Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice

For the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA), enhancing UC Berkeley's research enterprise includes catalyzing participation in intellectual property and the innovation ecosystem by researchers from all backgrounds. The IPIRA team also supports researchers engaged in important social science work who are bringing light to inequalities in society and advocating for more equitable outcomes. Here are a few examples of this work.

Funding

HS Chao Women in Enterprising Science Program, launched by the Women in Enterprising Science (WIES) Program at the Innovative Genomics Institute to promote gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship, accepts proposals from aspiring entrepreneurs seeking to translate genomics research into impactful solutions to real-world challenges. Fellows can receive up to $1 million to create and grow new ventures.

Chemistry Postdoc Program for Underrepresented Minorities, launched in 2018 with funding from UC Berkeley startup Aduro Biotech.

Intellectual Property

Gender Representation in Inventorship. This analysis of the percentage of UC Berkeley inventors by gender between 2000 and 2021 is part of an ongoing study to identify and root out systemic biases in research commercialization.

Racial Representation in Inventorship. As part of efforts to ensure everyone has the same equality of opportunity to participate in the innovation economy, IPIRA will begin inviting inventors to complete a voluntary demographic survey in 2022. Data will be aggregated for analysis to better understand and address the inventorship disparities among women, people of color, veterans, and other underrepresented groups.

Seven Steps to Increase Patent Inventorship Equity. Berkeley Industry Alliances Office Director Eric Giegerich and Jordana Goodman from Boston University School of Law share concrete ways university technology transfer offices can remedy patent inventorship gaps through quantifying the problem, education, and altering internal processes for disclosing inventions and obtaining patents.

Policy

Relationship of CEO Gender and Age to Performance of Venture Backed Startups. In analyzing the valuations of two decades of startup companies, IPIRA found that venture capital investors are leaving money on the table when they favor young, male startup founders over their older, female counterparts. This is the first of a multi-part study.

Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Promotion, and Tenure, Science, Editorial, 16 September 2021. The Promotion and Tenure–Innovation and Entrepreneurship coalition posits that establishing policies and practices that expand what academic institutions value as scholarship can help augment who is valued as a scholar. Recognizing and rewarding innovation, entrepreneurship, and the many and evolving dimensions along which faculty create societal impacts would expand professorial diversity at academic institutions. Co-authored by UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor for Intellectual Property & Industry Research Alliances Carol Mimura.

Socially Responsible Licensing. The intellectual property management strategy spearheaded by UC Berkeley, known as SRLP, stimulates innovative, high impact solutions to fundamental health inequities in low-and middle-income countries where racism, geopolitics, and oppression have led to significant disparities in access to care.

Non-exclusive Royalty-Free License. Early in the global fight against the COVID-19 outbreak, UC Berkeley adopted the AUTM COVID-19 Licensing Guidelines to expedite the transfer of university innovations for the prevention, diagnoses, treatment, and containment of COVID-19, and protection of healthcare workers. The Berkeley NERF license helped induce commercial investment in life-saving solutions to the pandemic's complex challenges.

Equity-Related Social Science Research

Equity-related data use and material transfer agreements. Research depends upon data and materials from a wide variety of public and private institutions. IPIRA negotiates agreements that allow researchers to access data sets and materials necessary to their work, and is proud to support and highlight Berkeley researchers doing important equity-related analyses in the social sciences.