ELECTION TO ELECTRON: HOW ELECTION TIME INFLAMES THE FIGHT FOR FEDERAL FUNDING Every election cycle brings a miasma of anxiety over the research community. Here we explore these anxieties to determine just how justified they are.
FIRST THOUGHT
Getting (Un)Involved:
Climate Change Researchers and the Paris Agreement by Sarah Hill
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“We’re not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money.”
robotics,” said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer at the University of Houston. “Interestingly, the development of the new energy economy has the potential to grow a large number of new jobs across the supply and value chain – some of these safer and some more reliant on advanced technologies.”
These words regarding climate change were spoken by Mick Mulvaney, director of the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget. The government has rolled back policies that aimed to slow down climate change and reduce environmental pollution. It has also limited federal funding for science and the environment, including cuts to the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Should researchers be concerned?
Is it any wonder that climate researchers became concerned that their federally-funded projects would be slashed? Philip Mote, the director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University, stated in a piece for NPR: “Some people have shifted away from climate research altogether.”
Rules of “war” The Paris Agreement is an international accord aimed at limiting the global average temperature rise this century to two degrees Celsius or less, supplemented by a 1.5 degree Celsius amendment, since it was determined that two degrees may still cause substantial harm to the environment. The agreement, sealed December 2015 and made effective in November 2016, is not about pursuing research on climate change itself. Rather, it is about implementing political strategies to limit CO2 emissions. “Joining the Paris Agreement is important and shows a commitment by the United States to achieve emission reduction goals that would incorporate innovative goals and promote carbon-free energy,” said Tracy Hester, associate instructional professor of law and co-director of the Center for Carbon Management and Energy at the UH Law Center. “Withdrawing, it can be inferred, will undo all of the United States’ good will and effort.” Although President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement (the earliest the U.S. can be officially removed is November 4, 2020), it would take a new president just one year to re-enter the Agreement. The federal government has claimed an early victory regarding its withdrawal from the agreement saying it “ended the costly war on energy.” According to the administration, this “war” cost American workers their jobs, hurt America’s energy producers and showed no real meaningful reduction of emissions. But is this really the case? “Jobs in oil, gas and coal have been slowly vanishing – some because of lower demand, but perhaps more importantly because of technology advancement, such as digital, automation and
UH employs many researchers who study the climate, the rise of global temperatures and a range of issues related to energy. In addition, the professors at UH are conducting their research in the city that recorded 40 inches of rainfall over four days in August 2017. After Hurricane Harvey impacted Houston, Tom Bossert, President Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser, told reporters: “We continue to take seriously the climate change – not the cause of it, but the things we observe.” The worsening of storms, flooding, wildfires and other disasters are of great interest to the federal government and researchers, alike. These extreme weather events strain federal resources, especially along coastlines, and may lead to national security issues, risks from terrorism, infectious diseases, poverty and food shortages. So when the intent to withdraw from the agreement first surfaced, there was fear in the science community that research funding would be severely impacted. It devolved into a full-blown panic on social media, with scientists tweeting that their livelihoods were at stake. But, Julia Smith Wellner, an associate professor in the UH Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who conducts research through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Polar Programs division, said: “To my knowledge, that hasn’t happened much yet. Our programs are continuing largely as expected so far. In part, most NSF programs are years in development and so changes happen at a slower frequency than election cycles.” There is some evidence of early impact, according to Hester. “Definitely, federal program offices doing climate change policy work have already been curtailed, particularly at the EPA,” he said, although he could not speak to larger, NSF-funded projects. Far more detrimental may be the deletion of terms like “climate change” from federal reports and the fact that advisory committees were terminated. Scott Pruitt, the former administrator for the EPA, forced scientists off advisory panels and replaced them with people from industry. Science magazine reported a federal researcher, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, said, “It’s been made clear to us that we’re not supposed to use climate change in press releases anymore. They will not be authorized.” While Wellner and her colleagues have not been financially affected, she muses on the overall hit researchers have taken over this new vocabulary, one in which “climate change” is deleted from nearly every exchange. “Scientists working for federal agencies have essentially had their hands tied behind their backs by the current policies, and that will have a lasting impact on not just the environment, but also our nation’s scientific community and infrastructure.”
TOP OF MIND
CHANCELLOR AND PRESIDENT RENU KHATOR
PUBLISHER AMR ELNASHAI Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer
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SCIENCE INTEGRITY
VIEWPOINT
DIRECTOR
FROM CONCEPT TO COMMERCIALIZATION
LINDSAY LEWIS Division of Research
EDITOR RENE CANTU Division of Research SARAH HILL Division of Research
EDITORIAL BOARD
FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK
JEANNIE KEVER Media Relations KATHY MAJOR Natural Sciences & Mathematics
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TONI MOONEY SMITH Liberal Arts & Social Sciences MIKE ROSEN Strategic Communications
IS A PICTURE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS?
FEATURE
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
MIGUEL TOVAR
DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGER
TIM HOLT
PHOTOGRAPHER
JOHN LIENHARD
WRITERS
RENE CANTU BRIAN HERMAN SARAH HILL JOHN LIENHARD CLAUDIA NEUHAUSER
PROOFREADER
ASHLEY MERWIN
WEB DEVELOPER
DARNELL THACKER
Send address and email updates to: University of Houston Division of Research 4302 University Drive, Room 316 Houston, Texas 77204-2015 Send feedback to: research@uh.edu The Big Idea is published by the Division of Research.
ELECTION TO ELECTRON 14 PERSPECTIVES
IDENTITY CRISIS 24 DISCUSSION BOARD
IN THE SHADOW OF THE VALLEY OF TECH
Printed on Recycled Paper The University of Houston is an EEO/AA institution. 9.2020 | 4,500 Copyright © 2020 by the University of Houston
CONTEMPLATIONS
A digital version of this publication is available at uh.edu/researchmag Cover: Artwork by Miguel Tovar
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THE GI BILL
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FROM THE TOP
We very proudly present this issue of the Big Idea, and it is packed with big ideas. To provide context to new readers, we departed from promotional magazines to investigative academic journalism. We figured out that the best promotion of the University of Houston Division of Research and our research enterprise is to invest our considerable intellectual prowess in addressing the most critical research issues of our time. The product of the latter research magazine concept is the third edition of The Big Idea. Before I preview some of the articles, I just want to share a thought. The Big Idea is an integral part of our concept of Service to and Leadership of the UH research enterprise. We developed this concept in 2017, and articulated it as the dual and intertwined roles of the Division of Research as the servant of the faculty in facilitating their research and technology transfer administration tasks, and the leader of the thought and structure of the research and technology transfer communities. We open with a provocative and thoughtful article on climate change, arguably the most debatable challenge of our time. We follow with the exceptionally hot issue of research integrity, a challenge that U.S. universities face daily, from allegations of unethical research to deep concerns about leakage of impactful research outcomes to global competitors. We have however left the latter issue to a later issue. A topic that has concerned me for decades is the existence or otherwise of a long-term (20-50 years horizon) of a bipartisan federal research policy. We contribute to the debate with analysis and observations in an article in this issue of The Big Idea. There is more food for thought in our daring effort to create an intellectual debate room through our new magazine, from the GI Bill to COVID, that I invite you to explore and I welcome warmly all comments, criticism and dare I say compliments from our diverse readership. I close by wholeheartedly wishing all our alumni, friends, colleagues, readers and our global community health, safety, prosperity and happiness in these challenging times.
