The Big Idea Spring 2019: A New Way of Thinking

Spring 2019

A NEW WAY OF THINKING Women and industry funding.

Get ready to join the conversation.

Rebecca Carrier

Northeastern University

Elyse Rosenbaum University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Samira Ali

University of Houston

FIRST THOUGHT

Beaker to Bedside: The Bridge Between Academia and the Clinic

By Nitiya Spearman At the intersection of medicine and technology are a group of specialized researchers referred to as physician-scientists, earning both medical degrees and doctorates who offer a perspective beyond the scope of clinical practice.

Three such researchers discussed how they make the connections between discovery and patient care.

Shaun Xiaoliu Zhang, director of the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling at the University of Houston and M.D. Anderson Professor of Biology and Biochemistry, knows exactly what the clinical demands are.

“I can see from the M.D. perspective, but at the same time I have a Ph.D. – I know how to design research properly,” he said. “In the clinic, you’re faced with the reality that a patient is struggling but you don’t have the tools to treat those patients. If you engage in research you can create a tool.”

Zhang said clinicians know the need but may struggle to design a solution. A Ph.D., on the other hand, may not understand the clinical need.

Renowned hormone researcher Jan-Åke Gustafsson, Robert A. Welch Professor of Biology and Biochemistry and founding director of the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling, agrees.

“The dual education makes it possible for you to see which diseases are in need of more research, drugs and so on,” he said.

Physician-scientists are the driving force behind many advances of modern medicine.

“The way I look at it is, practicing medicine is relatively easy but coming up with the next diagnostic device or the next treatment for a disease is way more difficult, way more challenging,” said Chandra Mohan, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Endowed Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UH. “You see patients with certain diseases, and you know there’s a dire need for better diagnostics, earlier treatment and earlier diagnoses with fewer side effects,” he said.

While researchers spend time primarily in the laboratory and clinical practitioners interact with patients, they both want to make an impact.

“We have made some discoveries which have led to the development of new drugs and better understanding of certain diseases,” says Gustafsson. “There’s a great satisfaction that it may help people to get healthy.”

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Translating the Research The synergy of this dual education makes these investigators valuable not only to academia, but also to medical science.

“I can’t imagine doing translational research without medical training,” Zhang said. “If you have this part without the other, you don’t know where to go.

With medical training, you know exactly which direction to go.”

Mohan echoed that assessment.

“When you start doing research there are so many questions you can answer,” he said. “Sometimes there are questions that are just too basic. They’re too far removed from how it will impact a patient’s life.

So what are the most important questions? I think questions that really make a difference in the patient’s life are the most important.”

Zhang noted that the National Institutes of Health has switched its funding philosophy – once focused on basic science, it now is more interested in translational research, with a direct relationship to patient health.

As physician-scientists, these “translators” of medical research are able to bridge the chasm.

Amr Elnashai, vice president for research and technology transfer at UH, said physician-scientists play an important role.

“The increasing importance of deploying technology in medicine renders it essential for a progressive research university to hire medical Ph.D. holders who are in an ideal position to bridge the gap between engineering and science on the one hand, and the broad field of medicine on the other,” he said.

Research groups that bring both fields together not only have a much higher probability of impacting lives by adopting the latest technology in medical applications, he adds, but they also give interdisciplinary teams greater access to specific funding to pursue such solutions. In that sense, said Elnashai, medical Ph.D. researchers play an important part of the future research university.

“I can’t imagine doing translational research without medical training.

With medical training, you know exactly which direction to go.”

Shaun Xiaoliu Zhang

M.D. Anderson Professor of Biology and Biochemistry

TOP OF MIND

CHANCELLOR AND PRESIDENT RENU KHATOR

PUBLISHER AMR ELNASHAI Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer

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INTO THE STORM

VIEWPOINT

DIRECTOR

THE VALLEY OF DEATH IS GROWING WIDER

LINDSAY LEWIS Division of Research

EDITOR JEANNIE KEVER Media Relations

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EDITORIAL BOARD KATHY MAJOR Natural Sciences & Mathematics

FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK

PAPER OR PLASTIC?

TONI MOONEY SMITH Liberal Arts & Social Sciences

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MIKE ROSEN Media Relations

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

MIGUEL TOVAR

DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGER

TIM HOLT

PHOTOGRAPHERS

WRITERS PROOFREADERS WEB DEVELOPER

TODD SPOTH TIM HOLT

FEATURE

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

CIANDRA JACKSON JEANNIE KEVER ERIC GERBER LINDSAY LEWIS JOHN LIENHARD NITIYA SPEARMAN ASHLEY MERWIN RENE CANTU 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.

PERSPECTIVES

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SECRETS OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE LEADERS OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

DISCUSSION BOARD

THE BUSINESS OF RESEARCH

Printed on Recycled Paper The University of Houston is an EEO/AA institution.

1.2019 | 4,500 Copyright © 2019 by the University of Houston

CONTEMPLATIONS

A digital version of this publication is available at uh.edu/researchmag

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WHEN I WAS A CHILD 32

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FROM THE TOP

Magazines from academic institutions are overwhelmingly advertising conduits and opportunities to showcase the accomplishments of the issuing entity. While there is nothing wrong in the latter approach to magazine production, such publications provide little-to-no incentive for academics and administrators from other institutions to open, read, debate and comment.

Our new magazine, The Big Idea, heralds a new approach, taking stock of the successes and failures of other research enterprises to create a forum for discussing, comparing and a chronicling pressing issues in research and tech transfer leadership – and best practices for addressing them. We think of The Big Idea as a structured debate forum and a source of solutions to challenges facing divisions of research in the United States.

In this issue of The Big Idea, we explore industrial sponsored research and some of the challenges female researchers face while trying to develop funded research portfolios from this sector. We share several success stories from women around the country who have gained significant corporate funding for their research programs. We also explore the role that universities can play in bridging the gap between ideas and products that startup companies have to grapple with in their innovation ecosystems. Moreover, we shed light on how several principal investigators have successfully built and managed major research centers.

We hope that you enjoy this issue of The Big Idea and we look forward to continued conversations on the myriad topics that a research and technology enterprise in a public research university deals with. Finally, we invite your comments, critique and suggestions for future researched articles in The Big Idea.

Amr Elnashai, FREng Vice President/Vice Chancellor for Research and Technology Transfer University of Houston/University of Houston System

TOP OF MIND

INTO THE STORM

By Jeannie Kever

2017 was a record year for natural disasters in the U.S. Researchers rose to the challenge.

KARL SPENCER | OVERTON | GETTY

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THE BIG IDEA

Hurricane Irma barreled toward the Florida coast in the fall of 2017, sending hundreds of thousands of Floridians inland.

Jason Senkbeil raced toward the madness. Senkbeil, a geographer at the University of Alabama, and his team seek the people most affected by hurricanes making landfall in the United States, interviewing them in the midst of storm prep and evacuation to better understand what people know about impending risks and how they react to those perceptions.

That year brought wildfires in California, hurricanes and flooding in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, and an earthquake in Mexico. That carried the tragedy of lives and property lost, but the disasters also sparked new research alliances and projects, many of them funded through the National Science Foundation.

