Science Market Update

A new research study at  Oregon Health Science University - OHSU is probing new treatment options for newborn infants who receive the HIV virus from their mothers.

The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is a major research institution, ranked among the top five nationally in spending, according to NSF statistics.  Yet in today's economy, having funding and prestige is not enough: the future lies in getting research out into the world, and increasingly the way to do this is through strong entrepreneurship.  To build those science marketing skills, UM has developed a Master's degree program in Entrepreneurial Education that combines coursework from the business and engineering schools to teach creative young business-scientists how to "give their inventions legs."

The University of Wisconsin at Madison is a research powerhouse that also knows how to turn its R into D, bringing technology to market, jobs to Wisconsin, and steady income back to the university through licensing agreements.

Relations between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the state's business sector have undergone a wholesale reversal from 30 years ago, when academic researchers were discouraged from starting up companies and the school's idea of a research park was a farm.  Today, Madison's University Research Park is a thriving business center, start-up incubator, and campus extension all in one.  And faculty are now actively encouraged to go into business, even given the resources to do so.  Intellectual licensing brings in a lot of money to the state, and companies bring jobs that pay well.

OHSU’s Oregon Center for Aging & Technology (also known as Orcatech) has received $3 Million in new funding from Intel Corp.  To collect and compile data that will help in understanding the onset of dementia and other aging ailments. The new Intel Funding, when coupled with the existing $12 Million in federal grants, will likely spur many lucrative research opportunities at OHSU.   

In the world of sustainable energy production and good environmental stewardship, Ohio is producing biogas from agricultural and food-processing waste through a successful partnership between the state university and business.  The Cleveland based Quasar Energy Group is working in collaboration with Ohio State's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) to turn 550,000 gallons of biomatter into energy at its flagship anaerobic digester at the OARDC's BioHio Research Park.

Ohio State University's Medical Center is undergoing a huge expansion and modernization effort with its ProjectOne $1Billion new medical facility.  Outdated buildings have been demolished and the concrete has been poured for the state-of-the-art Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute complex due to open in 2014.  ProjectOne is the largest development project in Ohio State's history and is expected to add $1.7 billion to Ohio’s economy.  Some of these gains will certainly include the purchasing of equipment, supplies and services for the medical center, as well as future gains through life science research funding and the commercialization of biomedical research discoveries.

If you're a business entrepreneur considering the University of Illinois' Research Park as a location for your start-up, you may stumble upon the micro-urban video above.  If you do, and the video does what it's supposed to, you'll want to relocate to the Champaign-Urbana area.  Because it is smart and innovative, fast-paced, young, brimming with movers and shakers, and your average commute time will be 14 minutes.

In fact, the Research Park and the micro-urban video are both efforts to link the university with the growing industrial research market that profits from its proximity to university resources and in turn offers job opportunities and tax revenues to the larger C-U community.

Universities have always been incubators for business development to some degree, and business parks that have sprung up in campus towns have been especially popular with start-ups.  What is new in the past decade is the development of research parks by the universities themselves, on university land, with clear links to the academic institution and even its business school.

Vice Chancellor for Research Joe G.N. Garcia had overall good news to announce in his Feb. 16, 2011 report on the state of research and funding at the University of Illinois, Chicago.  The most promising statistic is that UIC has turned a corner with regard to sponsored research funding: for the first time in five years, funding increased, from $347M to $412M for the fiscal year ending in 2010.  (The previous year had actually shown a decline.)