Amr Elnashai, FREng
Vice President/Vice Chancellor for Research and Technology Transfer University of Houston/University of Houston System
TOP OF MIND
SCIENCE INTEGRITY By Claudia Neuhauser Ph.D. Associate Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer, Professor of Mathematics, University of Houston
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By Brian Herman, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering and former Vice President for Research, University of Minnesota and University of Texas Health, San Antonio
Some European institutions, according to a recently published Nature article, have started to rely on science integrity inspectors to review papers prior to submission for errors in manuscripts.1 So far, this has not caught on in the United States. The question is, should it? One of the institutes highlighted in the Nature article was the Fritz Lipman Institute (FLI) in Leipzig, Germany. Their director was accused of research misconduct and found guilty of not supervising his lab group properly. He ultimately resigned his position as director of the institute. This was the second case of alleged research misconduct within a year at this institute. The institute decided to strengthen its vetting process and hired a science-integrity inspector. The FLI budgets about $55,000 per year to have a science integrity inspector look at their manuscripts. With 80-90 publications per year (according to Web of Science), this comes to about $650 per publication. This may not sound much compared to the cost of the research that goes into a publication, but it becomes prohibitively expensive for large research universities that publish thousands of papers each year. A science integrity inspector is a reactive way to deal with research misconduct. Research misconduct should not happen in the first place. Society expects scientists and researchers to behave in ethical ways. When scientists commit fraud, it has a disproportionate negative impact on the credibility of science. A National Research Council report on Fostering Integrity in Research describes two theories for why researchers commit fraud.2One theory says that there will always be a small number of people who commit fraud and nothing can be done proactively to prevent fraud. Another theory allows for an environmental or cultural factor, for instance, the intense pressure researchers are under to find employment in academia and obtain funding year after year. This theory leaves room for effective interventions.
WHEN SCIENTISTS COMMIT FRAUD, IT HAS A DISPROPORTIONATE NEGATIVE IMPACT ON THE CREDIBILITY OF SCIENCE.
Universities in the U.S. and elsewhere are serious about scientific integrity. They have offices of compliance to investigate accusations of research misconduct and are proactive in training researchers in responsible conduct of research. This proactive stance on research misconduct is not by choice. Training in responsible conduct of research is a requirement of funding agencies. Despite all these efforts, there is a perception “that a large and growing proportion of studies published across disciplines are unreliable due to the declining quality and integrity of research and publication practices.� 3
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How big a problem is it? There have been numerous attempts to define the scale of unethical research behavior. A 2009 study by Daniele Fanelli 4 showed that about 2% of scientists admitted to having fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once and up to 34% admitted other questionable research practices (QRPs). When asked about colleagues, scientists reported that they believed about 14% of their colleagues had falsified research results and up to 72% had committed other QRPs. Fanelli speculated that these were likely underestimates of the actual incidence because of the sensitivity of the issue. Almost ten years later, she concluded that “there is no evidence that scientific misconduct and QRPs have increased.” 5 Serious errors can lead to a retraction of the paper. Retraction Watch, a blog that reports on retractions of scientific and engineering publications, has created a massive database of retracted papers. Brainard and You 6 found that while “[t]he number of articles retracted by journals had increased 10-fold during the previous 10 years,” only about 4 out of 10,000 papers are being retracted. Not all retractions are due to fraud. According to Brainard and You, “nearly 40% of retraction notices did not mention fraud or other kinds of misconduct.” 7 Lack of reproducibility is part of what falls into the 40% of retractions. It has become a serious issue over the past decade. Entire fields have had to face the reality that their research methods yielded irreproducible results. One of the first areas affected by this crisis was psychology. Many biomedical studies cannot be reproduced either. This was highlighted in the 2017 book by Richard Harris, “Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions.” 8 Harris recounts Begley’s findings of barely being able to reproduce one in ten studies from academic labs while heading hematology and oncology research at Amgen and searching for promising ideas that might lead to new drugs.
How a hypercompetitive culture can lead to QPRs Overstating claims to increase one’s impact is one outcome of the hypercompetitive culture. A recent study, published by Johnson et al. in the highly cited journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), on “officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings” 9 falls into this category. The authors of this paper asserted in the Significance Statement that “White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.”
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THE BIG IDEA
The Significance Statement is written in a non-technical language and often used by journalists to convey to the public interesting scientific findings. Racial disparity in shootings is of great public interest, and the statement was picked up by 33 news outlets and created 1970 tweets, according to Altmetric. To put the level of attention in context, this paper is currently in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric. The only problem is that the authors showed something much weaker, as was pointed out by Knox and Mummolo,10 namely the likelihood of a victim of a shooting by a White vs. non-White officer being non-White. The misleading statement could have been caught by a careful referee. But it wasn’t. And when a journal is vying for publicity, ethical standards may be further compromised by the journal itself, as happened in this case. When Knox and Mummolo pointed out the misleading statement to the editor, they had to fight for months with PNAS to publish a response that demonstrated that Johnson et al. could not have shown the claim in the Significance Statement with the data they had.11 The hypercompetitive nature of research has also created an environment where researchers are tempted to “engage in careless or detrimental research practices.” 12A recent example 13comes from a retraction by Frances Arnold, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. She retracted a 2019 paper published in the journal Science after she found out that the results were not reproducible. She tweeted that she wasn’t as careful as she should have been since she “was a bit busy when this was submitted.”
Detecting research fraud Plagiarism and image manipulation are common problems. Both can be detected with available software, and, increasingly, publishers rely on software to screen manuscripts for those problems prior to publication. Advances in data mining have led to new tools to detect research misconduct. For instance, Markowitz and Hancock found that “[f]raudulent papers were written with significantly higher levels of linguistic obfuscation, including lower readability and higher rates of jargon than unretracted and nonfraudulent papers.” 14 However, data mining approaches that can scan a very large number of publications in very little time also come with a downside. These methods produce false positives, that is, they will flag publications that are not fraudulent. When a large number of publications are scanned, this may result in a significant number of publications that are falsely accused of QRPs. Even false accusations have a chilling effect on authors, are time-consuming to respond to, and may threaten the authors’ reputation.
Can science integrity inspectors prevent research misconduct? If someone wants to cheat to get ahead, they will find ways to do so, even if a science integrity inspector will review the manuscript. Instead of reactive measures, like science integrity inspectors, we believe that measures that establish a culture that encourages ethical behavior will ultimately be more successful. This includes the establishment of social norms of honest behavior and responsibility to both the scientific field and the public. Training on responsible conduct of research will need to be part of this, as well as ways to report research misconduct without fearing repercussions. Practices that reduce the temptation to cheat, such as pre-submission of experimental protocols and requirements to share raw data, need to become the standard if we want to ensure that the public trusts science.