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“In some ways, all academics study real-world problems,” said Michelle Meyer, an assistant professor of sociology at Louisiana State University with NSF-funded projects on emergency response and long-term recovery. But while the application for fundamental science may be far in the future, disaster-based work tends to have more immediate goals.

LSU is one of six universities that came together last winter to form the Hurricane Resilience Research Institute (HuRRI), a multi-state research center representing a range of disciplines, from engineering and the life sciences to social science and public policy.

Hanadi Rifai, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of civil and environmental engineering at UH and director of HuRRI, said it will focus on “anticipating and accommodating” the storms’ impact, rather than following the current model of waiting for a storm to pass and then focusing on repair and recovery. “It will take an enormous number of resources to influence a paradigm change and offer evergreen solutions for hurricane resilience for affected communities,” she said.

Rifai’s own work includes an ongoing study of the chemical and microbiological contamination in Houston waterways after Harvey.

It has been difficult to assess how a severe storm might affect water quality, both because the storms are relatively rare and because it’s difficult to collect and evaluate enough information using traditional methods. Under a NSF grant, she is using advanced metagenomic techniques to determine the microbiological condition of four Houston-area waterways.

Those techniques will allow researchers to conduct a detailed investigation of the health hazards Harvey posed to area communities, Rifai said.

“What we learn will guide decision making to increase resilience within the urban water infrastructure during and after extreme weather events.”

“It will take an enormous number of resources to influence a paradigm change and offer evergreen solutions for hurricane resilience for affected communities.”

Hanadi Rifai

Director, Hurricane Resilience Research Institute

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THE BIG IDEA

A number of UH faculty are working on Harvey-related projects, including: • Work by biologist Steven Pennings to study how well mangroves can protect the coast, building on his ongoing mangrove study along the Texas coast near Port Aransas. “The new question is, how well do mangroves protect the coast from storms?” he said.

Mangroves traditionally die back in cold weather but as hard freezes become less frequent, they are spreading along the coast. The project, which used drones to measure erosion and storm debris deposited in the mangrove plots, is testing a hypothesis that the large woody plants can better resist storms and offer better protection than coastal marshes.

• Geophysicist Will Sager is studying the sedimentation patterns to determine the impact of massive amounts of freshwater rushing into Galveston Bay after the flooding that accompanied Hurricane Harvey.

Working with sedimentary geologist Julia Wellner and geophysicist Rob Stewart, Sager is comparing surveys of the sea bottom and sediment samples collected after the storm to the results from similar tests conducted weeks before the storm.

Data collection is ongoing, but Wellner said the work has shown changes at both Bolivar and San Luis Pass. It also has led to collaborations with local and state organizations focused on storm impacts along the coast.

The new partnerships are important, she said, “since a wide range of expertise is needed to assess an unusual event like Harvey.”

• The Hobby School of Public Affairs at UH has launched a five-year panel survey of Houston-area residents about the impact of Harvey, which dumped more than 50 inches of rain on the city, flooding more than 300,000 homes.

By surveying the same group of residents over a period of time, Jim Granato, executive director of the Hobby School, said researchers will be able to more accurately determine how people were affected by the storm, how smoothly the recovery is going and what mitigation efforts proposed by regional leaders have public support.

S

enkbeil studies how the risk of weather disasters is communicated to people in a storm’s path. Many people, he said, understand far too little.

He and his team set up at interstate rest stops in Florida last September to ask people evacuating during Hurricane Irma about their perceptions of so-called geophysical hazards – wind, rainfall, flooding, falling trees, storm surge – as well as where they got the information. By better understanding how people make decisions, including what information they use to do so, people who handle emergency communications should be able to more effectively target the public with information about the risks of both evacuating and staying put.

The project uses data from a national panel study conducted by the NORC AmeriSpeak program, combined with government documentation and media reports. Schenider presented a paper earlier this year with preliminary findings.

“It confirms that most of the public thinks disaster response is important,” she said. “It’s not just hype by the media.”

The goal isn’t to say the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies are good or bad. It’s to determine what drives public attitudes toward government.

And if people think government is failing at disaster recovery, Schneider said, they are more likely to have a negative view of government performance in other areas.

B

y the time Harvey’s rain had stopped across Southeast Texas, volunteers from Louisiana and East Texas were arriving to join rescue efforts, fishing boats in tow. Using apps and social media, the Cajun Navy – formed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – pulled desperate people out of second-story windows and off roofs, ferrying them to higher ground.

One of Meyer’s projects considers how volunteer efforts fit with those of traditional first responders. Through interviews with those who performed boat rescues, acted as ad hoc dispatchers and filled other roles, she hopes to learn how to make better use of volunteers.

“With social media, we’ve gained the ability for volunteers to quickly mobilize, so we want to help emergency management use those resources in ways that benefit the community,” Meyer said.

JONH-BORDA | GETTY

People were very concerned about Irma’s wind speeds and size – the storm was a Category 5 or strong Category 4 when most people decided to evacuate but had weakened considerably by the time it passed over land. Some could have safely stayed home if they understood the risks, Senkbeil said.

His work combines real-time interviews with information from forecasts, media and social media, as well as data detailing the true meteorological impact.

Ultimately, he said, the goal is to improve the quality of the information people receive. “Unless some people can benefit from what I’m doing, I don’t see the point,” he said.

As a political scientist focused on public policy, Saundra Schneider works in the realm of real-world problems and solutions. Her proposal to study how people perceived government response to Hurricane Harvey last fall quickly grew to include hurricanes Irma and Maria, too.

“The idea is to really delve into how the American public thinks about disasters, how they perceive what government is doing, either well or not so well,” said Schneider, professor of political science at Michigan State University.

She has studied community response to disasters since graduate school; a second post-Harvey project dealing with long-term community recovery continues work began after the 2013 chemical explosions in West, Texas.

People who haven’t experienced a community disaster may think the federal government or a national nonprofit organization provides everything residents need. Disaster veterans know that’s not true.

But Meyer said there isn’t one simple solution.

“It takes multiple perspectives to get there,” she said. “I collaborate with engineers regularly. If we could build something that might protect us but there are social reasons people don’t understand the technology, don’t implement it appropriately, the money may not be well spent.”

RESCUE Ultimately, the multidisciplinary approach illustrated by academic work following the intensity of 2017’s extreme weather and disasters is a good thing.

“It means community members have the power to make changes, even if we can’t build a levy or retrofit a house or building,” Meyer said. “We are finding other ways to support resilience.”

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VIEWPOINT

The Valley of Death is Growing Wider How Universities Can Bridge the Gap

By Lindsay Lewis

CINOBY/VALENTYNVOLKOV/ANIKASALSERA/PHONLAMAIPHOTO/GEARSTD/SKODONNELL/ RELAXFOTO.DE/MR1805/CUSTOMDESIGNER/GETTY IMAGES

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THE BIG IDEA

When looking out over the commercialization landscape, the vast space a product has to travel from discovery to the marketplace appears to be growing.

For many startup companies, this so-called “valley of death” means the end of the road. Without support, resources and, most importantly, cash, many startups will shut down.

Universities are becoming epicenters for startup activity, and in many ways, they are perfectly positioned to support commercialization, with a pro-research environment, lab facilities, faculty expertise, human resources and tech transfer operations.

But there’s one problem.

