UNIVERSITIES' ALLIANCE WILL HELP STATE, SCHOOLS SAY
BYLINE: KRISTEN JORDAN SHAMUS
The University of Michigan hopes to use a 12-foot-tall electron microscope to develop a bionic eye that not only moves naturally, but can see just as well as the human eye.
Researchers at Wayne State University are testing a computer chip that can be used during surgery to help doctors immediately identify whether tissue is cancerous.
And at Michigan State University, scientists are using a laboratory on wheels to conduct tests that measure the health effects of pollution, the results of which U-M researchers are using to develop new ways of treating asthma.
Besides making people healthier, projects such as these at Michigan's largest universities could prove to be powerful medicine to remedy the state's ailing economy.
The companies spun off from university research - and the jobs those start-ups create - are a big reason the Big Three of higher education in Michigan have asked to be funded separately from the state's other 12 public universities. And, supporters say, the fledgling University Research Corridor (URC) created by those institutions could create even more jobs.
They point to the 79 start-up companies spawned by the state's biggest research universities from 2001-2005. And they say the 5-month-old collaboration - anchored presently by a Web site - could become more influential given time and more resources.
But a lack of dedicated money for the URC raises questions among some observers about how much it can accomplish beyond what the schools do on their own. Financial support in terms of public and private investment was crucial in building research hubs in Austin, Texas, Boston and California's Silicon Valley. Others say simply promoting the work at the schools will go a long way.
"They haven't got resources plowed into it, but it's part of a changing culture," said David Hollister, president and CEO of Prima Civitas Foundation, a Lansing-based community and economic development collaborative.
Years ago, the notion of sharing research findings with scientists from other schools would have been considered heresy, said Hollister, who previously served as the director of the state Department of Consumer and Industry Services. Today, he says it's vital to drive the state forward.
"There's some serious collaborations going on. ...This is unheard of in other states. It's just not being done."
Research often leads to start-ups
Start-up companies often are born out of the same university labs where new products, drugs and treatments are developed - often launched by the researchers who discovered them.
And with the state's three research universities getting 632 patents from 2001-2005 - filing for a patent every day over those five years - there appears to be plenty of opportunities to launch start-ups.
"I think that there is a growing consensus about ... the importance of research and innovation as the avenues for prosperity," MSU President Lou Anna Simon said.
University leaders say collaboration through the URC would offer researchers access to different areas of expertise and more resources. It also would help avoid overlap on projects.
Collaboration also might lead to products that could be manufactured in Michigan, which in turn could create more start-up companies and jobs. The key, said Stephen Forrest, vice president for research at U-M, is to find a way to get those technologies, jobs and people to stay in Michigan.
"You can spin off a company, and you can spin it right out of the state," he said. "We're doing everything we can to make Michigan much more attractive to people who have the money and the managerial talent."
U-M President Mary Sue Coleman said her school, WSU and MSU account for 95% of the research and development money in the state "and that's a lot of dollars - $1.3 billion - and that creates an enormous number of jobs."
Coleman added that even though Pfizer's decision to leave Michigan cost the state 2,100 jobs, U-M created 4,450 jobs during the last five years, many of them in research fields or for the U-M Health System.
Jobs also are coming from start-ups such as the Grosse Pointe Farms-based SenSound LLC, which grew from the work of Sean Wu, a distinguished professor at Wayne State.
He came up with a way to see sound and vibration, a technology that helps reduce noise pollution in vehicles and other products. SenSound was recognized last year as one of Michigan's 50 Companies to Watch by the Edward Lowe Foundation.
Michigan can learn from others
Rob Atkinson, president of a Washington-based think tank called the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said Michigan should look at how other states developed research corridors.
"To make it real, you've got to put some money behind it, tie it into the regional needs and make it accountable," Atkinson said, explaining that's how other parts of the country saw economic gains from research projects at universities.
John Taylor, vice president of research for the National Venture Capital Association, is more bullish on Michigan's approach and suggested that the state study how Austin, Texas, practically sprang up out of the desert in the 1980s.