The hypercompetitive nature of research has also created an environment where researchers are tempted to “engage in careless or detrimental research practices.” 1 Abbott, Alison. “The science institutions hiring integrity inspectors to vet their papers.” (2019): 430-433. 2 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. Fostering Integrity in Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/21896 3 Fanelli, Daniele. “Opinion: Is science really facing a reproducibility crisis, and do we need it to?.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.11 (2018): 2628-2631. 4 Fanelli, Daniele. “How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data.” PloS one 4.5 (2009): e5738. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685008/) 5 Fanelli, Daniele. “Opinion: Is science really facing a reproducibility crisis, and do we need it to?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.11 (2018): 2628-2631. 6 Brainard, Jeffrey, and Jia You. “What a massive database of retracted papers reveals about science publishing’s ‘death penalty’.” Science 25.1 (2018): 1-5. 7 Ibid. 8 Harris, Richard. Rigor mortis: how sloppy science creates worthless cures, crushes hope, and wastes billions. Basic Books, 2017. 9 Johnson, David J., et al. “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116.32 (2019): 15877-15882. (Retracted by the authors on July 28, 2020) 10 Knox, Dean, and Jonathan Mummolo. “Making inferences about racial disparities in police violence.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.3 (2020): 1261-1262. 11 Knox, D. and J. Mummolo. It took us months to contest a flawed study on police bias. Here’s why that’s dangerous. The Washington Post. January 28, 2020. 12 Ibid. P. 102 13 Nobel Prize-winning scientist Frances Arnold retracts paper. BBC News. January 3, 2020. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50989423; accessed on February 2, 2020) 14 Markowitz, David M., and Jeffrey T. Hancock. “Linguistic obfuscation in fraudulent science.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 35.4 (2016): 435-445.
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From Concept to Commercialization The Importance of Supporting IP in our Universities By Sarah Hill The road to the next life-altering discovery, invention or device often begins with university-imagined Intellectual Property (IP) and ends when an outside company makes the investment to productize the discovery. Is there enough emphasis placed on this pipeline nationwide? The more one looks at this complicated question, we see there are numerous problems; in a rush to publish findings, for example, researchers may lose the ability to obtain patent protection for their IP. What can universities do to make commercialization an end goal?
Protecting university discoveries “Patents are the fulcrums that allow technology transfer to happen. Without the exclusivity a patent provides, there is [no] incentive on the part of pharmaceutical [companies] to invest in these university ideas,” Jessica Sebeok, associate vice president for policy at The Association of American Universities, was quoted as saying in Insight Into Diversity magazine. This same consideration can also be applied to non-biomedical discoveries. A strong IP position gives a competitive edge to any business. The process at the university level starts with the faculty inventor disclosing the invention to the technology transfer office. Researchers should always disclose to their technology transfer office what their discovery is and what steps they plan to take to secure the IP. Technology transfer offices give expert advice and have the university’s best interests in mind, as well as those of its individual inventors. “Technology transfer offices are quickly able to evaluate an invention and file a provisional patent application. Once the provisional patent application is filed, the university is in a stronger position to work with the faculty,” said Tanushree Chatterji, assistant director of licensing at the University of Houston.
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But is a patent just an expensive piece of paper unless it leads to a commercialized product? Not necessarily, according to Richard W. Chylla, executive director for technology commercialization at Michigan State University. He said patenting an invention is an integral part of the mission of a research university, whether it is commercialized or not. “Even if a patent is not commercialized in an end product, the patent serves a very useful purpose by describing the invention in such a detailed manner, that anyone skilled in the art should be able to duplicate it,” said Chylla. This means that sharing knowledge is really an endpoint in itself. He adds: “Others will read the patent and build upon it to create new inventions.” The patent and technology transfer process in a university is just another way of disseminating knowledge to the public, and akin to publication in a scholarly journal, according to Chylla.
Understanding the risk of not protecting ideas Some researchers and technology transfer offices argue that a great deal of revenue is lost by not commercializing IP, which could conceivably be funneled back into research. For instance, U.C. Berkeley’s biggest IP licensing win was the monetization of a Nobel-Prize winning drug royalty from the first generation, which required massive amounts of corporate investment and 15 years to obtain FDA approval. The proceeds were used, in part, to build new research laboratories, reinvesting in and restarting the cycle of innovation. But Chylla reiterates data that show only five to 10 percent of academic patent applications go on to be commercialized, which is the same percentage of patents granted for industry-related discoveries. “Perhaps a better way to think about this question is not what do universities lose, but instead to understand that universities make a decision to patent or not based on a variety of criteria. They choose to patent because the university technology transfer office feels having a license to the patent rights provides the right incentives – a time-limited monopoly – for a company to invest the money that is required by a very early-stage, raw university technology.” Evan Facher, vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship and director of the Innovation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, agrees. “We don’t know at the outset if the product will make it to commercialization or if another discovery has been in the works and will be commercialized first,” he said. “It’s a game of roulette.” That’s why the Innovation Institute at Univ. of Pittsburgh casts a wide net and tries to patent IP across all disciplines, including within their medical school, computer sciences department and education sciences department.
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Incentivizing commercialization In the article “Changing the Academic Culture Valuing Patents and Commercialization Toward Tenure and Career Advancement” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors posit that a change needs to be enacted. They claim that tangible incentives must be offered to faculty who wish to commercialize their discoveries: “Universities should expand their criteria to treat patents, licensing and commercialization activity by faculty as an important consideration for merit, tenure and career advancement, along with publishing, teaching and service.” Currently, tenure is awarded based on the demonstrated quality of a faculty member’s teaching and their ability to maintain and fund a world-class research program. Promotion and tenure metrics are consistent with the mission of a university: teaching, research and public service. Yet, universities are beginning to consider if technology commercialization should be considered as another criteria on top of teaching and research. The University of Pittsburgh has recently offered credit for commercialization in the tenure process, but still values education above all – not whether a faculty member produces a marketable discovery. “Whether or not a given professor has patented or licensed a technology does not displace the three criteria for promotion and tenure, which are teaching, research and public service; it augments them,” said Carol Mimura, assistant vice chancellor for IP & Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA) at the University of California, Berkeley. “The pursuit of pure knowledge is no less impactful than commercializing a drug that saves lives. There are those who will never invent or commercialize a product, and they are no less an academic than those who have founded a dozen startup companies.”
“We value societal benefit above all, and education is our main goal. Some faculty members are entrepreneurial, some are not. And that’s fine with us.” -Evan Facher, vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship and director of the Innovation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh
Educating faculty on the process In what other ways can a university support faculty who wish to commercialize their IP? According to an anonymous researcher in a prominent United States public research university: “I never had to take a single course on anything to do with commercialization of science in my eight years of graduate school doing STEM research.” This omission caused her to miss out on knowledge regarding patents, the building of a business plan, how to communicate science to a non-scientific audience and other aspects of commercializing her invention. Sadly, her biomedical discovery now sits in a lab and the paper she published exists in an outdated journal. One internal action a university can take is to add coursework that walks each faculty member through the steps. This may or may not involve the university’s business school, incubators or accelerators.
