Section B·Page 10
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday. September 26. 2000
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University of Minnesota pushed to work closer with businesses
By KRT News Service
Campus Inc.? Not quite.
Still, America's great research universities — including the University of Minnesota — moved decisively toward the business world after greater competition from abroad led Congress to pass the Bayh-Dole Act. This 1980 legislation, which gave universities the right to patent the results of federally funded research, paved the way for closer ties between campuses and companies.
The goal is to unearth and profit from innovations that otherwise would gather dust in the obscure labs of academe. These innovations, if brought to market successfully before 1980, would not have brought financial benefit to the schools. Before then, profits from numerous products hatched at the University of Minnesota — ultrasound devices, taconite, vulcanized rubber, retractable seat belts — eluded the school.
To change that situation, the university established a technology transfer office, where for years there had been a single patent administrator. Today, 20 staffers work there. Nationally, the Association of University Technology Managers, whose members once fit comfortably into a modest living room, has grown to the point where its annual meetings draw 1,500 attendees.
Finally, significant results are showing up. Royalties and fees surged to $23.1 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, from $6.4 million in fiscal 1999. The increase came from two sources: the sale of stock in Net Perceptions, a company founded on university-developed technology that went public in 1999, and royalties from a new AIDS drug.
The drug, Ziagen, promises to be a blockbuster for the University of Minnesota. Ziagen came about as a result of research by Robert Vince, a pharmacy professor at the university. Revenue generated by Glaxo Wellcome, the pharmaceutical company marketing the drug, is expected to shower up to $300 million in royalty payments onto the university during the next decade or so.
Nothing like that has happened in the school's other principal tech-transfer niche startups based on the work of university faculty members. In the last five years, 34 companies have been launched using Minnesota-licensed technology,
"A lot of people are afraid it's going to be worse, partly because of failure to invest in both faculty and technical support." Roberta Humphreys Minnesota astronomy professor
with the school taking equity stakes in most of them. But so far, only one of the 34, Net Perceptions, has gone public.
Making tech transfer work has proven immensely complicated, tough, controversial, constantly misunderstood by the general public and, in the view of university and business leaders, absolutely necessary.
It's necessary, they argue, because the university has a mandate as a land grant institution to help the state's economy. The University of Minnesota did that in ways never dreamed in the 1950s. Then, C. Walton Lillehei, a pioneer in open-heart surgery in the University of Minnesota Medical School, teamed up with Medtronic founder Earl Bakken to initiate the work that led to the successful implant of the world's first heart pacemaker.
Since then, Medtronic products have prolonged the lives of thousands of people. The company has become Minnesota's most prized corporation and the world's leading maker of medical devices. If just one of today's University of Minnesota-backed companies manages to vault onto a similar trajectory, the school could gain more of a windfall than it stands to receive from the work of Vince.
It's also necessary, many believe, because rugged competition from other big-time research universities leaves Minnesota little choice but to give its faculty members the opportunity to pursue potentially lucrative research. If they can't do it here, they'll go elsewhere, with some of the nation's best and brightest professors and students following in their wake.
Yet Minnesota's research capability has come under serious stress. Major universities across the country have poured resources into attracting top-flight faculty, students and programs, sometimes in fields where their work seems most likely
to lead to successful companies. Overall, Minnesota remains one of the nation's heaviest-hitting schools for research grants. However, under pressure to keep a bewildering array of services and courses going, it has found a growing struggle for resources needed to meet stepped-up competition from other universities.
The National Research Council's rankings reflect this. Once a decade, on average, the council ranks major research universities. In 1959, and again in 1966, the University of Minnesota ranked 12th. In 1970, and again in 1982, it was 16th. In 1995, it ranked 23rd, according to calculations by Change magazine.
Opinions differ, but some who know the university well fear more slippage is in the works.
Roberta Humphreys, an astronomy professor at Minnesota, noted that many departments had lost key faculty members since 1995.
"A lot of people are afraid it's going to be worse, partly because of failure to invest in both faculty and technical support," Humphrews said.
The University of Minnesota Medical School has fallen from 14th in 1982 to 27th today in the National Institutes of Health ranking. Some of this decline may have been self-inflicted by a scandal at the school, which has only now worked free of penalties imposed by the NIH for making the anti-rejection organ transplant drug ALG for years without adequate approval.
But a greater source of strain appears to be the financial squeeze that's forced the school to leave more tenured faculty positions open — 80 out of 430 — than ever before.
Others say a populist streak in Minnesota's culture chills research efforts.
minnesota's culture chills research efforts. Tony Potamil, now chief executive officer at the William C. Norris Institute in Bloomington, Minn., headed Minnesota's tech transfer program for years. He spent long hours working with Vince, starting 20 years ago, to license the AIDS drug.
Potami said too many Minnesotans thought professors shouldn't be involved in money-making endeavors.
"Why is there a worry that someone could become a millionaire and do good?" he asked. "We've got recognize that if they're going to have a technology that's going to turn into a company, by default they're going to make money in equity or royalties, and that's a good thing."
South Carolina students create tech company
By KRT News Service
Last year, Matt Parker was trying to sort out plans for graduate school.
But just a few weeks into his final year at the University of South Carolina, the 21-year-old Charleston native has put the plans for graduate school aside.
Parker, along with Russian native and USC graduate student Yuri Khelbnikov, instead will be launching a high-tech company called Bandgap Technologies Inc.
The company has been admitted as the most recent tenant-client of the USC Columbia Technology Incubator and has received almost $300,000 in federal research grants.
"It itakes me up in the morning in a cold sweat," Parker said about starting the company instead of going to graduate school. "It's a lot of responsibility."
What the federal research grants and USC's incubator are supporting is a company that could affect electronics ranging from color displays to mobile phones.
Parker and Khelbnikov met while working together in USC's engineering laboratories on the technology of crystal growth.
The USC students are building Bandgap around a process for growing silicon carbide crystals.
The company hopes to use this process to create silicon carbide wafers that can improve the efficiency of certain electronic devices. That technology could lead to new forms of full-color displays, high-capacity compact discs and mobile phones that could send and receive more information while using less power, he said.
Bandgap will initially produce the wafers on a small scale in the downtown offices of the USC incubator.
Joel Stevenson, director of the USC Columbia Technology Incubator, said the facility has secured 1,000 square feet of additional space to make room for Bandgap.
The company, which has special utilities requirements for its crystal-making process, will occupy a building across the street from the incubator's downtown offices.
Bandgap gives the USC incubator five companies. A sixth company, NetGen Learning Systems, graduated from the program in July. Stevenson said Bandgap fit well with the mission of the incubator.
The company, which still is conducting research out of USC's labs, plans to work closely with the university and draw on university talent.
After work come play
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