I sponsor more academic research on my company than any other group here. It's a great way to stay in touch with the academic community, give to people who really need it, and give kids an 'in' at a great (the best) medical device company ever. Also, I've been using my past success to convince people at my company that I can guide great academic research and those in charge have been very open and enthusiastic about sponsoring some of the research I intend on pursuing next year. Even going to the point of starting to talk numbers and aims with me.
My most recent exploit has been very successful, however, the PI I'm dealing with wants to push results to publication. I love publishing, but this work has been going so well that I may be able to turn this into a great medical device. It's the first project where the profit will be realized immediately rather than 20 years down the road. Sooooo, I'm pub-blocking them.
I feel bad, especially since I really like the student on this, and this will delay their publishing. The agreement with the school is that I control when things are released. My concern with this now is that the PI will get antsy and leak information. Not through a conference or manuscript, but just in talking with people while at a conference or faculty meeting. Especially since they're starting to get frustrated, and in venting anger they may vent the idea. I've already filed for patents on this, but the patent probably won't be public for at least six months. When it's public, even though we don't have it issued yet, I've agreed to let it get submitted for conferences and manuscripts.
I'm trying to see this from the PIs point-of-view since I'll probably be in that situation before I know it. But I'm hoping that I will empathize more with my [past] company, and relay this to the student. Anyone out there that gets industry sponsorship and you're frustrated: please don't get too mad. We're not just doing this for greed or ego. This is something we have to...please understand. And please relay this to your students.
Showing posts with label funding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funding. Show all posts
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Thursday, May 15, 2014
#InnovationDeficit
I've always wanted to help become a bridge between industry and academia. I think this is part of why departments took kindly to me while looking for an academic post. I think so, but I still don't know how the faculty hiring process works. This involves a few different approaches (I'm omitting some things but these are the biggest):
1. Funding acacdemic labs to do basic science I don't have time for
2. Hiring interns from schools
3. Giving talks at academic conferences and universities
4. Convincing my company to sponsor academic conferences and different university events and students
5. Working directly with local schools (K-12 and universities) and my company to show the youths that STEMs are fun, lucrative, necessary, and useful.
The last one involves me traveling to schools, taking part in tours, outreach with FIRST, SWE, ASME, MAES, SASE, and BMES (e.g., random acronyms) events, etc. I try my hardest to get people into STEMs. We need more of us of any race, religion, and creed. The problem with this is we can convince more people to want to join, but without the funds to pay for college and have jobs for them, my recruiting efforts are useless.
While I wasn't born in the USA, I bleed the stars and stripes. I love this country, which is part of why I recruit so heavily for STEMs. To prevent our country from falling behind we have to have innovation. And we need people with advanced knowledge to spur this on. And to have innovation, we must have the funds to provide the best possible education, paying for tuition, fees, and stipends; especially for those who can't pay on their own. We need funds to pay for more (and accountable) professors (and K-12 teachers) for the influx of students. We need the funds to create the technologies that turn into the next generation of businesses to fund many a STEMer to come. In industry, I fund a lot of academic research, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the NIH/NSF/DoD give out. But to handle the influx of STEMers we need to keep innovation going on the homefront. We need more investment. This is something I've always preached.
This bring me to this website: http://www.innovationdeficit.org
When I saw this today, I saw statistics that I've always seen, but this is a very nice way to present them. There has been all kinds of talk about funding being so bleak right now from federal agencies. I have heard it in regard mainly to grant-funding. But there's so much more to the lack of funding occurring in the academic environment. There needs to be more professors to handl the influx of students (and grants for them), we need the best labs and classrooms for them. And events to get them pumped about the fields. As a country we need to start thinking about this and understanding our priorities. Or companies need to start investing in our future since these students will be the eventual STEMers these companies need. There needs to be an interaction between industry and the government. Discussions about how they can work together: the government spending in a way to protect our intellectual future, with industry willing to shoulder some of the burden.
#InnovationDeficit
5. Working directly with local schools (K-12 and universities) and my company to show the youths that STEMs are fun, lucrative, necessary, and useful.
The last one involves me traveling to schools, taking part in tours, outreach with FIRST, SWE, ASME, MAES, SASE, and BMES (e.g., random acronyms) events, etc. I try my hardest to get people into STEMs. We need more of us of any race, religion, and creed. The problem with this is we can convince more people to want to join, but without the funds to pay for college and have jobs for them, my recruiting efforts are useless.
While I wasn't born in the USA, I bleed the stars and stripes. I love this country, which is part of why I recruit so heavily for STEMs. To prevent our country from falling behind we have to have innovation. And we need people with advanced knowledge to spur this on. And to have innovation, we must have the funds to provide the best possible education, paying for tuition, fees, and stipends; especially for those who can't pay on their own. We need funds to pay for more (and accountable) professors (and K-12 teachers) for the influx of students. We need the funds to create the technologies that turn into the next generation of businesses to fund many a STEMer to come. In industry, I fund a lot of academic research, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the NIH/NSF/DoD give out. But to handle the influx of STEMers we need to keep innovation going on the homefront. We need more investment. This is something I've always preached.
This bring me to this website: http://www.innovationdeficit.org
When I saw this today, I saw statistics that I've always seen, but this is a very nice way to present them. There has been all kinds of talk about funding being so bleak right now from federal agencies. I have heard it in regard mainly to grant-funding. But there's so much more to the lack of funding occurring in the academic environment. There needs to be more professors to handl the influx of students (and grants for them), we need the best labs and classrooms for them. And events to get them pumped about the fields. As a country we need to start thinking about this and understanding our priorities. Or companies need to start investing in our future since these students will be the eventual STEMers these companies need. There needs to be an interaction between industry and the government. Discussions about how they can work together: the government spending in a way to protect our intellectual future, with industry willing to shoulder some of the burden.
