Universities, Corporations Build New Collaboration Models

Since the beginning of the year, several new partnerships have been launched that are intended to support research collaboration, enhance student-employer relationships and increase overall university-industry engagement. These partnerships focus on creating a more expedited, user-friendly process for industry to partner with universities.

Recently, Motorola Mobility's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) announced a new collaboration agreement with eight U.S. research universities. By reducing the time and complexity needed to establish new research projects through the use of common strategies and terms, the Multi-University Research Agreement (MURA) is intended to streamline the generation of new joint research projects and increase cooperation on the development of fundamental new mobile technologies. This single, universal agreement allows ATAP to easily engage in a spectrum of research efforts with these universities and reduce the time it takes for sponsored research agreements to be established from several months to less than 30 days.

The eight universities are the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Texas A&M University and Virginia Tech University. Read the press release...

Earlier this year, Siemens Corp. announced a new partnership with Penn State University to support research collaborations, enhance the recruiting relationship and increase engagement across a range of university programs. This relationship is the first of its kind between Siemens and a U.S. university. The agreement between Penn State and Siemens will include collaborations in health care, infrastructure, energy, people development and sustainability. Read the release...

Launched in January, the Oregon State University (OSU) Advantage initiative focuses on developing more and stronger partnerships between Oregon State researchers and industry and enhanced educational opportunities for students. This retooling of the university's business engagement efforts includes the establishment of a venture accelerator and the industry partnering program. The industry partnering program will provide a one-stop shop to help industry access talent; do research and development; attract private investment; and, produce cohorts of experienced graduates.

According to an OSU press release, it is expected to increase industry investment in university research by 50 percent and lead to the creation of 20 new businesses within the next five years. The university also projects that at least 300 OSU students each year will work with Venture Accelerator projects and more in the Industry Partnering Program.

In Washington, the state announced recently the public launch of the Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation (JCATI). Established by Washington lawmakers in 2012, JCATI is a multi-institutional education and research center intended to strengthen aerospace research collaborations between the state's public research universities and industry partners (see the April 18, 2012 issue of the Digest). Initial grants of more than $1.3 million already have been provided to faculty throughout the state to further aerospace related research according to the Wall Street Journal.