Ying Sun has built his career at the University of Rhode Island, 19 years of
teaching, doing research and inventing new gadgets. One of his latest creations,
an automatic motion-tracking camera, has been patented for development in the
security surveillance industry.
A smaller project, an automatic page-turner built with students in a class on assistive technologies, is also on track to be commercialized.
Sun, an electrical engineering professor, relies on URI’s research office to seek patents and try to sell his inventions. But many aren’t big enough, or potentially lucrative enough, to be marketable for URI, which deals primarily with major companies.
URI returns the intellectual property rights on such ideas to the faculty, but until last year, state ethics laws barred professors from commercializing their own inventions by making a deal with a company or setting up their own business.
Last year, the General Assembly lifted the ban, acknowledging its detrimental impact on innovation and entrepreneurship. But as eager as URI researchers were to get going, 13 months later, not one has yet been able to benefit.
The reason, said Jeffrey R. Seemann, dean of URI’s College of Environmental and Life Sciences and one of the strongest advocates of the change, is that under the law, such deals couldn’t be made until the Board of Governors for Higher Education, which oversees the three public colleges, updated its ethics rules accordingly. It hasn’t.
Asked why it’s taken so long, Seemann said he doesn’t know, but “we’re working hard on this.” In the meantime, however, faculty can only wait.
“I will tell you that the atmosphere in the university is different because of the law,” said Jim Miller, a professor of ocean engineering who jumped through many hoops to commercialize an invention under the old law (he could only do it because his sonar to keep ships from running aground wasn’t developed within URI proper).
“Because of the law,” Miller said, “it’s a lot more pro-entrepreneur atmosphere. Before, it was ‘Absolutely no.’ Now it’s ‘Just wait, we’re almost there.’”
Seemann said going through with the change is “one of those key steps” that URI needs “to be a key player in the state’s economic development,” especially in biotechnology.
“I think it’ll encourage a lot of our faculty to be more entrepreneurial in that regard,” Seemann said. “We want our faculty generating new ideas, new technologies, new companies. And on the flipside, we want, for example, biotech companies investing in the research of our faculty and allowing our faculty to benefit from it.”
URI has lost at least one prominent scientist because the opportunities weren’t there, Seemann said.
The ethics rule also delayed the hiring of Albert Kausch, director of research at HybriGene, a turf-grass development biotechnology company with which the College of Environmental and Life Sciences set up a partnership.
Kausch has since come onboard as a professor of cell and molecular science, but URI had to get a temporary waiver from the commissioner of higher education to do so.
“He’s one of our more superstar hires of the last couple of years, particularly as the university becomes stronger in the area of biotechnology research and education,” Seemann said.
Before, Kausch hadn’t wanted to be hired because he would’ve had to divest himself from his financial interests in HybriGene, Seemann added. Now, once the new rules are in place, he’ll just carefully document his situation as required.
The commercialization of faculty research will also benefit students, Seemann said, because the companies with faculty ties can provide internship and job placement opportunities.
“That’s a vital part of giving our undergraduates and graduates the education and training they need to get high-paying technology jobs.”
Sun said students also stand to benefit directly as inventors.
Many of his creations are developed with students, he noted, and especially with smaller-scale projects such as new assistive technologies, they could do much more under the new law.
“I really welcome this rule, because it gives us more flexibility,” he said.
