Universities seek sponsors for research

RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN student Jen Harris  sits in a space suit created as part of a project sponsored by NASA  to find ways to better seal a space craft to keep moon dust out. /
RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN student Jen Harris sits in a space suit created as part of a project sponsored by NASA to find ways to better seal a space craft to keep moon dust out. /

Some students this summer are designing an entryway that traps as much moon dust as possible so astronauts don’t track the abrasive substance into their living quarters. The research is for NASA, which plans to send astronauts to the moon and back by 2020.
Rhode Island School of Design students and adjunct professor Michael Lye are developing solutions to the moon dust issue because if inhaled or attached to the skin, the dust could be harmful to the astronauts’ health.
Federal dollars, such as those funding the NASA research at RISD, have long been the staple of research funding at universities. At Brown University, for example, federally sponsored research represents 96 percent to 98 percent of total research.
Last year, federal funding mostly from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health represented $123.6 million. The remaining $5.5 million came from corporate sponsorship.
But the rate of corporate sponsored research is growing for some schools, such as RISD, which has seen a 30-percent increase in corporate sponsorship since 2005, said Bill Foulkes, executive director for the Center for Design and Business at RISD.
“It’s driven by significant trends driving corporations to seek design thinking,” he said, adding that RISD does have a longer history – nearly five decades – of working on research projects with companies.
Corporate-sponsored projects at RISD have included finding a new design concept for children’s furniture, targeting more educated consumers, for P’kolino, and creating new designs for interior layouts of Sikorsky’s S-92 helicopters.
At Brown, researchers have sought to trim vehicles’ weight and improve their recyclable traits through the use of advanced materials – a project sponsored by General Motors. And most recently, a Brown researcher helped a removable-tattoo company create a safer kind of tattoo by encapsulating ink.
At the University of Rhode Island, meanwhile, corporate-sponsored research has tended to focus on environmental and life sciences. Researchers have studied aspects of turf insects for companies such as Valent Biosciences Corp. and tick control measures for Imugen Inc. in Norwood, Mass.
One of the benefits companies realize from sponsoring research at universities is the fresh, new ideas that students generate, RISD’s Lye said.
“[Students’ ideas] might inspire a new way of thinking about a problem,” he said. “It might not be the end result that matters.”
For students, it’s a huge motivator because “they really want to contribute in some way to the world,” Lye said. Corporate-sponsored research allows them to interact with a variety of professionals in the field, and it gives them “real-world experience” that can lead to job opportunities.
“It allows us to offer educational experiences that, otherwise, we would not be able to offer,” he said.
RISD wouldn’t say exactly how much of its research funding is corporate, but both Brown University and URI said for them, it has fluctuated from about 2 to 4 percent for the past three years, at least. But both universities are taking steps to increase corporate partnerships.
URI this year formed the URI Research Foundation as a separate arm of the university.
Its goal is to interface between the university and the corporate world in an effort to “allow us to operate with corporate sponsors in a quicker, more flexible way,” said Peter Alfonso, vice president for research and economic development at URI.
It is an important source of revenue because the royalties generated from licensing agreements for use the intellectual property will support further research at URI.
“Most states have dwindling support for their state universities … and it’s getting much more difficult to get federal support,” Alfonso said.
In 2005-06, about 2 percent, or $1.5 million, of URI’s research was funded by companies and foundations. Total sponsored research equaled about $73.5 million. “Our aim is to attract more corporate partners,” Alfonso said.
Brown University is aiming to attract more corporate partners as well. The university would like its corporate sponsorship to increase from 2 to 4 percent to 5 to 6 percent, said Clyde Briant, vice president for research at Brown.
The schools’ efforts reflect a national trend in academia that is driven both by the financial realities and the desire to engage students and researchers more directly in the outside world.
But the trend has also bred some controversy. Many in academia have expressed concern that corporate sponsors, far more than the government, will be inclined to try to control the outcome of their work – and recent problems with pharmaceutical research have fueled that concern. Academics are also used to seeing their work as geared to the common good, so not all are comfortable working, ultimately, to produce a profit.
At RISD, for example, as much as corporate-sponsored research has been embraced, there has always been an effort to differentiate between sponsored research and “research for hire.” Companies are encouraged to provide opportunities for students to learn and apply their creativity to the real world, but the projects tend to be one step removed from direct commercial uses – rather than design a new model of sneakers, for example, RISD students might explore trends and innovative approaches to sneaker design that the sponsor can then apply to its own product development process.
Yet the bottom line at all the schools is that corporate sponsorships are increasingly important. Brown recently created a new position, director of research initiatives, and one of that person’s main tasks is to find corporate sponsors.
“With federal dollars not growing at a rate we’d like it to, it’s good to have multiple funding sources,” Briant said.
In addition, when Brown formed its Office for the Vice President of Research about four years ago, it created a unit called Brown Technology Partnerships within it that facilitates 12 to 15 licensing agreements with three to four companies per year, said Charles Kingdon, associate vice president for technology partnerships at Brown.
BTP also assists startup companies created by faculty, which sign licensing agreements to use intellectual property they created at Brown. But, Kingdon said, the university has to be realistic about the number of companies it can create.
“Where we’re falling short is in ongoing support of those companies once they are created,” he said, adding that the startups need physical space in facilities, additional funding streams and mentoring support.
Briant said offices such as the BTP office are “absolutely essential” for research universities looking to capitalize on the intellectual property created by faculty because of the sophisticated knowledge sponsored research and licensing agreements require.
“Much of the funding that comes in goes to interdisciplinary research,” he said. “It’s important to have someone facilitating that.”

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