Chatterji goes even a step further: “Every grant should have a requirement for commercialization activities and customer discovery,” she said. This basically means that if a professor’s project is funded, they are going to need to show a propensity for entrepreneurship.
Engaging industry Mimura said: “Patenting and licensing are just two ways that we engage industry. Being relevant to the private sector and to [California’s] goals of creating economic development requires ongoing relationship continuums, not a single transaction type or another.” Mimura reflects on U.C. Berkeley’s philosophy of managing IP rights to achieve the dual goals of social and economic impact: “[U.C. Berkeley] believes ‘technology transfer’ means movement between academia and industry – in both directions.” Mimura said this holistic, campus-wide approach to industry relations takes many forms, including corporate-sponsored research and collaborations, data and personnel exchange, consulting and other public service, IP creation and licensing, gifts, industry consortia, investment in startup companies, and participation in incubators, accelerators and with mentors. To operationalize the philosophy, U.C. Berkeley’s IPIRA has evolved through five business models from the first generation of “patent and shop the rights to industry” through the fifth, which focuses on a campus-wide infrastructure to help entrepreneurs and startup companies.
Like many universities that value innovation, including Stanford, U.C. Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology, the University of Houston System has launched a substantial research fund to help faculty members in bridging the gap between proof of concept and commercialization. Gap funding is especially helpful in the event that a startup experiences what is called “the valley of death” – a time when funding from the university has dried up and the private sector has not fully funded the commercialization yet. Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIRs) programs are often credited with educating faculty members about the business of IP commercialization. The University of Michigan has more than 10 Mentors in Residence (MIRs) to support early-stage startup teams at their university. “Our MIRs are experienced entrepreneurs, investors and domain experts and work on-site as embedded advisors for pre- and postlaunch University of Michigan startups. MIRs provide assistance with technology de-risking, company building, fundraising and talent recruitment,” said Kelly Sexton, associate vice president for research, technology transfer and innovation partnerships at the University of Michigan. In the last two years alone, UM’s Tech Transfer team has launched 43 new startup companies thanks to this integrated program of startup support.
“The largest form of ‘technology transfer’ is achieved by educating students who go out into the world to make a difference.”
Universities, as much as they may protest otherwise, are still coveting that next blockbuster drug or the new device that will live in every American’s pocket. In the meantime, entrepreneurialminded faculty should consider working closely with the technology transfer office on their campus, contributing to the diversification of their university’s portfolio of patents. If a university can top that five to 10 percent of patents that actually make it to commercialization, they will have done extremely well.
-Carol Mimura, assistant vice chancellor for IP & Industry Research Alliances at the University of California, Berkeley
No to CEO
Supporting startups and spin-outs “Once world class researchers are in place, the university needs to provide the infrastructure and resources needed,” said Chylla. “This includes supporting and funding the university technology transfer office, creating an ecosystem that supports university spin-outs and publicly celebrating the successes of university innovation that are creating impact.” Many universities encourage faculty members to meet with industry partners, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who have succeeded in the marketplace. The University of Houston, for instance, has instituted the Startup Pains Program. Residing within the Technology Bridge, a hub of innovation, Startup Pains brings CEOs and founders from both spin-outs of the University and startups (who tenant at the Technology Bridge) together with faculty. Others attend, as well: community members, graduate students who are working with principal investigators and post-doctoral students looking to move into full-time roles in companies. “Startups and entrepreneurship have become an increasingly important focus of our activities due to the economic impact they create, their inclusiveness, and the speed and agility they demonstrate in identifying and solving problems,” explained Mimura.
The Big Idea: Encouraging faculty to become more entrepreneurial and start a company based on their intellectual property is important. But is it important for that faculty member to be the CEO? Shaheen Lokhandwala, formerly University of Houston While faculty members can become the CEOs of the companies they spin out, we recommend they do not. Hurdles, obstacles and even failures abound. Not to mention, running a company is time consuming and takes away from one’s position as a full-time faculty member. Additionally, there are conflicts of interest. Carol Mimura, University of California, Berkeley: Entrepreneurial faculty members have to navigate COI and conflict of commitment of time policies of the university. U.C. Berkeley professors often serve on the scientific advisory board of a startup that (s)he is a founder of, because that is not a position that requires daily managerial responsibilities. Instead, it is a strategic position.
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Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? -Edited by Sarah Hill
This is The Big Idea’s reoccurring segment where we ask some of our top professors from across the University of Houston to weigh in on a truism or idiom – a safe place for them to rant, wax poetic or dazzle us with their clever take on age-old adages.
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First, a photographer… As most photographers can confirm, when people say a picture is worth a thousand words, they certainly aren’t talking about financial value. I know plenty of photographers who would say their work isn’t valued, but that’s true for most of the writers I know, too. I’ve always taken the saying to mean that photos convey a lot of information — details of time and place, the “objective reality” captured by the camera, the dozens of associations an image mobilizes. A photo has the power to instantly trigger an emotional response, but to describe all we find in an image would require a lot of words, including some of the ones in the previous sentence, which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t be worth posting on Instagram. A photographer might make a thousand photos to get just one they are satisfied with. Multiply those photos each by a thousand words, and we’re doing the equivalent of more writing than just about any other field. I have hard drives filled with terabytes of photos, but they still take up less space than the books on my shelves. I’ve only had about 200 words here to make my case. Maybe one-fifth of a photo would have done just as well. Keliy Anderson-Staley is a UH associate professor of photography and digital media. Perhaps she sees life just a little differently due to the fact she, in her own words, “grew up in a off-grid log cabin in northern Maine — with no electricity, phone or indoor plumbing.” When not lending her unique artistic vision to her UH students, she can be found in her home near the bayou, crafting with her five and six year-old children.
I often think in pictures, and sketching helps me get ideas. But those doodles then need to be translated into mathematics and code, and eventually into explanations. If I am lucky, a few of these sketches will translate to a thousand words in a publication. Pictures are worth more than words in talks and informal conversations, however. Too often, we see slides overburdened with text that put half the audience to sleep. Some of the best presenters can get away with slides containing only figures. So, in the end it goes both ways: A picture can be worth a thousand words. But a few words and symbols can also be worth many pictures. Krešimir Josić, UH professor of mathematics, specializes in the theory of deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems to problems in neuroscience, systems biology and evolution. When he is not scribbling equations, he stays busy off-road biking and playing classical guitar (rarely at the same time, he says!)
The picture v. the thousand words At the kitchen table in Kansas, where most of the family action took place, my sister the psychologist casually mentioned that she never thought in words but only in images. I literally could not envision it.