“Universities and industry are like two icebergs moving in different directions,” said Montgomery Alger, professor of chemical engineering and director of the Institute for Natural Gas Research at Pennsylvania State University.

“Companies need to make quarterly profits quickly through new products and services, and the academic business model is not set up to support that need.”

The question then becomes: How can universities shift their approach to bridge the gap from idea to market?

There are a few paths to take – none are easy, some might seem impossible. But for universities looking to up their game, especially their innovation game, there’s a sea of opportunity.

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Spark Innovation on Campus Universities are tried and true – long-standing institutions built upon centuries of tradition. But when it comes to the rapidly developing innovation landscape, they may need to rethink a few things.

“Universities must play a key role in the commercialization process because so many ideas start there,” said Walter Ulrich, longtime technology management consultant and former chief executive officer of the Houston Technology Center, previously one of Houston’s most prominent accelerators and incubators. “And investors and inventors go to where there’s a critical mass of opportunity, so universities need to step up their game.”

Supporting commercialization gives universities a chance to be even more relevant when it comes to local economic development. As cities across the country continue to up their innovation game by boosting entrepreneurial activity such as startup districts, incubators and accelerators, the role of the university is critical – if it can adapt.

Changing the institutional culture, however, may be necessary if universities want to become a true bridge across the valley of death. Sparking the spirit of innovation across campus is a giant step in that direction.

One way this can be done, said Alger, who spent part of his early career working for GE Global Research before transitioning to academia, is by creating multidisciplinary teams of researchers across the university to help industry bring ideas to the market – a foundational part of the bridge. This means intentionally building faculty teams from various disciplines to address every aspect of a real-world problem, from the technology solution to the social impact.

“Universities can design project teams that focus specifically on the market need,” said Alger. “Industry was set up to do this many years ago, but with shifting priorities and budget cuts, companies now have gaps in research and development.”

It takes a strong business leader to create a horizontal structure to functionally align groups across the university, he said. With the right person in place and a budget, the university can begin to invest in projects that connect with the marketplace.

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THE BIG IDEA

SKYNESNER | GETTY

Another way to spark innovation is to boost technology transfer or industry alliance offices, according to Susan Jenkins, managing director of the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Hiring an intellectual property manager to work specifically with academic research institutes can go a long way in supporting an innovation environment.

Having a patent agent who understands the research and its impact on the market is incredibly valuable, she said. By anticipating potential discoveries, a patent agent can give researchers options that may be better to pursue when it comes to commercialization.

“When it comes to innovation, universities need to be open to new ideas,” said Jenkins. “They need to be able to shift quickly to the next best thing, whatever is hot at the moment. That’s how the market works.”

Disrupt the Academic Business Model By design, universities are structured to support educational throughput, and many balance that with a bustling research enterprise. Most, however, are not functionally set up to support the wide swath of commercialization activities needed to keep up with a fast-moving, increasingly demanding marketplace.

“Universities are stuck in a rut,” said Alger. “There has to be a conscious decision to make the university function like a business to support business.”

That means dedicating resources to building the bridge – putting the right people in place to fix the many pain points experienced by companies. Long response times, extensive paperwork processes and the lack of system-wide policies governing university-corporate relationships can often lead startups and industry partners to look elsewhere for solutions.

“Just like scientists need to be innovative, the administration needs to be innovative,” said Jenkins. “Long-standing policies need to be reviewed to see if there are ways to improve them to support the relationship. If you want to be in the race, you have to be ready to be flexible and adapt.”

There are a few things universities may want to explore to support early-stage startups, but they are risky. No guts, no glory?

Removing obstacles that keep industry-academic partnerships from prospering has never been more important.

1. Invest in long-term payouts. Most venture firms expect returns in 7-10 years. By establishing longer-term payouts, more cash will stay in the hands of the entrepreneur.

“Over time, relationships between academia and industry have been severed,” said Alger. “So, we have to reinvest time and effort now to connect these two worlds.”

Another way to disrupt the academic business model is to consider commercialization as part of the promotion and tenure process.

2. Consider equity for returns. Universities can negotiate equity, possibly even in the leasing of space.

3. License more broadly. Diversifying provides more pathways for inventors to find the right fit for licensing their product.

“If universities are serious about advancing technology entrepreneurship, they must recognize faculty who drive the commercialization of groundbreaking research in the same way they do faculty who conduct fundamental research,” said Ulrich.

4. Provide resources as investment. Explore resources such as coursework credits for startups looking to expand their knowledge base.

Alger agrees. “There has to be some kind of incentive structure established for the research program when it comes to technology transfer,” he said. “Incentives drive outcomes.”

5. Establish seed funding. Entrepreneurs can use even the smallest amounts of cash. Not having to give it back is even better.

Get Serious About Investment Beyond improving basic business practices to more readily encourage startups and industry partners to move to campus, universities may need to explore new approaches when it comes to investments and returns within their innovation environment.

“Tech transfer departments have to change,” said Ulrich. “Helping startups survive the valley of death will ultimately bring more returns and help universities be self-sustaining. There’s a huge opportunity here.”

According to Ulrich, who has launched hundreds of successful startups throughout his career, startups need cash – and lots of it. Early licensing fees, short-term payouts, competitive prices for rent and other services charged by the universities could end up keeping startups from success.

“Cash is king,” said Ulrich, noting that an increased demand for early-stage capital has widened the valley of death.

6. Create a university-focused angel network. With broad alumni and donor bases, universities can more readily tap into their business community to build a network of investors. Pursuing venture philanthropy may be another avenue for universities to consider for their innovation ecosystem.

“Incorporating different streams of funding could be very important,” said Jenkins, who worked with a foundation to an entrepreneurial fellowship program at UC-Berkeley. She points out that foundations are not interested in licensing or returns, but they are interested in making good investments.

It’s a dimension, however, that some campuses may not be set up to deal with yet.

“Product development within the academic research environment will take a focused investment,” said Alger. “Universities just need to give the right attention and priority to it.”

Investments used to be more informal, he said. But now, venture capital firms have a lot more competition and angel investors have huge requirements, making it hard for startups to find the cash they need.

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FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK

Paper or Plastic?

Prepare yourself for another edition of “Funny You Should Ask,” the feature that encourages UH researchers and scholars to put scientific method on hold and amuse themselves with a more light-hearted approach to inquiry.

Previously, we’ve challenged our participants to ponder such puzzlers as whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day or whether it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.

This time, they’re weighing in on another of modern society’s most bewildering issues … paper or plastic?

Here are their responses – material evidence, you might say. - Eric Gerber

BIRD NESTS AND FISH DINNERS

By Brigitte Dauwalder It must have been in one of your more mischievous moments that you decided to ask me, a biologist, this perplexing question!

Because, you know, it does not look good for choosing plastic. On the face of it, though, plastic does look like a champion: It is so tough and durable.

And let’s not forget that it can make sturdy and artful contributions to birds’ nests. But like some once-liked house guests, it just will not go away. True, it will crumble into teensy tiny pieces and slip away into the oceans, but just when you think that you got rid of it (hurray!), even teensier-tinier pieces show up in your fish at dinner and, eventually, in your body.

Paper? Want a laugh? Just try to pack the frozen dinners and the ice cream from the grocery store in a paper bag.