#InnovationDeficit
Friday, January 31, 2014
Funding academics
Normally, when there's a technology I discover through publications or a competing or start-up company, I have to make a critical decision for my company:
a) Make a better version of the technology,
b) License the technology, or
c) Collaborate.
There's a d): keep it to myself, but let's assume that doesn't exist. Each of these has pros and cons (obviously), and a couple weeks ago I discovered a technology that will be very cool in one of my products. And I know that with my involvement, it will be much better (one of the best things about the internet is that I can be cocky and not feel bad for it :) ). Not just because of my knowledge, but because of my budget. In this particular case, it's a lab at a major state university in a different state (not one of the schools I applied for...for those of you thinking about conflicts of interest). So I'm weighing which of these options I should pursue, and since I have some experience in a), b), and c), of course I want to blog my thoughts.
a) I've done this before with a start-up that had a technology that they weren't willing to share at all. I came up with a prototype alternative using a different physical principle, but giving similar, but better, data. This method was cheaper and had other clinical advantages. The company didn't get purchased for the hundreds of millions of dollars they wanted from us (don't cry for them, they got bought by one of our competitors). My version is getting ready to save a ton of lives as we've gotten approval for sale in the good ol' USA. This was relatively cheap, and turned around in less than half the time of the company acquisition and integrating their technology.
b) I didn't have time to create a specific product, so I knew of a company that had something close-to-done. The product isn't really something complicated, just something that's necessary for the particular surgical procedure. So I led the licensing effort, and ended up with a product that got recalled after 3 months. Not a pleasant experience, and now I'm redesigning the product myself.
c) I collaborate with two university medical centers to perform animal and some human studies. But they have relatively little engineering input, they just perform the procedures and process data for us. Nothing spectacular, although I've gotten these universities over a half million bucks each per year. The one time I found a university to work with me on an actual product things never worked out because of legal. They wanted a crazy amount of overhead (500%), and our people were not okay with that. Then our legal department got mad, then my manager got mad. Not a great experience.
So, I talked to legal a few months ago, and got approval from the VP of my company. I've been allotted $800,000 over two years to allocate to this. The PI has a couple smaller grants, but nothing big. He was very receptive, and he has gotten his legal department on board. We have agreed to 400% and my company gets to keep the IP. This significantly cuts into the budget. We'll be able to fund maybe two students, but we will have enough left to do what we need.
I'm really looking forward to this because I'll be able to work with students again! Being treated like a colleague from the PI is fun, too. He doesn't really act like I'm his boss, which I appreciate. I just want to do cool science. My #2 working with me is pretty pumped about this too, because it's her alma mater for her MS and BS (she has a PhD). I'm going to try and make sure she's very well trained. If I get admission to the ivory tower, she'll need to take over. And if the academic search doesn't end well, then at least I'll have this academic exposure! Bright sides!
a) Make a better version of the technology,
b) License the technology, or
c) Collaborate.
There's a d): keep it to myself, but let's assume that doesn't exist. Each of these has pros and cons (obviously), and a couple weeks ago I discovered a technology that will be very cool in one of my products. And I know that with my involvement, it will be much better (one of the best things about the internet is that I can be cocky and not feel bad for it :) ). Not just because of my knowledge, but because of my budget. In this particular case, it's a lab at a major state university in a different state (not one of the schools I applied for...for those of you thinking about conflicts of interest). So I'm weighing which of these options I should pursue, and since I have some experience in a), b), and c), of course I want to blog my thoughts.
a) I've done this before with a start-up that had a technology that they weren't willing to share at all. I came up with a prototype alternative using a different physical principle, but giving similar, but better, data. This method was cheaper and had other clinical advantages. The company didn't get purchased for the hundreds of millions of dollars they wanted from us (don't cry for them, they got bought by one of our competitors). My version is getting ready to save a ton of lives as we've gotten approval for sale in the good ol' USA. This was relatively cheap, and turned around in less than half the time of the company acquisition and integrating their technology.
b) I didn't have time to create a specific product, so I knew of a company that had something close-to-done. The product isn't really something complicated, just something that's necessary for the particular surgical procedure. So I led the licensing effort, and ended up with a product that got recalled after 3 months. Not a pleasant experience, and now I'm redesigning the product myself.
c) I collaborate with two university medical centers to perform animal and some human studies. But they have relatively little engineering input, they just perform the procedures and process data for us. Nothing spectacular, although I've gotten these universities over a half million bucks each per year. The one time I found a university to work with me on an actual product things never worked out because of legal. They wanted a crazy amount of overhead (500%), and our people were not okay with that. Then our legal department got mad, then my manager got mad. Not a great experience.
So, I talked to legal a few months ago, and got approval from the VP of my company. I've been allotted $800,000 over two years to allocate to this. The PI has a couple smaller grants, but nothing big. He was very receptive, and he has gotten his legal department on board. We have agreed to 400% and my company gets to keep the IP. This significantly cuts into the budget. We'll be able to fund maybe two students, but we will have enough left to do what we need.
I'm really looking forward to this because I'll be able to work with students again! Being treated like a colleague from the PI is fun, too. He doesn't really act like I'm his boss, which I appreciate. I just want to do cool science. My #2 working with me is pretty pumped about this too, because it's her alma mater for her MS and BS (she has a PhD). I'm going to try and make sure she's very well trained. If I get admission to the ivory tower, she'll need to take over. And if the academic search doesn't end well, then at least I'll have this academic exposure! Bright sides!
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