Photo: One-fifth of “Bill, 2015” by Anderson-Staley
The math expert says… This seems like such a simple statement, but it can lead to bitter disagreements between scientists (perhaps this says more about academics than about pictures and words, but let’s forget about this for now.) Some mathematicians working on the most abstract questions seem to be visual thinkers (for instance, logician Hugh Woodin and Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani). Others who work on much more concrete problems have told me that “An equation is worth a thousand pictures,” and will work hard to avoid including a figure in their work.
Words, for me, are the world. For many years my nervous habit was to “type” the sentences others were speaking to me, my fingers tapping along in thin air. I am one of those people who ALWAYS prefers the book to the movie, which is to say: the words over the moving picture. Character is action, says Aristotle (I think), but I like knowing the inside dirt on that action, the many many explanations that any character cares to summon up, the stories he tells himself, the justifications and convoluted or rational logic, not to mention magical thinking and long-standing feudal grudges, that result, finally and perhaps epiphanically, in action. But before action, the thought. The words. All thousand of them. Antonya Nelson, UH professor of creative writing has published nine books of fiction and was the recipient of the Rea Award for Short Fiction, a 2000-2001 NEA Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Missouri Review once referred to her as a “master of the domestic genre” – which might not come as a surprise to her partner and colleague, Robert Boswell, a professor who also teaches in the creative writing program.
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FEATURE
ELECTION TO ELECTRON By Rene Cantu
HOW ELECTION TIME INFLAMES THE FIGHT FOR FEDERAL FUNDING Every election cycle brings a miasma of anxiety over the research community. Here we explore these anxieties to determine if they’re justified.
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There is a sport where two individuals clash in front of thousands of screaming fans. A heated bout where both participants throw jabs at each other and launch haymakers hoping to land a knockout blow; and it’s all for money. A bloody display of barbarism and competition not unlike the violent exhibitions of Roman gladiators. That sport … is called politics. Unlike boxing, politics is brutal. That’s why every election cycle, researchers nip at their nails nervously. Watching on and rooting for their prizefighter, their political candidate, to win. But why? Why would researchers have this much emotional investment in an election?
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On a sweltering June 2 afternoon in 1875, a young man named Thomas A. Watson sat in a warm room, perspiring intensely and staring at a length of wire on the dingy floor. The wire ran some sixty feet down the hall and to the other side of the building. On the other end of the wire another young man sat impatiently in a separate room. His name was Alexander Graham Bell, professor of vocal physiology and elocution at Boston University. In just a few moments, both men would set on a course that would change mankind forever. They’d send the first transmission of several messages over the wire at the same time, sans interference. The device they used was called the harmonic telegraph. The progenitor of the telephone and, eventually, the pocket computers we walk around with today. In order to fund the development of this invention, Bell went to the father of one of his students, Mabel Hubbard, who would later become his wife. Her father elected to fund him and the rest was history. You see, before federal funding, finding money for research and development was pretty simple. You got it from a “guy that knows a guy.” That all changed when Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act into Law. This made it possible for states to sell federal land to fund colleges that concentrated on agriculture or engineering. Soon, the country was peppered with “land-grant colleges.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) founder William Barton Rogers persuaded the state to give MIT part of its land-grant fund in exchange for agreeing to teach its students military instruction. This newfound influx of government funding presented MIT as a worthwhile investment to private donors.
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In 1919, Rogers spearheaded a campaign called the Tech Plan, an ancestor to modern technology parks. Thanks to this plan, MIT was reborn, this time buoyed by corporate patronage. The institution even created a Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research — a predecessor to today’s pervasive tech-transfer offices — to oversee corporately backed research projects at the university.
“Some of the benefits of basic research are obvious. It helps American families lead healthier lives through amazing new drug treatments and medical devices, better nutrition, and cleaner air and water,” said Richard Atkinson, former director of the NSF from 1977-80 and former president of the University of California, in his San Diego Union-Tribune piece “Why Federal Funding for Basic Research is Important.”
Corporate funding of research and development hit a land mine with the stock market crash of 1929. The stark reality of a moribund economy throughout the 1930s pushed MIT to do what many fiscally conservative administrators and even researchers and scientists were unanimously against: federal funding.
“Indeed, almost all of the technological advances of the past 50 years are linked to improvements in fundamental knowledge — much of it stimulated by federal research dollars,” he continued.
What’s the big deal about federal funding anyway? According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), federal support for research makes up over half of all university research. Without federal funding, university research will suffer, and in turn, so will the public. Think about this: when the Ebola outbreak ravaged West Africa, it was a cluster of research universities that sent their lab and clinical assets to help treat and manage the virus. The benefits of university research surround us every second of every day. Touch screens, lithium-ion batteries, fluoride toothpaste, GPS, solar power, radio, insulin, numerous vaccines, ultrasound, CAT scan, MRI scanner, the internet (the internet!) and Gatorade have their roots in university research. How far would these innovations have gotten without half the funding?
Federal support for research makes up over half of all university research. Without federal funding, university research will suffer, and in turn, so will the public.
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The politics of the penny So, what do elections have to do with federal funding? Can’t every administration just hand over a check? If only it were that simple. Elections present candidates that represent different parties. Each major party has its own reputation for science support. The research community might feel that one party in particular has more support for university research funding than the other. But presidential elections aren’t the only political battle the research community should be watching. “Presidents can influence the allotment of resources for higher education through the bully pulpit, but in terms of elections, higher education advocates should pay close attention to who is elected to Congress,” said Renee Cross, the senior director at the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs.
“Similarly, the election of state legislators is a critical part of the state funding component of higher education, particularly in a state such as Texas, which limits the power of the governor,” she continued. Proof that the power of the purse still lies with Congress is in the fact that during the Trump presidency, Congress has actually boosted research funding despite the administration’s proposed cuts to basic and applied research by $12 billion. “From the beginning, the Trump Administration has taken a hard fiscal line on most research and development programs, favoring Department of Defense technology development and acquisition at the expense of basic and applied research, even Defense research activities,” explained Matt Hourihan, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in his article “R&D in the FY 2020 White House Budget: An Overview.” “But these proposals have been rather emphatically rejected from the start, beginning with the FY 2017 appropriations, which Congress began under Obama but didn’t finish until Trump. That spring, the Trump Administration recommended late-breaking cuts, but Congress ended up providing a mix of increases,” Hourihan explained. It has been the same story since 2017, including a historically substantial FY 2018 omnibus and a recent 2019 omnibus that have given research agencies tons more to spend today than at the beginning of the president’s term.
Politics and PI panic 2016 brought about big change in America. A new administration brought forth new ideas, a different worldview and certainly a different economic disposition. Maybe a little too different. The panic on the streets of America during this time seeped its way into the sterile, pristine labs of university research centers. “It’s no secret that faculty are a little antsy,” Kalliat Valsaraj, vice president for research and economic development at Louisiana State University, told Politico in a 2016 interview. “They all wonder where the policies are going to go, where the funding is going to go. We’re all, as leaders, trying to remain calm. We have an opportunity to influence.” The anxiety in 2016 reached a fever pitch just minutes after the new president was announced, with Ph.D. students and scientists taking to Twitter to announce their fears and displeasure.
