Written by: Meagan Comerford, Marketing Manager, AUTM

Twenty takes for a podcast intro. A cat asleep on the keyboard. Rebuilding an episode after corrupted audio files. Behind 300 episodes of AUTM on the Air is a lot more than a microphone and a guest list. What began as an idea during a conversation at the 2019 AUTM Annual Meeting in Austin has grown into one of the tech transfer field’s most recognizable platforms for discussions about technology transfer, innovation, policy, and the people behind the work.

Lisa Mueller, Shareholder at Casimir Jones and podcast host, first imagined the podcast after hearing tech transfer professionals openly share challenges, successes, and lessons learned during an Opening Reception conversation. “I thought it would be really helpful for a larger audience to hear more of these conversations on a regular basis,” Mueller said.

After launching independently in early 2020 as the Tech Transfer IP Podcast, the show gained momentum during the pandemic as guests and listeners embraced the format. In 2022, the podcast officially became AUTM on the Air. Now, 300 episodes later, the show has become both a reflection of the field and a record of how much it has changed. “When I started the podcast, a lot of the conversation centered on the mechanics of the work,” Mueller said, pointing to topics like licensing terms, startup formation, and royalty structures. “Today we’re talking just as much about why tech transfer matters and who it serves.”

That evolution has brought larger conversations into focus, including economic impact, workforce development, equity among inventors, climate innovation, and pandemic preparedness. Policy discussions that once felt niche now regularly take center stage, with topics like Bayh-Dole, march-in rights, Section 101, and SBIR/STTR reauthorization surfacing across episodes. And, like nearly every corner of higher education and innovation, artificial intelligence has reshaped the conversation too. “Five years ago AI was an emerging topic,” Mueller said. “Now it’s the lens through which a lot of our guests see the future of the field.”

Some of the podcast’s most memorable episodes reflect that widening lens. Mueller points to conversations about the life-saving pediatric neuroblastoma therapy Danyelza, neurodiversity in STEM with Temple Grandin, and the human impact of university innovation through stories like Suspenders4Hope. “What ties these together,” she said, “is that each one reminded me why this work matters. These are the stories behind the patents and licensing deals.”

But Mueller believes there are still important conversations the field needs to have more openly. Among them: burnout, retention, and career development for tech transfer professionals. “We talk a lot about deals and metrics, but not enough about the professionals who make those deals happen,” she said, especially in smaller offices where a handful of people manage enormous portfolios. She also hopes to see greater attention paid to innovation happening outside large R1 institutions, along with more global perspectives on commercialization and technology diffusion.

“Episodes with guests like Ravini Moodley at Stellenbosch and the team at WIPO have reminded me how much we must learn from how other countries approach diffusion, absorptive capacity, and commercialization in resource-constrained environments,” noted Mueller. “The U.S. tech transfer community can sometimes be inward-looking, and there’s real value in widening that aperture. And then there’s one topic the field rarely embraces publicly: failure. “We celebrate the success stories, as we should,” Mueller said, “but we rarely talk openly about the deals that didn’t work, the spinouts that folded, the licenses that went nowhere. There’s so much to learn from those experiences.”

For listeners, the final product may sound effortless. Behind the scenes, though, each episode involves extensive preparation. Mueller researches guests, institutions, and topics in depth — sometimes reading entire books or lengthy theses before recording. And then there are the intros. “The record so far is 20 takes for a single intro,” she admitted. “My husband can hear me through my office door, and after a stretch of retakes he’ll usually call out, ‘Having a bit of trouble with that one, huh?’” There have also been power outages, ringing doorbells, and at least one cat determined to nap on a keyboard mid-recording.

One particularly memorable challenge came during an in-person episode celebrating WARF’s 100th anniversary. Audio problems corrupted portions of the recording, forcing Mueller and the podcast editor to reconstruct parts of the episode remotely after the fact. “I was genuinely worried the episode would feel choppy and disjointed,” Mueller said. “But it turned out beautifully. You’d never know listening to it.”

As AUTM on the Air moves beyond its 300th episode, Mueller is already looking ahead. Later this year, the podcast plans to launch a new Economic Impact Series focused on the role tech transfer plays across all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The shorter-format episodes will feature guests discussing how university research drives startups, job creation, and economic development in their local communities. The goal is to create something offices can share directly with policymakers, university leadership, and economic development partners. “It’s one thing to hand a legislator a fact sheet,” Mueller said. “It’s another to let them hear directly from the people on the ground about the startups, the jobs, and the lives being changed by university research in their own state.”

Three hundred episodes in, that mission still sounds a lot like the one that started in a crowded Austin reception hall years ago: creating space for the people behind tech transfer to tell their stories.