University of Utah President Michael Young on Wednesday called on universities and the business community to collaborate on advancing devices and technology "out in the marketplace where they really do transform and change people's lives."

Young, the keynote speaker at the Edison Showcase educational and networking event for Utah inventors and entrepreneurs, said the United States always has been at the forefront of economic changes because of its people, including a university's ability to be "a launcher of talent and a basic research engine for the United States."

"The element added to it today is the increasing need — and I think one is seeing a realization of that need — of a partnership that occurs between the universities and the business community. Partnerships of all different sorts — partnerships working with venture capital, partnerships working with those innovators who take the basic research and create the translation research that creates real progress and the businesspeople who under- stand real markets and how to get things out," Young said.

"For the first time in history — or I'm not entirely sure, but at least for now — that partnership is going to become the essential element to be able to take advantage of the universities' historic capacity to unleash talent and the universities' historic role in doing so much of basic research."

Without such partnerships, universities alone can't move research "from the work bench to the bedside," he said.

"A cure for cancer that stays in the test tube may become interesting cocktail party conversation, but it really doesn't cure cancer, and what is necessary to cure cancer is to get it out of that test tube, into the markets so doctors are inclined to use it and use that as opposed to something else," he said.

The U., he said, has "2,000 brilliant, pointy-headed professors, but they're not businesspeople."

"So the questions of raising capital — a few of them are really spectacular at it; we have some who are just really gifted at it — but they don't teach that in a Ph.D. course in chemical engineering. . . . That whole part of the process is not something that we necessarily are particularly good at, that we know a lot about. That's where we really need the deep, abiding partnership with the business community."

The Edison Conference featured exhibits showcasing some of Utah's newest technologies, plus remarks from several technology officials. During the event, Dinesh Patel received the 2006 Utah Engineering Experiment Station Pathfinder Award. Patel is managing director and founding partner of vSpring Capital. He is also the founder, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Ashni Naturaceuticals Inc.; co-founded and was chairman of Salus Therapeutics Inc.; and was co-founder, chairman, president and CEO of TheraTech Inc.

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