Or bring a piece of that nice lasagna from last night for lunch in a paper bag instead of a nice tight plastic container!

And how about all the trees that are being sacrificed to make all that paper?

Does this make a biologist feel better?

By the way, have you noticed how very, very concerned the utility companies are about the disappearance of trees because of your paper bills? I’m sure this has nothing to do with corporate convenience. They must be genuine tree lovers! Now, that would truly be a reason for excitement for a biologist.

For me, after extensive personal research, there is a clear answer to the question “paper or plastic”: cloth and glass!

Dauwalder, an assistant professor in the department of biology and biochemistry, is interested in how complex behaviors (such as mating behavior and circadian behaviors) are regulated by genes and molecular pathways.

She knows more about fruitfly sex than you can possibly imagine.

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THE BIG IDEA

CASH OR CREDIT?

AVOID A GOOD FACE-PUNCHING

By Stuart Long

By Tamler Sommers

So: kill a tree or clog a landfill?

Perhaps the more basic question is … bags or sacks?

Look, I know what I’m supposed to say.

I’m supposed to say, “Neither. It’s important to bring your own canvas bags because that’s better for the environment.” Maybe that’s right, as long as you don’t get too sanctimonious, because then someone will want to punch you in the face. And they might have a good point.

When I first moved to Boston from West Texas and asked a store clerk to put my purchase in a “sack,” he was mystified. Finally, he put it in a “bag.” What distinguishes one from the other? Handles? Size? Do sacks fit in a bag? Bags in a sack?

Personally, I usually go with plastic.

Handles make it easier to carry five or six and still unlock your front door.

Or I can smuggle them to my appreciative daughter in Austin, where they are banned.

Maybe there’s even a black market in our fair capital? Most important for me, however, is that I’m a longtime owner and neighborhood walker of a Great Dane.

The typical doggie litter bags just don’t work well for his … greatness.

One nice thing about paper: you can stuff newspapers in them and feel no guilt about dumping it all into the recycle bin. But I have to admit it’s hard to let go of those artisanal paper sacks from Whole Foods or Trader Joes. Meanwhile, the plastic ones accumulate into other plastic ones and often annex an entire cabinet in the pantry. As a dedicated scientist, I experimented and discovered you can fit 47 wadded up plastic bags into one of a similar size.

I’ve heard that those new to our country who are still developing their English skills are often completely baffled by “paper or plastic?” Some even think the clerk is asking if they want to use cash or a credit card.

Makes sense. Our language can be funny that way. As George Carlin used to ask – why do we park on a “driveway” and drive on a “parkway”? Paper or plastic? Yes, please.

Long, whose research interests include dielectric resonator antennas and why “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing, is the associate dean of undergraduate research and the Honors College.

Tons of other titles, too.

But here’s my real answer: plastic.

Why? Because after you unload your groceries, you’ll have free poopy bags for your dogs. Q. E. D. But I don’t have a dog.

Well, that’s insane – you should have a dog. Research shows dogs improve your quality of life by 50 percent at minimum, even if your dog sucks. A great dog can triple it. Not having a dog is like not having refrigerator. Yes, you could live your life without a refrigerator, but why?

I travel too much to have a dog.

So find a dog sitter. And maybe think about not traveling so much. Try to enjoy what you have. Take your dog camping.

You should bike more, too.

I’m more of cat person.

Ok, stop. I thought this was a serious conversation. Nothing wrong with cats, Had one most of my life and my cat Prune’s ashes sit upon my mantle. But, c’mon – cats are not in the same league as dogs. Saying you like cats better is like saying Judd Apatow is a better director than Martin Scorsese.

You might occasionally be in the mood for one of those Apatow comedies, but don’t try to tell me he’s a better filmmaker than the man who made “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “King of Comedy” and “Goodfellas.”

So, with that in mind, the logical conclusion is indisputable: yeah, plastic.

S-S-SURPRISE ME

By Barbara Stewart I’m a decisive person, but I’ll admit it: when put on the spot I can morph into a stressed blob of indecision.

It’s Saturday in the H-E-B checkout lane. As the cashier – let’s call her “Jenny” – drags my tenth pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream across the counter, she locks eyes with me, and asks that insidious question: “Paper or plastic?”

My blood turns colder than the cartons of Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey. Yes, I could opt for plastic, but I know they will join the intimidating mountain of wadded-up plastic bags growing under my kitchen sink.

Everyone I know has an unlimited reserve of scrunched-up bags squirreled away somewhere still waiting patiently for purposes unknown.

And what would shoppers behind me think?

Perhaps I should bow to eco-consciousness and go for paper. Even without hard scientific data, paper feels like the greener choice. ... unless it’s still raining outside, in which case, paper will be the grayer choice as I get drenched, my bags turn into a mushy sort of brown goop, and my produce plummets to the asphalt.

If I were really savvy I’d have brought my own bag. I actually have one … somewhere.

Really cute, too! I just haven’t seen it for a while. It’s probably in the backseat of my car. Little good that does me now.

Jenny still stares at me. I stare back blankly.

“S-S-surprise me” I hear myself stutter.

As I totter out with my bags, I sigh and think: Next time I’ll shop online. My groceries will arrive in a paper box, wrapped in plastic, and I’ll never have to face Jenny again.

Stewart, a professor in the human development and consumer sciences department, firmly believes retailing is engaged in both evolutionary and revolutionary change.

Sommers, an assistant professor of philosophy, is also the director of Phronesis, the Honors College program in politics and ethics. He records the podcast “Very Bad Wizards” with a psychologist from Cornell with whom he often agrees/disagrees.

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FEATURE

A NEW WAY OF THINKING Industry has become an important source of research funding. Get ready to join the conversation.

By Jeannie Kever

FRANCESCOCH | GETTY

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THE BIG IDEA

Rebecca Carrier

Northeastern University

Samira Ali

University of Houston

Elyse Rosenbaum University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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SOLSTOCK | GETTY

The researchers had a hypothesis. Women faculty, they predicted, would be more successful than their male counterparts at earning private funding – from industry, from nonprofit groups, from charitable endowments. That was about relationships, after all, an area where the popular literature suggests women excel.

The numbers told a different story.

A

review of faculty research funding conducted by the Center for ADVANCING Faculty Success at the University of Houston – funded by the National Science Foundation to help recruit and retain female faculty, and especially women of color, in STEM fields – found that women and men had similar success rates when competing for funding from federal agencies.

With industry funding, however, the disparities were greater.

“It’s about networking,” said Christiane Spitzmueller, an industrial psychologist and managing director of the UH center. “Men do more of that. Women aren’t primed as much for networking and self-marketing.”

No one tracks the numbers nationally, and not all universities report a gender disparity. What is clear is that working with industry and nonprofit groups has drawn new attention in academia amid concerns about stagnant or dropping levels of federal research funding and increasing academic interest in finding solutions to some of society’s thorniest problems. To take full advantage of the opportunities, universities need to make sure all faculty who want to work with the private sector have a chance to succeed, regardless of their gender or discipline.

Industry needs the partnerships, too.

“Companies are realizing that to be competitive, particularly in high-tech domains, they can’t rely on only their internal resources,” said Jeff Fortin, associate vice president for research and director of Research and Industrial Partnerships at Pennsylvania State University.

