3 colleges team up to spark economy
BYLINE: Marisa Schultz
The state's three largest research universities are expected to announce today the creation of the University Research Corridor, a "virtual alliance" committed to re-energizing Michigan's economy through collaborative research.
By working together, the presidents of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University say they can more effectively usher inventions from their labs to the marketplace and attract fresh jobs to the state.
"All of us feel a very strong desire and commitment to helping the state through the economic downturn we are in," U-M President Mary Sue Coleman told The Detroit News. The research corridor will "dramatically increase" the ability of faculty to work together, said Ralph Kummler, dean of Wayne State's College of Engineering. Currently, collaborations between universities occur between individuals on specific projects. However, the corridor would provide a formal mechanism for researchers to find each other, Kummler said.
"We often find the faculty can complement one another and we can put together a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts," Kummler said.
The goal of the partnership is to promote the three as an asset to businesses that are considering locating to Michigan, Coleman said.
The announcement comes on the heels of the creation of One D, a civic alliance working to transform Southeast Michigan, and the unveiling of "Road to Renaissance," an economic revitalization blueprint designed by Detroit Renaissance, a group of area business leaders.
The addition of a research corridor will only help to strengthen the state, said Doug Rothwell, president of Detroit Renaissance.
"The universities need to play a larger role in economic development in the state," Rothwell said Monday. "There's recognition among the business community that we probably haven't leveraged that resource to the degree that we should have in the past. What you are seeing now is much more of an openness toward collaborations that haven't happened before."
The partnership's first step is today's expected launch of a Web site -- www.urcmich.org -- that will detail innovations at the universities, which bring in 95 percent of Michigan's federal academic research dollars.
Over the past five years, the universities have netted more than 500 license agreements for new technologies, according to corridor officials.
The Web site will allow faculty at each university to better understand what faculty at the other schools are undertaking, said Wayne State University President Irvin Reid.
That way, he said, researchers can work together to create the best products, and businesses can track research activity and decide which projects would be helpful to their companies.
The greater focus on technology transfer is expected to increase retention of the state's young creative minds, Reid said. The alliance builds on the 1999 Life Sciences Corridor initiative, where the three collaborated to help develop a biotechnology industry. Then in an unprecedented move earlier this year, the three university presidents testified together before a state House committee on university funding. Since then, the project for a University Research Corridor has been in the works, according to MSU President Lou Anna Simon.
"People want to invest in a place that they perceive is strong," Simon said. The universities need to show that "we represent a strong market and we are as competitive as other markets," she said.
Unlike the Research Triangle Park, a public-private partnership that includes Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Michigan's research corridor won't involve land acquisitions or new buildings. Instead, Simon calls the partnership a "virtual research triangle."