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THE BIG IDEA
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The funding fears “There is little doubt that research funding priorities change when a new administration arrives. And this is not necessarily partisan either. Each presidential administration is unique,” explained Jim Granato, the executive director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs. Every new administration brings about a set of expectations within the research community. Researchers might expect less support from one party than another. More times than not, however, that party is the Republican party. “Due to the political parties’ ideological differences about government spending, with traditional views of Republicans aiming to keep expenditures low and Democrats pursuing increased spending on centralized programs, most people assume that federal funding on higher education and other areas will increase with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in Congress,” said Cross. Are these assumptions justified? Just looking at the recent history of federal research funding, there is evidence that the blue party seeks more funding for research while the red party seeks more cuts. But there is also evidence that Republicans champion funding, too. Yes, it’s true that President Trump has sought to cut funding every year of his term so far, while Barack Obama sought to increase funding every year of his second term. But it’s also true that under the current administration federal funding for research has actually skyrocketed, even in the two years President Trump had a majority Republican Congress.
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THE BIG IDEA
When asked if there has been more concern about federal funding when the government is Republican-led vs. Democrat-led, Jim Granato explained, “That might be the popular perception but it is not accurate because priorities shift. I can recall discussing this with my NSF colleagues (some with decades of experience) and – in the case of NSF – their view was the NSF did better under Republican Administrations.” So was the panic justified? This is the part where you’re probably expecting a cop out answer like “yes and no.” Well, you guessed right. The answer is yes and no. No, the panic may not be entirely justified as it relates to the funding of research, since we saw a boost in research funding under a Republican president, including two years with a Republican majority Congress to boot. And yes, it is a bit justified given the intentions of Obama’s second-term Republican majority Congress to appropriate less than what he requested in his budgets. Add to that President Trump’s proposed cuts to funding and one can see why anxiety might linger over the heads of researchers. “The concern about support for science turned out to be mainly unfounded in that Congress has continued to support budget increases for science agencies, although the administration has not supported those increases in the President’s budget requests to Congress,” said Norman Bradburn, senior fellow at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and former assistant director for social, behavioral, and economic sciences at the NSF.
Surely, the concerns over the 2016 election were more nuanced than to just be about funding alone. “In practice, funded research areas are more likely affected by which party is in office than how much funding is made available. For example, a few years ago, a number of Republican congressional members pushed to substantially decrease the NSF’s support of social science, particularly political science,” said Cross. She continued, “The aim was to limit social science grants to research solely pertaining to national security and economic interests. In this case, the primary issue was not necessarily the amount of funding, but what exactly the federal government would fund (emphasis added).” And therein lies the nuance. It wasn’t just about funding, but what the administration might choose to fund and choose to cut. So, is research funding the only reason for continuing PI panic and research community anxiety? “It depends on who you talk to since the practice of science can fall victim to politicization – within the scientific community. Thomas Kuhn warned us about this years ago. One issue in this current period, that is quite explosive, revolves around climate change research and regulations. The Trump Administration clearly has a different view on this issue than the Obama Administration,” said Granato.
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Political climate change Most people are not sure what’s more concerning, the political climate or the actual climate. The issue of climate change has taken the spotlight again when it comes to science and politics. When asked what he felt were the biggest concerns in the research community regarding the 2016 election, Bradburn replied, “The two biggest were whether budgetary support for science would continue at a high level in the new administration and whether science would continue to be listened to in deciding about regulations, particularly those concerning climate change. ”One of the biggest reasons for these concerns was the president’s rhetoric during his debates, speeches and interviews leading up to his presidential victory. During this time, he vowed to cancel the Paris climate agreement, which as we know, eventually came to fruition. “If Trump steps back from that, it makes it much less likely that the world will ever meet that target, and essentially ensures we will head into the danger zone,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produces global reports on the state of climate science. Asked if the 2016 election concerns in the scientific community regarding climate change were unfounded or substantiated in the last four years, Bradburn remarked, “(It) has turned out to be true, and science advisory committees to agencies, particularly those related to climate concerns, have been decimated and scientific advice has been rejected or downplayed in many agencies.”
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Hindsight is 2020 Looking back now, we can see, quite clearly, that there were definitely reasons for concern in the scientific community regarding the election of President Trump, but there was also reason to think the hysteria might have been inflated. Whereas concerns of budget cuts were realized, as the president did indeed propose myriad budget cuts to research funding, Congress defied expectations and granted funding beyond what was requested. While funding concerns were predominantly quelled, the issue of climate change and the downplaying of the voice of the science community in matters like climate change is still very much alive. “There is less concern about the future of funding for science agencies because of strong Congressional support for NIH and NSF and well as the Defense Department and NASA, but there is a fear that the President’s reelection will further erode the role of science in important policy areas, particularly those related to climate,” proclaimed Bradburn. The research community has every justification to be nervous about any election. They want to make sure they avoid the jab of a funding cut, the right hook of anti-science politicking, and the knockout blow of science suppression. Indeed, politics is a brutal affair not unlike boxing. In boxing the competitors only hurt each other. In politics they hurt each other but can hurt everyone around them. 320 million people to be exact. The decisions they make reverberate throughout every facet of culture, society and science. From voting booth to laboratory. From poll to PI. From election to electron.
The research community has every justification to be nervous about any election. They want to make sure they avoid the jab of a funding cut, the right hook of anti-science politicking and the knockout blow of science suppression.
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PERSPECTIVES
Identity Crisis Research continuity in the face of an epidemic
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Q&A with Alexandra Albinak, Johns Hopkins University By Tim Holt January 21, 2020. That was when news first broke that the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, had arrived in the United States. The next three months saw the country scrambling to understand the scale of what was about to happen. In the midst of this, universities began shuttering their campuses and the American academic system moved online almost overnight. When Johns Hopkins University announced it would cancel all in-person classes on March 18, it joined an early contingent of universities initiating campus closures to brace for the oncoming pandemic. But as the classrooms turned into virtual conferences, research operations faced an entirely different set of challenges. Alexandra Albinak, JHU’s associate vice provost for research administration, tells us how her team prepared.