“They have to look to universities and other external sources to fill that pipeline of innovation.”

Some faculty researchers already are fully engaged with industry.

Others aren’t interested.

16

THE BIG IDEA

The 911 on Industry Funding What type of projects?

• Short-term, often for a period of one year • Practical, focused on a specific product or project • Industry support for basic science is unusual but not unheard of

How is it different from government funding?

• Generally less money, for a shorter period of time • Fewer restrictions but can require more flexibility • More contact, from biannual or monthly conference calls to sending researchers to work at the company, or having their researchers come to your lab • A new vocabulary. Terms understood to mean one thing by researchers and federal funding agencies may be used differently by industry

How to connect • Network. Attend conferences that are important to the industry with which you’d like to work.

• Educate yourself about the problems a particular industry needs to solve, and think about what solutions you may be able to offer • Be persistent and don’t be afraid of rejection • Take advantage of personal connections – friends, neighbors and former classmates who work in industry may help you connect on specific projects

Then there is the middle group. “They would like to engage more with companies,” Fortin said. “They haven’t done it much, and they need more help, explaining how the process works, the contracting.”

His office – and those at other universities seeking to increase their interactions with the private sector – can help.

Samira Ali, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, is directing one of three centers that are part of the initiative, which will provide awards to community-based organizations that provide HIV treatment or HIV prevention services. She hadn’t previously worked with industry and wasn’t sure what to expect, but the project was a good fit with her research interests and, she noted, wasn’t something the federal government would be likely to fund.

It’s not just about finding another source of funding.

“Another advantage is giving faculty and graduate students the opportunity for applied research,” Fortin said. “The opportunity to take things they may have been working on with federal funding, which tends to be more basic science, and apply their research and expertise to solve problems.”

The connections and hands-on experience can help students find jobs in industry after earning their graduate degrees. But tapping a new revenue stream for funding research is nice, too.

“Federal funding has been flat for the most part,” Fortin said.

“It has not grown significantly. Research funding from industry has grown slightly. Certainly if you are in an applied area like engineering, agriculture, materials, there are opportunities for industry-sponsored research that can supplement a faculty member’s federal funding.”

Industry funding comes with different expectations and restrictions.

Federal funding agencies generally require an annual report, with little or no interaction at other times. “When you’re working on a project industry cares about, you may report in every six months, or conduct monthly or biweekly teleconferences.

You may collaborate with their researchers. You may send your students to their site,” said Elyse Rosenbaum, Melvin and Anne Louise Hassebrock Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Rosenbaum also is director of the Center for Advanced Electronics through Machine Learning, a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.

“NSF isn’t going to use what you’re doing,” said Rosenbaum. “ The companies are hoping to use your outcomes.”

Sometimes the work is mission specific – a contract to solve a specific industry problem, whether that’s high workforce turnover or limiting methane emissions on oilfield drilling rigs. Other times, the goal is more global.

She went for it, was selected and, countless conference calls later, the project is on its way.

Ali and other researchers caution that working with industry has the potential to distract faculty from their core research goals. She built several research processes and projects into her work with Gilead to avoid that.

But the relationships also can provide researchers with a clearer view of the outside world.

Rebecca Carrier, professor of chemical engineering at Northeastern University, said working with industry – in addition to federal funding agencies – ensures she is thinking about real-world concerns.

“At Northeastern, we’re interested in application-focused research,” she said. Working with the private sector is a constant reminder of the end goal – in Carrier’s case, that means finding answers to questions about the mucosal barrier in the intestine, with an eye toward enhancing the absorption of medications and nutrients, as well as understanding links between the gut and overall health.

Research administrators can smooth the way for such partnerships by developing policies for intellectual property, licensing and royalty issues that arise from an academic-industry partnership.

Companies want to know how those issues will be handled upfront, Fortin said.

Penn State has been at the forefront of pushing industry partnerships; Fortin said it has about 500 industry-sponsored projects every year, with about one-third of those involving student projects and the rest covering faculty research.

But each project ultimately comes down to the individual faculty member. For those who want to work with the private sector, people who have been there say it can offer a number of awards.

“The big thing is not to sell yourself short,” Carrier said. “Maybe they’re not going to be interested in precisely what you want to work on, but they might be interested in a variation of it. Finding common goals that tie your research goals with those of the company is key.”

Gilead Sciences, Inc. last year launched a $100 million, 10-year program; part of the initiative entails working with universities and nonprofit organizations to address HIV/AIDS in the southern United States.

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“ PART OF IT IS NOT BEING AFRAID TO PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE”

ZORAZHUANG | GETTY

18

THE BIG IDEA

PHOTO BY ADAM GLANZMAN/NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Can you have it all when it comes to research funding?

Rebecca Carrier’s lab at Northeastern University is focused on drug delivery and tissue engineering, drawing funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. But she also works with pharmaceutical companies, a software company and other private sector sources.

Working with industry is different than working with federal agencies, she said. “There is a lot more interaction. Research agreements are often smaller with regards to funding amount. So there are certain challenges and disadvantages,” she said.

But there are advantages, too, including having a more diverse funding base as worries mount about the future of federal research funding.

Carrier, professor and associate chair of research in Northeastern’s Department of Chemical Engineering, said industry funding checks another box, too.

“I wanted to work on real products,” she said. “It’s really important to stay in touch and in tune with people who are trying to make a product so that I know what I’m doing matters.”

REBECCA CARRIER Her work is clearly of interest to drug companies developing drugs that must be effectively absorbed. But Carrier also looks at the relationship between what we eat and a range of other issues and immune system concerns, from autism to Alzheimer’s. Seventy percent of the body’s immune cells are found in the gut, she said.

She had a head start in working with industry – she worked at the pharmaceutical company Pfizer before taking a faculty job at Northeastern. Her first industry contract after moving to academia came from a group she had worked with in the corporate world, to continue prior work tailored to maximizing drug delivery.

But other relationships have been forged through cold calls and word of mouth. “You have to find the right person.”

“We developed these quantitative models,” she said. “I knew of a software company that had similar models, so I went up to their booth at an American Chemical Society conference and struck up a conversation.”

She has worked with the company on both funded and unfunded projects and expects to do so again in the future. Researchers with another company approached her after attending a presentation she did at Northeastern.

“Part of it is just not being afraid to put yourself out there,” she said of finding industry funding. “It’s a lot of the same things you need to do to get government funding. Be incredibly persistent.

Don’t be afraid of rejection. Rejection from industry is a lot less painful, frankly, as interactions with industry help build relationships that could lead to future collaboration.”

Carrier is director of the Advanced Drug Delivery Lab at Northeastern, which seeks to better understand the mucosal barrier in the intestine and how that affects the absorption of different compounds, including medications and supplements, as well as how absorption is affected by what you eat. Foods, and food additives, affect absorption.

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“WE NEED TO TRY EVERYTHING”

FPM | GETTY

20

THE BIG IDEA

PHOTO BY TODD SPOTH

There is no high-tech equipment in Samira Ali’s lab, no atomic microscopy or novel chemical compounds. Her laboratory is out in the field, working with community organizations and with people affected by HIV/AIDS to develop more effective approaches to HIV treatment and prevention.

Ali, an assistant professor in the UH Graduate College of Social Work, studies the ways in which mental health, trauma and substance abuse shape HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, work typically funded by federal agencies, such as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and other public agencies.

