UMass eyes clout through research

GROWING ENTERPRISE: UMass Dartmouth is a $25.6 million research enterprise that graduated 24 Ph.D. recipients this past spring, says Provost Mohammad Karim. / COURTESY UMASS DARTMOUTH  PHOTOGRAPHICS/JENNIFER WHITE
GROWING ENTERPRISE: UMass Dartmouth is a $25.6 million research enterprise that graduated 24 Ph.D. recipients this past spring, says Provost Mohammad Karim. / COURTESY UMASS DARTMOUTH PHOTOGRAPHICS/JENNIFER WHITE

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth offers 10 doctoral programs and has up to three new doctoral degrees in the pipeline, as it positions itself to become the only nationally recognized doctoral research university in the state south of Boston.
The growth in doctoral programming is part of the objective of the school’s 2020 strategic plan launched last month and has implications for growing the region’s economy as well as the university’s reputation, according to Provost Mohammad Karim, who is also executive vice chancellor for academic and student affairs.
UMass Dartmouth in 2013 was a $25.6 million research enterprise and graduated 24 Ph.D. recipients this past spring, Karim said – numbers the university intends to grow. (UMass Dartmouth also has the commonwealth’s only public juris doctorate degree.)
“We don’t want research for its own sake,” Karim said. “Our hope is for more [invention] disclosures, more patents, more marketing of the patents and transitioning the patents into products,” he said.
UMass Dartmouth research currently generates a few patents a year, according to a spokesman. By comparison, research grants awarded to University of Rhode Island faculty and researchers have in recent years averaged $100 million per year and generated 22 U.S. patents and two trademarks in 2011-2012, according to the university.
Chamber of Commerce presidents in Fall River and New Bedford are eager to see UMass Dartmouth succeed, recognizing though that it could be years before higher academic standing in turn promotes significant economic development.
“We think it’s a good thing that the university is looking to expand its research capacity,” said Roy M. Nascimento, president and CEO of the New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce. “Having a research university in our backyard doing high-quality, scientific research and securing federal research grants will help make the South Coast region much more attractive to biotech companies looking to expand.”
Multiplying grant funding that comes through and the number of doctoral graduates produced will help the university raise its stature and have a greater economic impact in the South Coast region, says Carlos Santiago, senior deputy commissioner for academic affairs at the Mass. Department of Higher Education. While Santiago is not familiar with the UMass Dartmouth initiative, he was directly involved in expanding doctoral programs at the University of Albany and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, he said.
“You have to have a strong faculty base of expertise in a particular area,” Santiago said. “You’re going to need public support largely for facilities. And you need to have a private-sector partner interested in pursuing this type of research area that the institution has expertise in.”
The University of Wisconsin campus in Milwaukee is generating $70 million in research funding today, after generating $22 million in 2004. While educators there wanted Santiago to replicate his earlier success at Albany by focusing on nanoscience, the Wisconsin university ended up focusing on its strength in water research and public health, Santiago said.
“If I were to have come out and said, ‘This is good for the university,’ it would have fallen on deaf ears,” Santiago explained. “You have to make the case that it’s good for the community, or the business sector, or the region. Otherwise it’s not going to get the widespread support you need.”
Karim, in fact, has helped achieve this very type of academic and economic growth before, he said, and he intends to do it again at UMass Dartmouth.
Karim spent nine years at Old Dominion University in Virginia, where he helped more than triple expenditures in research from $29 million to $105 million. Likewise, as the patent portfolio changed and expanded, the annual number of graduates from more than 30 Ph.D. programs grew from 15-20 when he started to 110 when he left, he said.
UMass Dartmouth was graduating about eight students a year in doctoral programs two years ago. Fifteen graduated a year ago, and 24 are today on the path, he added.
“What this does is, it emboldens the faculty already here and the ones we are able to attract,” he said.
“This year, we recruited 39 new faculty members for 2014-15; 22 are in the tenure-track line. Each time we bring new people, some are coming with existing grants and others we think have a big potential in hit rates for grants and contracts.”
Speaking independently, Michael Goodman director of the UMass Dartmouth Center for Policy Analysis, noted that by comparison, Greater Boston has “critical mass” with multiple doctoral research institutions, including Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But as the only institution at the doctoral level in the South Coast region, “the economic effects [from UMass Dartmouth’s initiative] would definitely be positive,” he said.
“Once you start this virtuous cycle of research,” Goodman said, “if you have an effective technology-transfer operation, the fruits of that operation find their ways to the economy through licensing agreements, startup companies and spinoff companies and it can be, if it’s managed well, a font of innovation.”
John Hoey, UMass Dartmouth’s assistant chancellor for strategic communications, media relations and special projects, said that is the intent.
“We believe we can play a very big role in fertilizing and nurturing new ideas, new companies, new processes that will ultimately lead to a stronger economy,” Hoey said. “We have a desire and obligation to be a center for innovation for the region.”
At UMass Dartmouth, two possible new doctoral programs that are under discussion at the school include one for business administration and expansion of the existing math program to a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) doctorate, Hoey said.
Hoey and Karim noted that the university is working to “cluster” faculty in the disciplines of “life span biology” and health, robotics, control of robotics, ocean modeling, big data, and bioengineering to improve the opportunity for innovative research.
Obtaining an upgrade to its national status through the Carnegie Foundation – from its current “master’s large institution” classification – has the potential to attract even more talent to the university and region who can then build new research teams, along the way potentially spinning off new companies at university-affiliated facilities such as the Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center in Fall River’s South Coast Research and Technology Park. The center provides infrastructure for emerging companies and has graduated more than 20 startups so far, Hoey said.
The UMass Dartmouth initiative is also about the arts and social sciences, not just medical-device and biotech companies, he added.
Led by Chancellor Divina Grossman, who is emphasizing getting beyond the planning to the “doing,” Hoey said, the university is already engaged in an $11.5 million ongoing renovation of underutilized research and teaching labs for engineering, biology and chemistry. Nascimento and Robert Mellion, president, CEO and general counsel to the Fall River Chamber of Commerce and Industry, both say they see potential in the Massachusetts Accelerator for Biomanufacturing, which is located in the Life Sciences and Technology Park in Fall River.
UMass Dartmouth built the Fall River accelerator but it is now being operated and outfitted with lab equipment by the UMass Medical School in Worcester, said Jennifer Berryman, vice chancellor for communications at UMass Medical School. UMass Dartmouth chose its neighboring medical school to manage the facility, Hoey said.
The accelerator was built based on feedback from pharmaceutical and medical-device companies, and the university’s active marketing of the area to them, Nascimento said. Some of the companies that have since located offices nearby include Symmetry Medical Inc., Morgan Technical Ceramics and Five Star Cos., all in New Bedford, he added.
“The concept is to provide affordable labs for biotech companies,” Nascimento said. “That positions us to attract and grow biotech companies that need that kind of infrastructure and specialized need for labs. We’re also fairly close to the epicenter of the biotech industry in Greater Boston, and our state leads the nation in terms of the biotech industry.”
He hastened to add, however, that the market is not saturated.
“There is room to grow, and they like to cluster around each other,” he said. “They’re looking for a quality workforce, the labs, a stable government, water and sewer, highway access, affordable land. We have that.”
Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, a Democrat who represents the state’s 4th Congressional District, which includes the university, said in an email that innovation clusters across the country rely on strong educational assets to attract business and spur development. UMass Dartmouth’s pursuit of a higher academic standing, he says, has the potential to do the same.
“Their 2020 plan is strategic, long-term and will build off the promising economic bright spots we’re already seeing across the region – from biotech to ‘clean energy’ to life sciences,” he said. •

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