The title of this publication – Driving Innovations Forward – aptly describes CTTC’s on-campus mission. We are an advocate for researchers to find tangible applications for their discoveries to improve the human condition. To make easy that which is hard; to make possible that which is impossible.
Occasionally an opportunity comes along to practice what we preach, to apply creativity and innovation to a problem in our local universe for a better outcome. One such example is the processing of Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) for University researchers. CTTC processes more than a thousand MTAs annually to facilitate research between academic collaborators. We have experienced a forty percent increase in MTA requests over the past 5 years, and it is a constant struggle to keep up with demand with limited resources. We felt that the only solution was to create an electronic MTA processing system, and so we teamed up with Paul Harris, PhD and his REDCap team to create MTAShare.