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Have your ideas about research preparedness changed over the course of the COVID-19 crisis? One of the things I attribute the university’s swift action to is having a Chief Risk Officer, who is a full professor in the School of Public Health, and an overarching risk management system. We all knew our roles for years because we had annual continuity exercises where we would go for half days and play out different scenarios in tabletop exercises. But all of the infrastructure issues are different based on what we’re facing. They’re similar in that business continuity, being able to work remotely, that’s always been at the top of our minds. A snow storm is regional, but we still have to submit proposals, we still have to do our research. In this case, the VPN (virtual private network) is overloaded because so many people are working from home. Most universities are still standing up research for anything related to COVID-19. That’s another challenge because you have to worry about dealing with the human subjects. It’s not just about the spread of the virus or endangering participants. There are so many other considerations about what is critical. That is the big conversation across all universities: We’ve moved away from the word essential, and we’re now asking, “How do you define critical research?” Part of our decision to discontinue non-critical lab research is for the protection of the students. Everyone feels their research is critical, but you have think about the staff and the students that are at risk. How did you prioritize action and manage the flow of so much information through the enterprise? My team started planning about three weeks before the campus closed. We’re the ones who submit the proposals and accept the awards, so that keeps the money coming in. The Vice Provost for Research, Denis Wirtz, took the lead in bringing our groups together and collaborating with the School of Medicine. We have three different offices and many IRBs, but they still talk daily to make sure things are addressed. After we made the plans and figured out how we are going to do it, we asked: “How do you operationalize all of this?” That is the challenge all universities are facing. What do you think were the most critical first steps you took to begin preparing everyone for major operational changes?
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THE BIG IDEA
Our key first steps involved keeping in touch with our federal sponsors and making sure we’re all on the same page with how we were going to handle this. Then we contacted Human Resources to make sure the faculty and staff issues were addressed. HR sent a very clear message that we were going to move to telework and that they were there to support us. From an administrative standpoint, we decided that Microsoft Teams was going to be our best friend. It has been helpful because it has web conferencing and chatting. All administrative staff are getting better at learning to use these tools as well. What kinds of larger conversations do you think COVID-19 should be prompting within our research enterprises? There’s a lot going on, both internal and externally. Hopkins is a member of the Council of Governmental Relations (COGR) and we’re also members of the AAU. If anything, that traffic and the consulting has accelerated. For Instance, I participate twice a week on a call that COGR organizes. There are about 50 participants from across the country sharing how they are dealing with the challenges, everything from trying to figure out how to move 35 people instantaneously from working in an office to their homes to questions like “How are you interpreting that one FAQ?” that a government agency might have sent out. This has all of us in university research now asking ourselves: What does remote research really look like? Do you see any longer-term shake up to business as usual within university research on the other side of this pandemic? Somebody in our biweekly calls at COGR brought up issues around rigor and reproducibility, an important issue that faculty don’t have much dedicated time to think about. Perhaps faculty can have more opportunity to deal with the conceptual aspects of research if they’re not running back and forth to a lab. But you have to figure out how to adapt to any kind of change, whether it’s sudden or gradual. When we were considering continuing to pay and doing telework – that included research – we knew there would be universities that are heavily lab-based where remote work will be more staggered. For instance, people will have to work certain shifts, I know they are doing that in our labs. But there is a lot that of work that can be done remotely. You can imagine an explosion of remote – work software and solutions for data security issues in the event we must work like this in the future. I hope this situation will accelerate the technologies for large data repositories and things the government already wanted to prioritize. These are things that we need to consider in the event that we face another crisis.
The big conversation across all universities: We’ve moved away from the word essential and now we’re asking, “How do you define critical research?”
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DISCUSSION BOARD
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In the Shadow of the Valley of Tech By Rene Cantu It started with prunes. Long before Silicon Valley was the innovation capital of the world, it was a giant valley of fruit trees and verdant hills. The primary crop in the then called Santa Clara Valley was the French plum, which was sun-dried to turn into the valley’s most popular export and métier: prunes. By the late 19th century, the Industrial Revolution had produced myriad millionaires, billionaires by the boatload and tons of tycoons. Among them was Leland Stanford, a railroad king. Stanford owned an 8,100-acre ranch in Santa Clara Valley near Palo Alto. That’s where he founded and established Stanford University. It was also here that the region transformed into the valley of technology known today as Silicon Valley. In 1925, Stanford alum Frederick Terman, considered the father of Silicon Valley, returned to teach radio engineering. Over the next decade, Terman noticed something quite concerning. He recognized that Stanford produced elite, highly-educated grads who continually opted to leave town for jobs in New York City. Terman expressed his desire for Stanford alumni to stay in the valley to grow the region’s business sector and feed the local economy. The first company to heed this advice was Hewlett-Packard. Terman encouraged Stanford grads William Hewlett and David Packard to partner up and thus, we saw the first ever “garage-startup” born. Anon this historic partnership, more alumni and faculty at Stanford began to found their own companies in the valley. Soon, a massive network of companies was formed, bound by their shared connection with the university. Terman had essentially built a pipeline through which Stanford grads poured into the valley, a process that is still in full swing today. In a sense, Silicon Valley was the first academic incubator. One that is stronger than ever today. Or is it?
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The great tech-xodus? According to The Economist, “[In 2018,] more Americans left the county of San Francisco than arrived. According to a recent survey, 46% of respondents say they plan to leave the Bay Area in the next few years, up from 34% in 2016. So many startups are branching out into new places that the trend has a name, ‘Off Silicon Valleying.’” Business Insider’s Melia Robinson writes, “Silicon Valley is on the brink of an exodus” and that “the tech elite are abandoning Silicon Valley in droves.” More tellingly, Kevin Roose wrote in his New York Times article “Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley,” that “This isn’t a full-blown exodus yet. But in the last three months of 2017, San Francisco lost more residents to outward migration than any other city in the country.” Roose followed 12 venture capitalists on a bus trip throughout the heartland. They were looking for hot startups in lesser-visited areas of America. The venture capitalists were in awe of how inexpensive the home prices were in the Midwest compared to the Bay Area. To add to this, a public-relations firm named Edelman conducted a survey of 500 residents in the Bay Area and found that almost half of all Bay Area residents “said they would consider leaving California because of the cost of living.” Moreover, Eric Rosenbaum wrote in his CNBC article “Silicon Valley Edged Out: Google Employees Aren’t the Only Ones Walking Away From Elite Tech Headquarters,” that “Silicon Valley is not about to lose its dominant position as the home of billion-dollar technology start-ups and hub for top talent, but there are a growing number of reasons why more workers and new companies are choosing other cities, far from San Francisco.” The common theme in most of the aforementioned articles is that the reason behind this mini-exodus is the high cost of living in the Bay Area. The Economist states that “young startups pay at least four times more to operate in the Bay Area than in most other American cities.” Aside from the cost of living, one often-cited reason why entrepreneurs leave the Valley is groupthink. Again, The Economist sheds light on this stating that, “The Valley does many things remarkably well, but it comes dangerously close to being a monoculture of white male nerds. Companies founded by women received just 2% of the funding doled out by venture capitalists last year (2017).”
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Entrepreneur Tim Ferriss told Business Insider that the tech scene in Silicon Valley can be brutal for people who deviate from the political echo chamber. After ten years in the Valley, Ferriss moved to Austin in 2017. Business Insider also tells the account of Peter Thiel, a billionaireinvestor who was all but ostracized from Silicon Valley because of his support for President Donald Trump. He told Insider that “Network effects are very positive things, but there’s a tipping point where they fall over into the madness of crowds.” Even if not quite an exodus, there are many accounts like the aforementioned that point to the fact that startups are indeed looking for greener pastures. Just where are these greener pastures? They are located in the business districts and technology parks that are smaller versions of Silicon Valley in cities all over the country. However, one green pasture in particular has taken the startup world by storm in recent years: the rise of the academic incubator.