The area became a hub for semiconductors largely because of the research under way at the University of Texas. Through partnerships among UT researchers, the business community, government leaders and venture capitalists, they were able to build an entrepreneurial economy that is now based largely on information technology.
The Austin Chamber of Commerce said the Austin Technology Incubator, programs at the UT's IC2 Institute and the Capital Network, which connects investors with new companies, all helped transform that city's economy.
Boston's Route 128 corridor also was built on a foundation of strong research schools - Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology among them - along with lawmakers who historically have been business-friendly with granting zoning and permits for start-ups.
Its main industries are now information technology and biotech, with an emerging biofuels market, said Michele Whitham, comanager of Foley Hoag LLP, a law firm that focuses on intellectual property in the corridor.
"When you get those pieces working together, you have the ability to build out this kind of economy," she said. "A lot of our earliest companies here came from the major universities with a couple of neat ideas."
One of those ideas came from Edwin Land, who founded Polaroid and instant photography, fresh out of Harvard. Today, the company has evolved into other products.
Schools want to share equipment
John Mansfield, associate director of the U-M Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory, hopes the next big thing could come out of collaborative efforts to buy a new, nearly
$6-million electron beam microscope that would be housed at U-M but available to researchers from the other schools and private industry.
He said he's already gotten financial commitments from other schools, as well as Dow Chemical and Ford Motor Co., which could use the equipment for their own research.
"We're absolutely sure that the U-M can't afford more than one of these, and MSU can't afford one of these, but we can afford to share one," Mansfield said.
Accountability is one of the reasons U-M's Coleman, MSU's Simon and Wayne State President Irvin Reid have said their schools should be given a distinct budget bill, separate from the other 12 public universities in the state.
The controversial push to split higher education funding into two separate bills, they say, will allow the research schools to be held accountable for what they bring back to the state. It also would recognize their unique missions.
"I think this is a great time for the universities and for the state of Michigan," said Forrest, vice president for research at U-M. "I think we really have a unique opportunity to reverse the economic trends that have been dominating the state for really the last 100 years."
SIDEBARS
BY THE NUMBERS
The state's three major research universities - the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University - currently:
Bring in 95% of all external research and development dollars that come to the state. In fiscal year 2005, that amounted to $1.3 billion.
Bring in another $750 million annually in federal financial aid to students.
Got 632 patents in the five-year period from 2001-2005, the most recent data available.
Applied for 1,282 patents, and realized $192 million from technology they developed from 2001-2005. This activity resulted in 79 start-up companies.
Source: University Research Corridor
CRASH-TEST DUMMIES, IPODS, GOOGLE ALL HAVE TIES TO MICHIGAN UNIVERSITIES
Do you Google? Own an iPod? How about wear a seat belt? Odds are you have used something developed with the help of scientists with ties to the University of Michigan, Michigan State University or Wayne State University. Their innovations over the years include:
Cisplatin
The drug, developed at MSU, helped Lance Armstrong's testicular cancer.
iPods
Tony Fadell, who went to U-M, led the team that developed the omnipresent music player.
Virtual biopsies
Wayne State researchers have developed technology that allows doctors to determine whether tissue is cancerous without having to remove it from the body.
Bexxar
U-M recently developed this cancer-fighting drug for patients with advanced-stage lymphoma - a condition previously considered incurable.
Fiber-optic wire
MSU's Donald Keck was one of the inventors of the technology, which enabled the Information Age by allowing the transmission of massive amounts of data across great distances.
Crash-test dummies
Developed out of research at Wayne State.
U-M's Larry Page is one of the founders of the company, and he's bringing 1,000 jobs to the state with a Google office in Ann Arbor.
AZT
Wayne State medical professor Jerome Horwitz discovered this drug, which has been a key reason that AIDS can be treated as a chronic, rather than an acute, illness.
*For more on the University Research Corridor, go to www.urcmich.org.
Contact KRISTEN JORDAN SHAMUS at 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com.