. He receives the $25,000 prize and will take up a one-year fellowship at the NRC's Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences.

The team behind the NRC's Millennium Conferences on Creativity in the Arts and Sciences was also honoured. They are: Michel Brochu, Martin Brooks, Dick Doyle, Lucie Lapointe, Jocelyne Lavigne and Nicole Sarault.

Research conducted over the past 10 years by the CF-18 International Follow-on Structural Test Pilot team was acknowledged. The program is the first in which actual in-service data was used for an actively controlled aircraft.

Entrepreneurship awards were given to ParaTech Therapeutics Inc, and Mitel Corp/NRC Echelle Grating. The Industrial Partnership Award went to Battery Technologies for developing technology to produce cathode material for lithium ion.