A tech-splosion of university parks “In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in public and private investment in university research parks (URPs). URPs are important as an infrastructural mechanism for the transfer of academic research findings, as a source of knowledge spillovers, and as a catalyst for national and regional economic growth,” wrote Albert N. Link and John T. Scott in the highly regarded journal Oxford Review of Economic Policy, in their article “The economics of university research parks.” One of the biggest reasons universities have become hotbeds for tech startups is that campuses provide a means for people with multidisciplinary backgrounds to intermingle within the same space. A mechanical engineering student with a great idea might meet an MBA during a startup launch party. Together they can build and market their time-traveling DeLorean, or whatever actually-realistic idea the student has. In essence, academic incubators are courting tech entrepreneurs because universities offer an ecosystem designed to support and grow startups from conception to commercialization. This ecosystem includes a space where researchers, faculty and students of all disciplines interact and form working relationships. In many cases, it also includes university owned equipment and laboratories for use by startup researchers.
“I feel that organizations working to commercialize university IP realize a great source of off-the-shelf technology that small businesses can use to either augment their own offerings or exploit something not currently found in the marketplace,” said Michael Tentnowski, the director of entrepreneurship for Innovation Park of Tallahassee. “Basically, the potential business can work with university staff to perfect, enhance or create new versions of various innovations to appeal to consumer demands. Taking the technology risk out of the equation helps new businesses focus on customer discovery and market penetration,” Tentnowski explained. Faye Liu, founder and CEO of RevoChem, a hot startup that recently launched out of UH’s Technology Bridge, expressed that “one key benefit is the easy access to great talents and research resources from both students, researchers and professors from the university with flexibility.” Liu goes on to explain, “We have successfully hired multiple UH students and alumni through internships to work full time. We have also sponsored UH research that is relevant to our work which is a win-win for both of us.” It is true that universities position aspiring entrepreneurs to network with the right people for building their company from the ground up. Even the Innovation Leadership Forum attests that innovation is born when different ways of thinking clash. “Providing a high-density area for collisions between thoughts and ideas to occur is driving innovation. Our urban location – adjacent to a Tier One research university – provides the chance for success to increase exponentially,” said Carrie Roth, the president and CEO of Virginia Bio Tech Park. “Our experience demonstrates that startups come here for a competitive advantage – and that is being in an environment where they can keep costs lower and accelerate their startup,” she continued.
“University research parks offer the opportunity for startups to be at the nexus of technology, talent and opportunities. The UH Technology Bridge, for example, offers a unique setting where companies from a broad range of technology areas can come together and have access to a variety of different resources, including wet lab space,” explained Christopher Taylor, the executive director of University of Houston’s Office of Technology Transfer and Innovation. “Locating in a research park near a major university offers startups a chance to engage and collaborate with academic researchers in their field and leverage the vast talent pool of students through internships and parttime employment to develop their technology and grow their company,” Taylor proceeded. Yes, it is no wonder that so many entrepreneurs are choosing to leave Silicon Valley. They actually have options now. There are a ton of alternatives available all over the country now that are just as “top tier” as Silicon Valley, without the drawbacks of living there. Chief among these alternatives are academic incubators. The explosion of university investment in these tech parks has opened, nay, kicked down, the door for startup founders looking to venture outside of the Bay Area. Say what you will about the mini-exodus from Silicon Valley. The high cost of living, the echo chamber and political groupthink, the lack of diversity. All valid points. But one thing is for certain, there are no academic incubators today without Silicon Valley. Its influence on modern tech parks may be taken for granted, but it is real. It was once said that as gigantic and unfathomably massive as the sun is, it still manages to gently reach out with its light, millions of miles away, to ripen a vine of grapes as if it had nothing better to do. That’s how Silicon Valley’s influence is felt. Except instead of ripening grapes, it’s drying plums. And today, academic and non-academic incubators merely operate in its shadow. The shadow of the valley of tech.
Academic incubators exude a different aura from non-academic parks. There’s a certain sense of prestige they carry because they are based in universities. Perhaps it is the idea of working with professors and using university labs and equipment that resonates.
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CONTEMPLATIONS
THE GI BILL BY JOHN LIENHARD, PH.D. I started college in 1947. Most of the other students in my classes were returning veterans, ten or so years older than I was. That was just three years after President Roosevelt had signed Public Law 346, The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act. But everyone simply called it the GI Bill. It gave tuition, books, and college living expenses to returning veterans. A predictable outcry against federal spending had greeted the Bill. It would shelter slackers, too lazy to go back to work. Legislators passed it only because they expected no more than one GI in ten would ever make use of it. A premature 1945 headline in the Saturday Evening Post announced that, “GI’s Reject Education.” What a spectacular miscalculation that was! The next year, a million ex-servicemen (and some women) were already back in school. I graduated from Oregon State College in 1951. Our classes of ’50 and ’51 were, by far, OSC’s largest engineering classes ever. Colleges across America groaned under the load. Oregon State threw up prefab quarters in their mud flats – shabby Quonset-hut housing for married students. No “Joe College” days for those guys! America had expected a few slackers. Instead, they got an army of the hardest working people I ever met. Colleges tried to cope with their numbers by running the workloads up to the sky. They hoped the slackers would drop out and make room for the rest.
But those students had seen war. This hardship was a piece of cake. I was surrounded by officers and infantrymen back from the valley of the shadow of death. One classmate, in his late 40s, had been a general. Their faces were somber, their emotions in check. And I was honored to be accepted as a part of it all. Art Winship had suffered polio in the service. He rode his wheelchair back and forth to classes. Handicap access was unheard of in those days. The four of us nearest him grabbed his chair each day and lugged him up two flights. Art’s disability was one more shared cost of a terrible war. Those people understood community. So the nation educated the survivors of war. People for whom college would’ve been an unimaginable privilege in 1939 were now in school. I was the youngest member of that class and missed out on many rites of youth. But no matter: I was privileged to watch history unfolding around me. Our government never made a wiser investment. We democratized education. We gave new purpose to our universities. We brought a generation back into the American mainstream. We did it all in one stroke. Later, I came back from my own turn in the Army, to do graduate study on the GI Bill. What America had done for a whole generation a few years before, she now did for me as well. But my good fortune aside: I’m more grateful to those legislators on behalf of those millions of WWII veterans. They’d saved the world from fascism. Now America equipped them to keep shaping America in the years that followed. Kiester, E., Jr., The G.I. Bill May Be the Best Deal Ever made by Uncle Sam. Smithsonian, 1994, pp. 128-139. Olson, K. W., The G. I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges. (Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press, 1974).
Dr. John Lienhard is a retired professor of mechanical engineering and history at the University of Houston. He’s the founding author and voice of the nationally-aired radio program, “The Engines of our Ingenuity.” www.uh.edu/engines
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