A retired faculty member has returned to UWSP to staff a new initiative to help colleagues secure copyrights, patents or licenses on their work.

Byron Shaw, a water quality specialist who retired from UWSP last spring, has agreed to accept a quarter-time appointment as UWSP’s first Campus Liaison for Patents, Copyrights and Licensing.

The campus liaison initiative is a UW Systemwide plan to help four-year comprehensive campuses obtain licenses and money for ideas and inventions developed by their faculty.

Among Shaw’s responsibilities will be to provide information to faculty and staff and to assist them in obtaining legal and intellectual property review to determine market feasibility for the results of their research. As an advocate for faculty and staff, he plans to inform and encourage colleagues through one-on-one meetings.

Shaw also will attend UW System programs, provide campus workshops and give information to UWSP and UW System administrators about the status of campus initiatives. He will work with experts at UW System who are involved with WiSys, a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

UWSP Chancellor Tom George, a member of the WiSys board, says, "I’m excited by the opportunity that WiSys affords UWSP and the other comprehensive campuses of the UW System. Byron Shaw and the liaisons from other campuses will be a boon to the process of identifying faculty with innovative ideas and helping them bring those ideas to fruition through the WiSys program. Our faculty members are brimming with groundbreaking research that will have application in the world beyond academe.

"As our faculty develop their research interests into projects that have applications beyond academe, they also will bring this experience to their students through instruction enhanced both by research and by the experience of converting research to applications."

Shaw says he is looking forward to the challenge of the new position especially to encouraging and helping faculty and bringing new resources to campus. During his 32-year career at UWSP, he directed the Environmental Task Force Program and led regional and state efforts for improved groundwater monitoring and protection. Since his retirement last spring, he has maintained his professional involvement in water quality and other natural resource issues.

Shaw, who holds degrees from UW-Madison, received the University Scholar Award from UWSP and the Distinguished Service Award form the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Water Resources Association last year. Upon his retirement, he was honored by colleagues and friends with the establishment of a scholarship in his name.

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