She has focused on individual, social and structural interventions – changing behavior, social norms and environments that shape the well-being and mental health of communities – since starting a master’s degree program at Columbia University in 2004, continuing through her Ph.D. studies at the University of Pennsylvania. But when she first heard that Gilead Sciences, Inc. was looking for academic and nonprofit partners to work on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment along the Gulf Coast, she wasn’t sure it would be a fit for her work.

Still, she liked the project’s focus. Another lure? More than half of the Gilead funding for the center will flow to communitybased organizations, the very groups with which she has spent her career.

Ali last fall was tapped as principal investigator for a $5 million, three-year grant from Gilead Sciences, Inc. to establish a center to address HIV/AIDS across the south – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina,

SAMIRA ALI North Carolina and Florida. The SUSTAIN Wellbeing COMPASS Coordinating Center works with centers established by Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and the Southern AIDS Coalition to address the issue.

Like other academic researchers who have made the leap to working with industry, Ali has discovered some key differences.

Researchers on this project have had to be flexible, more open to thinking outside the box to decide how to establish three centers that will work together in attacking the problem in a holistic way.

“Federal grants are a little more restrictive about changing your plans,” she said.

There are pitfalls, and Ali said there is a risk that relying on industry funding will pull a researcher away from the heart of his or her own research program.

To avoid that, she built research processes into the proposal: building a geographic assessment of HIV/AIDS in the United States to collect data that can be used in future research and working with colleagues at the Rollins School of Public Health and the Southern AIDS Coalition to develop a survey of community-based organizations.

She has one more piece of advice for academics interested in working with industry.

“At the end of the day, try to take a step back and look at the big picture. We’re all moving to reduce HIV infections and get people with HIV into treatment.”

To achieve that and other goals, Ali said academic researchers should be open to funding sources beyond the traditional federal agencies. “There’s no reason HIV should exist anymore,” she said.

“We have the technology. We have the meds. We need to try everything.”

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“WE’RE ALL WORKING ON ISSUES WITH INDUSTRY”

SPAINTER_VFX | GETTY

22

THE BIG IDEA

PHOTO BY AMY KOESTER/UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

ELYSE ROSENBAUM

Academic-industry partnerships are nothing new for Elyse Rosenbaum. She’s been part of that world since graduate school.

Rosenbaum, Melvin and Anne Louise Hassebrock Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is known for her work in integrated circuit reliability.

That requires modeling the responses of all components, with the ultimate goal of building a self-protecting circuit. That would have applications for any product which relies on integrated circuits, from cell phones to airplanes, she said.

“Who cares about that?” she asks. “Industry.”

That fits in nicely with the mission of the Center for Advanced Electronics through Machine Learning, a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, launched in 2016 to bring academic researchers and businesses together to solve industry problems. Rosenbaum is the center director.

While many in academia are just beginning to think about whether and how to work with the private sector, it came naturally to Rosenbaum, who earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California-Berkley working with graduate advisor Chenming Hu, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers known for his seminal work with three-dimensional transistors and other microelectronics.

His real-world work carried over to his students. “We’re all working on issues with industry,” said Rosenbaum, who also is a Fellow of the IEEE. Many of her colleagues in the electrical and computer engineering department are, too, including the women.

“The women here are just as successful as the men with industry funding and industry recognition,” she said. “It’s not unusual in engineering. A lot of engineers are trying to solve real-world problems.”

Rosenbaum studies electrostatic discharge – the release of electric current between two electrically charged objects – including work to develop capabilities to simulate the electrostatic robustness of a system prior to manufacturing.

“Electrostatic discharge is a serious, pervasive and unavoidable reliability hazard,” she said. “This focus lets us solve challenging problems at the intersection of semiconductor devices and integrated circuit design.”

She and the center’s two site directors, from North Carolina State University and Georgia Tech University, all have a history of collaborating with industry and working on issues relevant to industry. “We already had these relationships in place,” she said. “You can’t lead a center like this if you don’t have these relationships.”

And building those relationships takes time, as well as a history of success.

Recent doctorates probably have built-in contacts from classmates who took jobs in the private sector. Building contacts from scratch isn’t impossible, but it takes time and effort.

“Attend the conferences that researchers from the industry you in are attending,” Rosenbaum said.

“Become familiar with the technical challenges they face. Meet and learn their problems.”

Then, start thinking of solutions.

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PERSPECTIVES

PEOPLE WHO SUCCESSFULLY MANAGE LARGE RESEARCH ENTERPRISES ARE SOMETIMES

SEEN AS SUPERHUMAN WITH THE ABILITY TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

Padma Raghavan

Rob A. Rutenbar

Theresa Mayer

Vanderbilt University

University of Pittsburgh

Virginia Tech University

Amr Elnashai University of Houston

SECRETS OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE LEADERS OF

RESEARCHAND INNOVATION

By Ciandra Jackson

To be successful, leaders in research and innovation have a lot of support from their teams and they make conscious efforts to maintain their mental and physical well-being in different ways.

We asked leaders in research and innovation from Virginia Tech University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Pittsburgh and our own leader, Amr Elnashai, to reveal how each of them squeeze the most out of their day and how they maintain balance between work and life.

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THE BIG IDEA

“Advancing research, like research itself, must be curiosity-driven.”

Padma Raghavan, Ph.D. Vanderbilt University

Padma Raghavan, vice provost for research at Vanderbilt University, is an expert in high-performance computing and computational science and engineering.

She has conducted research in the field for many years and is a founding director of the Pennsyvania State Institute for Cyber Science. She’s been a leader to many, believes in driving outcomes and values her faculty and staff greatly.

“I like to be out and about – I want to be accessible and see first-hand what’s going on. If I need to meet with a faculty member to learn about their research, many times I’ll go to them.”

Clearly Padma is super smart, personable, driven and busy, but that doesn’t mean she won’t find time to enjoy comfort food or curl up with a good book.

Currently, she’s reading Florence Kings’ Southern Ladies and Gentlemen – a slightly dated but hilarious look at southern ethos.

Most notable scientific discovery made under her leadership?

I’m very proud of the work our Vanderbilt scientists have done to develop potential new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia, both extremely devastating diseases.

Research on VU319, the new drug began more than 10 years ago by a team of scientists at the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, led by center director P. Jeffrey Conn and Craig W. Lindsley, codirector and director of Medicinal Chemistry. On July 29,2017, the drug was administered to the first volunteer enrolled in a first-in-human Phase 1 clinical trial at the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and more than five million people are living with the chronic neurodegenerative illness.

What time do you wake up?

What is your best trait?

6:30 a.m. I’m not an early riser by nature, but the job calls for it.

Problem solving ... and I’m definitely an optimist.

What is your “go to” food?

What is your worst habit?

Shrimp noodle soup … it’s great comfort food.

Reading too much!

“Communicate with clarity and intention.”

Rob A. Rutenbar, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh Technological innovation is nothing new to Rob Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research at the University of Pittsburgh. With more than 40 years of experience in higher education, he was the perfect person for the newly created position. His career accomplishments include serving as the Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was also a professor of computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University for more than 20 years.

