Cambia is named to the list of World’s Top 100 NGOs 2012 by The Global Journal
The Global Journal, January 12, 2012
Author: The Global Journal
From the hundreds of thousands of Non-Governmental Organizations in the world, the Global Journal has selected the Top 100 based on impact, innovation, transparency, accountability and efficiency. Cambia is honored to be amongst this group for its achievements in democratizing scientific innovation and providing open-access tools to navigate the patent regime.
According to molecular biologist Richard Jefferson, civilization has been built on ‘open source’ for 4000 years – ‘but it wasn’t with software, it was with plants, it was with animals, it was with agriculture’. The founder of Brisbane-based technology non-profit Cambia, Jefferson is convinced that biotechnology can be used to benefit the impoverished, but only if the innovation process is ‘democratized’ to allow inclusive access to critical scientific tools.
Since 1992, Cambia has sought to develop and disseminate new technologies and collaborative instruments, while fostering transparency and collective innovation in the life sciences. Though Jefferson and his team are highly respected researchers in their own right, Cambia’s greatest impact has been in its unceasing commitment to an open source alternative to complex intellectual property regimes. This energy is channelled into a handful of key projects. ‘Patent Lens’ is an open-access, webbased, free patent search resource that provides the basis for the ‘Initiative for Open Innovation’ – an ambitious global facility dedicated to publicly map global patent landscapes around (initially) public health challenges such as malaria, tuberculosis and other neglected diseases.
Ultimately, Jefferson aspires to nothing less than a transformational change at the global level in how scientifically grounded problem solving is done and by whom.