More university-business links could boost economy

Creating a critical mass of cooperation among local universities and business leaders is a key to boosting the Triangle’s economy, national and state higher education experts agree.

By:
Jane Paige
Triangle Business Journal

Breaking down the barriers among professors at the various universities, merging ideas among the different university departments as well as between academics and community leaders are among the best ways to develop this mass, according to speakers at a recent statewide forum.

"The engine for economic growth is tied to translating knowledge into new products and practices," says Mary Walshok, associate vice chancellor at University of California at San Diego. "Innovation drives the new economy."

Walshok was a speaker in a session at the 2003 Emerging Issues Forum held Feb. 10 and 11 at North Carolina State University’s McKimmon Center. The session was devoted to discussing how to develop new roles for higher education in economic development. Walshok stressed the need for universities to have a more integrated view of what area companies require and take more of a coherent approach to research and development and educational training.

"We need to get those lawyers and professional managers in here and teach them about global science and global investment strategies," she said. "There needs to be a lot of cross-disciplinary, cross-professional education and knowledge."

Don Smith, vice president for economic development at Mellon Pitt Carnegie Corp., emphasized the importance of making the university community available to the business community and entrepreneurs. He has worked with the development of curriculum, projects and, eventually, companies as a cooperative effort between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

"We are now not just happy to train great students, but we want to actively make the connections with the private economy," he says. "We want to make resources more accessible to the community and economy."

Walshok and Smith agreed that universities must open a dialogue among faculty, students and members of the business community to develop a shared agenda.

The 16-campus University of North Carolina System already is putting into action many of the critical points discussed at the forum, according to Russ Lea, vice president for research and director of sponsored programs for the campuses.

Universities in the Triangle and across the state are working together in many areas, such as marine science, bioinformatics, biomedical engineering and homeland defense.

"It is very difficult for each university to go it alone," Lea says. "The universities can’t sit in individual silos and not know what the others are doing. We can not succeed that way and we can not help the state’s economy."

Named to the university system position in March 2001, Lea points to a master agreement that has been adopted between the 16 universities during his tenure. The agreement spells out the specifics of the campuses working together to help eliminate haggling over intellectual property, financial requirements and unnecessary paperwork.

"While administrators are arguing back and forth, the scientists get discouraged and lose faith in the institution," Lea says. "We want to move away from that and stop wasting time. We want to cut through all the red tape."

Lea said there has always been cooperation among the universities, but much of it has been required as part of grant or research applications. Professors had to get along on paper in order to get funding.

Today, he sees more university faculty members voluntarily working on projects together and collaborating. A trust level is being established, Lea said.

Bruce Weir, director of the bioinformatics research center at NCSU, works closely with colleagues at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The collaborative effort works to everyone’s advantage, he said.

"When we all pool our resources, we are unequalled anywhere in the country," Weir said. "Synergy is important to the success for all of us,"

Weir and NCSU have a formal agreement with colleagues at Duke’s human genetics center that allows student interns to work between the two universities. The relationship with UNC is relatively new, he said. The two schools recently submitted a joint grant application for bioinformatics work.

"We do not duplicate efforts on our individual campuses," Weir said. "We each can not do everything but we can accomplish a lot by working together."

The country’s top students also can be attracted because the three universities have so much to offer jointly in the field, he said.

UNC and NCSU also are working to create a new joint graduate degree program in biomedical engineering, pooling the medical expertise at UNC and the engineering expertise at NCSU.

Dr. Troy Nagle has been a leader in establishing the joint degree programs. Since 1988, he has held a research professor appointment in biomedical engineering at UNC, and for the past 10 years he has been active in establishing the graduate biomedical engineering program at NCSU. In July 2001, an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering was established at NCSU. The next development in the biomedical engineering academic program will be joint master’s and doctoral degrees from UNC and NCSU.

"With Duke, UNC medical school and N.C. State, this is a great area for biomedical engineering," Nagle says.

Medical researchers at Duke and UNC are collaborating to land one of about a dozen biodefense research facilities that the Bush administration has proposed to fund. Other universities such as NCSU, Emory University in Atlanta, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., are involved in the effort. Local officials say the former Environmental Protection Agency building in the Research Triangle Park could be a site for the lab.

An NCSU program also has helped several Triangle technology startups get off the ground. The Technology, Entrepreneurship and Commercialization program is an opportunity for business, technical and non-technical graduate students to use what they’ve learned in the classroom and have an impact on the economy.

LipoScience, a medical diagnostics company, was started in a class. Nitronex, a semiconductor startup, was also begun by alumni of the class. In addition, TEC provides hands-on education to engineering and business students about entreneurship.

The TEC program began in 1995 as an outgrowth of a $1 million National Science Foundation and Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science grant to study technology commercialization.