Not only is Rutenbar well accomplished in academia, he is also a successful entrepreneur. He founded two tech firms, Neolinear and Voci Technologies, along with the Center for Circuit and Systems, a multi-university consortium that developed chip design technology funded by large companies such as Intel and IBM.

CONTINUE ON NEXT PAGE > > > > > SPRING 2019

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SEE “ROB A. RUTENBAR” PAGE 25

What is your one wish?

What time do you wake up?

I wish I could do more Yoga classes!

5 a.m. I usually try to hit the gym. Naturally, I’m a morning person.

What is your “go to” food?

What is your best trait?

I’m able to manage multiple, high maintenance initiatives (with great support from my team). We can juggle many flaming chainsaws around here.

I love vegetarian or Indian food.

What makes someone a memorable leader?

Communication. A good, memorable leader communicates with clarity and intention to faculty and staff. Also, a great leader facilitates connections among the faculty. When people are united through common interests or research focus areas, innovation occurs.

Our best work comes from that.

How do you stay organized?

Typical stuff – keeping my calendar and phone updated, but I have an exceptionally talented and dedicated executive team who help me stay organized and on top of things.

“Academia must engage and partner with industry leaders.”

Theresa Mayer, Ph.D. Virginia Tech University Theresa Mayer, was appointed to vice president of research and innovation at Virginia Tech in January 2016. Since then, she has never looked back.

Not only does she oversee research focus areas such as cybersecurity, social informatics and cancer biology, Mayer is deeply involved in the university’s new business engagement center, a venture to expand partnerships between Virginia Tech and leading companies.

“Our campus is one big loop. To get some exercise my colleagues and I like to walk those loops. Some of the best ideas come from walking those loops.”

With all of her professional success and accomplishments, Mayer is most proud of her children, what the future holds for them and providing opportunities to live their dream and never look back.

What time do you wake up?

Early! 6:15 a.m. I have kids

What is your proudest personal accomplishment?

My kids – I have 12-year-old fraternal twins and I love watching them grow up.

What makes someone a memorable leader?

Vision. A great leader must have a vision and be able to communicate the vision to staff and faculty. A great leader also deeply understands an organization and ponders over many questions: Who are we? Why do we do this work? What makes us different?

How do we make the world better?

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THE BIG IDEA

What is the most notable initiative under your leadership?

I’m very proud of the Virginia Tech’s new business engagement center, led by Brandy Salmon. The work of the center facilitates partnerships between the business community and the university. Academia must engage and partner with industry leaders in order to advance research and business endeavors for the betterment of the commonwealth of Virginia and the world.

How do you manage work and life?

I have a very supportive husband and family – they keep the train moving.

How do you overcome defeat?

Accept feedback in all shapes and forms – I’ve had a lot of great mentors in my life who’ve given me wonderful advice and feedback. Sometimes the feedback is tough love in which you have to be open to it. That’s how you learn from mistakes and be better the next time.

“My work must improve society.”

Amr Elnashai, Ph.D., FREng University of Houston Amr Elnashai arrived at the University of Houston in July 2017. Since then, he’s hit the ground running to lead and move forward the ambitious research goals of the institution. It’s not an easy task, but he is no stranger to taking on challenges or meeting high expectations.

He came to UH from Penn State, where he was the dean of the College of Engineering, one of the largest in the country. Elnashai accomplished a lot during his nearly four years there – hiring more than 70 new faculty members, creating 16 new graduate degree programs and managing a tremendous increase in undergraduate enrollment numbers from 2014 to 2017 to reach 11,000.

Prior to Penn State, Amr was head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he also served as director of the NSF-multi-institution interdisciplinary Mid-America Earthquake Center.

Amr spent over 23 years teaching and conducting earthquake research overseas. He was professor of Earthquake Engineering and head of the division at Imperial College in London from 1985 to 2001. His interest in learning more about societal impacts of earthquakes spawned 140 refereed journal papers, magazine articles and three books which include the Fundamentals of Earthquake Engineering.

Recovering from natural disasters can take years or even decades. Amr has dedicated a large part of his career determining how to better mitigate the severity of earthquakes on infrastructure, economies and communities.

“Success to me is observing that my work improved society.”

What time do you wake up?

How do you stay organized?

Between 6 and 7 a.m.

You are assuming I stay organized (he laughs).

I have many to-do lists, subfolders on Outlook and hard disc, mapped, and Ashley, my executive assistant, keeps things on track too.

What’s your “go to” beverage?

Tea — Black tea and milk specifically. I spent more than 20 years in the U.K. Tea has become a fundamental for me.

What is your most notable scientific research endeavor?

Understanding the true impact of earthquakes on various facets of society through event simulation, I led the development of an earthquake impact simulation tool called MAEviz.

My research delved into how earthquakes truly affect infrastructure and their interaction with the economy and people. Currently, MAEviz is being adapted to examine hurricanes.

How do you overcome defeat?

One is only defeated if they do not learn from their mistakes.

What is your best trait?

I do not take myself too seriously. Peter Ustinov, an English actor once said, “It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”

What is your worst habit?

I have too many hobbies – I enjoy myself (a little too much) outside of work. I love to watch movies, fish and read. I try to balance the job and my hobbies. It is difficult.

What movies do you like and dislike?

The Deep with Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte – I have seen it more than 30 times and it is a great film. To be honest, I cannot name a movie I dislike. Even if a movie is deemed terrible, I learn something from it and gain a new experience.

What is your proudest personal accomplishment?

My three children. They are all unique and I am very proud of them. A very close second are my students – they are my true legacy, all 46 doctorates and many hundred graduate students, more so than any research work I have done.

I have trained and taught students from across the world who have gone on to be quite successful. I am very proud of them as well.

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DISCUSSION BOARD

The Business of Research: How Faculty Found Success Running Major Research Centers

By Ciandra Jackson

PESHKOV | GETTY

28

THE BIG IDEA

It takes bravery, creativity and a plan, long days and constant pressure, to launch a successful business. The same is true for starting and managing an effective research center.

A research center may not be about the bottom line, but it still has to stand out from its competitors, collaborate with colleagues in different fields and communicate with stakeholders.

Researchers from around the country offered a window into how they made the leap from running a lab to running a successful research center. Here’s what makes them tick.

Be Unique and Solve Problems Creatively As with any business, finding a small corner of the market can be profitable. Case in point: The Center for Research on Electronic Commerce (CREC) at The University of Texas at Austin.

“My colleagues and I always carved out a niche for ourselves and developed creative ways to answer questions and address problems,” said center director Andrew Whinston, an economist and computer scientist at UT-Austin.

Established in 1988 and housed at UT’s McCombs School of Business, the center is recognized as a leader in communications infrastructure and information systems research, offering a unique blend of economics and computer science to uncover new ideas for improving electronic commerce processes, business productivity, customer satisfaction and market efficiency.

One of CREC’s notable endeavors is the Cybersecurity Rating Project, which helps organizations combat the significant challenges associated with spam, phishing and malicious software. At first sight, it seems this work mainly falls into the realm of information systems research, but it’s broader than that.

“Whether it be cybersecurity or e-commerce, it is not just about computer science,” said Whinston. “Regarding improving e-commerce safety and processes, we study game theory, the science of strategy.”

Game theory is a branch of mathematics focused on strategies for dealing with competitive situations in which one participant’s decision-making depends on what other participants do.

