18th International Conference on Technology Transfer successfully concluded

The 18th International Technology Transfer Conference (ITTC), an event on innovation, research and knowledge transfer between research organisations and industry, concluded on 10 October 2025. The conference was co-organised by the Rudolf - Science and Technology Centre Novo mesto, whose employees actively participated as reviewers of scientific papers, coordinators of the WIPO national awards and members of the programme, organising and scientific committees.

The main part of the conference took place on 8 October 2025 at the University of Primorska in Koper, where more than 80 participants, including international guests, gathered. The competition part of the conference attracted special attention again this year - the innovation presentations or pitches by researchers from public research organisations, which were presented by ten finalist teams with a total of 27 members from seven Slovenian and one foreign research organisation. The main prizes were awarded to Anže Zidar from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, for his invention in the field of dentistry - Smart nanofibre patch promoting gum health, and to Andreja Pondelak from the Building Research Institute of Slovenia for her wood processing technology SAFE WOOD - a fire-resistant and durable mineralised wood technology.

The WIPO National Awards were decided by an expert jury composed of Annika Bastian (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Alojz Barlič (Slovenian Intellectual Property Office) and Nina Urbanič (Slovenian Enterprise Fund). The award for the best innovator went to Prof. Dr. Franc Majdič from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ljubljana, while the award for the best company went to two companies - Gorenje, d.o.o. and ReCatalyst, d.o.o. - due to their extremely evenly matched results.

The scientific part of the conference was led by Prof. Dr. Jane Hojnik from the Faculty of Management Koper. This year's conference was a special success for Rudolfovo, as the first prize for the best scientific paper went to our colleague Ana Hafner. The prizes for the best scientific papers went to Ana Hafner (Rudolfovo) - 1st place, Velu Kaliappan (India) - 2nd place, and Tomaž Lutman (Jožef Stefan Institute) and Jure Vindišar (National Institute of Biology) - 3rd place.

In her winning entry, Ana Hafner explores innovation in patent evaluation and tests a web application developed by the Korea Invention Promotion Association on the case of patents of Slovenian spin-offs and start-ups. She finds that the application is very promising, but has some shortcomings, such as inconsistent evaluation of members of the same patent family. He concludes that these shortcomings will be addressed in the coming years and that AI will be able to effectively complement the work of experts - and perhaps even replace them one day.

Congratulations to Anna Hafner for her outstanding achievement and successful presentation of Rudolfovo at the international conference!

More information about the conference is available on the official website: https://ittc.ijs.si.