Engage with Industry
Cultivate resources and relationships to meet your goals
Engaging with industry through the exchange of materials or establishing research collaborations can promote intellectual exchange, advance work on a project toward commercialization opportunities, and attract financial support for your lab.
How Engaging with Industry Can Help Your Lab
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Advance Your Research
Funding and access to data, tools, or samples to further advance your research.
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Access complementary expertise
Work with industry experts to strengthen and validate your research.
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Support Trainees
Provide students and postdocs with exposure to real‑world problems and potential career paths.
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Accelerate Societal Impact
Faster translation to move promising ideas toward solutions that benefit society.
Types of Industry Collaborations
We make it easy to collaborate with industry, from exchanging materials and sharing knowledge to advance research efforts to establishing research collaborations to uncover solutions to key challenges.
OTD facilitates two types of research collaborations: industry-sponsored research and university-wide research alliances.
Industry-Sponsored Research
The OTD team will enable and facilitate your industry-sponsored research collaboration to further advance your research goals. Key aspects are:
- Faculty and PI led relationship
- Supports a specific research project in a single PI’s lab
- Tactical, project specific collaborations
- OTD facilitates stand-alone agreements and IP management
University-wide Alliances
We also forge multi-year strategic research alliances with industry to support multiple labs across the university. Key aspects are:
- OTD led relationship
- Strategic multi-year, multi-project framework across departments
- OTD curates potential projects built around broad research areas
- OTD provides dedicated alliance management throughout the multi-year relationship
Get Started
Do you have a relationship with a potential industry partner looking to collaborate with your lab?
Contact OTD
Interested in collaborating with industry by sharing research materials while protecting your intellectual property?
Materials Transfer Agreement Process
Want to learn more about the different industry-sponsored research agreements?
Industry-Sponsored Research at Harvard
Does your research align with the goals of an active alliance?
Active Corporate Alliances
Types of Agreements
OTD can discuss with you what type of agreement best supports your objective. A few different agreements we establish with industry include:
Confidentiality Agreements
Harvard and its industry partners typically enter into confidentiality agreements prior to discussing sensitive or proprietary information in connection with a potential license or research collaboration agreement. Below are illustrative examples of a mutual confidential disclosure agreement and one in which only Harvard is providing confidential information.
Sample Confidentiality Agreement (mutual)
Sample Confidentiality Agreement (one-way)
Material Transfer Agreements
Harvard OTD arranges thousands of material transfers each year to facilitate scientific advancement and innovation. The sample agreements below contain terms representative of Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) but are provided for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change. Harvard researchers can learn more about our MTA Process and access our MTA Submittal Form for incoming and outgoing materials with industry.
Sample MTA to Company for Internal Research
Sample Material Evaluation MTA
Industry-Sponsored Research Agreement
Harvard OTD establishes dozens of fruitful research collaborations between academic scientists and industrial partners every year, ranging from open science sponsored research agreements to custom translational science sponsored research agreements. Learn more about our Industry-Sponsored Research Process.
Sample Open Science Industry-Sponsored Research Agreement
Sample Translational Science Industry-Sponsored Research Agreement*
*Please note that this sample agreement is provided for illustrative purposes only. It contains terms representative of a basic Sponsored Research Agreement, including material transfer provisions, but any such agreement will be subject to modifications based on the unique aspects of each collaboration.
OTD’s well-crafted corporate partnerships have enabled researchers in my lab to follow their curiosity, connect with new collaborators, and pursue more ambitious studies than we could have done alone.