You leave a data trail behind whenever you place something in an online shopping cart. In e-commerce, that means retailers can gather that data to develop ever-changing price structures to maximize profits. The growth of online shopping since CREC’s inception 30 years ago illustrates how society has changed. Whinston said CREC had to evolve along with changes in economics, technology and how people and companies conduct business online. That forward thinking has allowed CREC to secure consistent funding from the National Science Foundation to lay the foundation for the center’s innovation in online marketing, digital currency and the internet of things.

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Collaborate, and Do it Well Finding a sweet spot in the research market is critical. Today’s research centers also require collaboration across disciplines and often, across institutions.

The Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation and Statistics (TIMES) at the University of Houston has conducted substantial research focused on education, children and how they learn since 2001. Directed by David Francis, professor of psychology at UH, TIMES’ mission is to improve the behavioral, psychological, educational and developmental outcomes of children and adults through leading-edge quantitative and qualitative research methods. And it has done that, Francis said, by involving researchers with diverse skill sets, expertise and disciplines.

The center grew from a partnership between Francis and Jack Fletcher and Barbara Foreman, both of whom were then at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “The three of us had worked together on various education and reading problem prevention projects for over a decade, and we all had expertise in different areas,” Francis said. “Barbara was a content and literacy instructional expert, Jack was the disability expert, and I brought psychometrics and statistics to the table.”

Over the years, their partnership evolved into TIMES, leading to multimillion dollar grant awards and contributing to shifts in the way English language learners are taught to read and new interventions for children with reading difficulties and learning disabilities. One series of studies, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, came about after then-Gov. George W. Bush raised questions about how best to support English language learners in school.

“Back in the ’90s there was a movement in California and Arizona’s education systems to be English only. At the time, Gov. George Bush reached out to the science community to determine if Texas, being a bilingual state, should enact legislation to be English only as well,” said Francis. “(Former) Gov. Bush wanted to ensure English learners in Texas thrived in school, not just survived.”

Working with colleagues at UH, UT-Houston, UT-Austin and California State University at Long Beach, UH was awarded $17 million to conduct research for the Bilingual Program Project, with Francis as principal investigator.

More projects dealing with English Language Learners followed, including collaborations with Harvard University and the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C.

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THE BIG IDEA

During a conversation with Francis, a common theme became apparent. TIMES’ success and sustainability is attributed to partnerships with researchers with a variety of skills and interests.

“Don’t be afraid to go outside of your discipline or own institution,” he said. “Gather the greatest expertise you can for projects, because the best ideas win the largest grant awards and produce the most impactful research.”

Francis also believes sharing space and even equipment is critical for more meaningful collaboration, better projects and bigger grant funding.

While years of experience has allowed TIMES to make this interdisciplinary collaboration look easy, Francis acknowledges there are challenges and risks in working across disciplines.

Each researcher has to connect to the greater good.

“Everyone must align, coordinate and visualize how individual projects integrate with a larger research program,” he said. “There’s only so much funding available in a program project or center grant, and each investigator has to compromise somewhat on their individual project for the program to succeed.”

The common thread in all this work is collaboration.

“Cross-discipline research groups have to see the vision, understand it, have a sense of what’s needed in the field and distill it down into operational ideas that are executable,” Francis said. “We strive to make a great impact to mankind and intellectually contribute to society.”

Promote Your Work Collaboration is key at the Institute for Society, Culture and Environment (ISCE) at Virginia Tech, too. But getting out the word about the findings from those collaborations matters, as well.

Institute scholars tackle a wide array of topics – global extremism, hate speech and adolescent substance abuse are just a few examples – bound by ISCE’s focus on social science and the humanities. But institute director Karen Roberto said sharing the results of that work is important, too, in order to help community leaders and decision-makers work toward ways to improve society.

“We encourage the faculty not only to publish their research but to tell their story through our communication channels such our website and the weekly ISCE news flash,” she said.

Engaging in public forums seems like a natural move for researchers who deal with topics at the forefront of today’s world. Researchers in other fields are discovering the value of sharing their work with the public via online newsletters, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, too. (Academics also have begun using social media to collect research data. And a few have discovered the risks, as well as the rewards of using social media, but that’s another story.)

ISCE brings together faculty from across Virginia Tech, incorporating social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. “Our goal is to support faculty members in establishing their research agendas and strong relationships that result in interdisciplinary teams of faculty working together long-term,” Roberto said.

That ranges from helping younger faculty connect with more experienced researchers to help navigate the grant process.

YUROLAITS ALBERT | GETTY

Whether they pursue new types of collaborations or new ways of reporting scientific discoveries, academic researchers are drawing upon traditional business tools to ensure the success of these larger research enterprises. Running a center or institute, they have discovered, is different from managing your own work.

And that’s OK. “We’re risk takers,” Whinston said of his colleagues. “We look toward the future.

The world changes every day.”

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CONTEMPLATIONS

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

FERRANTRAITE | EPPIC PHOTOGRAPHY | GETTY

When I Was A Child

BY JOHN LIENHARD

We are told, “When I was a child ... I thought like a child ... When I was a man I put away childish things.” Well, I once helped survey the layout of rough dirt roads for logging trucks in the virgin Douglas fir forests near Roseburg, Oregon. That was in 1947. Nearby loggers felled those great trees, half a millennium old – 300 feet high. A falling tree sent a peal of thunder echoing down the draw as we tight-roped our way across rotting old logs, crisscrossed over ancient humus some 15 feet below. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.

Did my reptilian 16-year old brain see the flaw in this picture? Well, yes, somewhere in the back of my mind, I suppose. But only later, when I studied engineering, then worked in industry, did I begin to see the massive responsibility we all bear for the well-being of the ecosystem that sustains us.

Years later I was an old man, back in Roseburg for my high school reunion. I looked into the matured faces of those once-teenagers; and I found a transformation.

Roseburg had been a logging town when I was in school. Now, with the nearby virgin forests all eradicated, it had become a town of lumber mills. The logging trucks came from further and further away. And new growth was rising where the old forests had been.

The town now viewed wood as an agricultural product, not an ore to be mined until the vein ran out. Preservation and conservation once lay so far from our minds. Now Roseburg lived by sustaining its resources. We all had once known the astonishing wonder of those true primeval forests – and we would never know it again. I looked at my friends and there it was: “But when I became a man, I put away child-ish things.”

Human history is that of rapacious nomadic vandals or robber barons, settling in to become sustaining farmers in lands they once savaged. Here was that process in microcosm. These, of course, were the fortunate ones who had the resources to move to a sustaining existence. Others do not fare as well.

Consider two important Peruvian export goods: Anchovies and bird droppings – guano – for fertilizer. The shorebirds that produced guano lived on anchovies.

But Peru got greedy and overfished their anchovies. The birds couldn’t eat and left. Result: economic disaster. Peru lost not one, but two of her major sources of income in the 1960s. We now have new sources of fertilizer. And Peru now carefully monitors its anchovy fishing.

Of course, we continue struggling to leave our many childhoods behind. Childhood is, after all, so much fun. Populations are now far larger. Technologies move faster.

That leaves us with a daunting picture. And I believe that we in the universities need to emphasize the dangers that lie in every fast-moving and promising consumption of resources.

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