Question for the day: how many federal dollars currently flow to U.S. colleges and universities for science and engineering research? The answer is $29 billion — up nicely from $17.5 billion in 2000, according to data from the National Science Foundation.

So you might presume the American people would want a solid ROI for all of this public investment in basic research. But how do you fairly define what this ROI is? Is it about university licensing revenues, companies formed, numbers of patents? Or is it also about ensuring a fast and fluid flow to the public of broad “knowledge diffusion” (such as networks, research tools, new equipment) along with breakthrough inventions? 

These questions, more or less, are at the heart of a new report from the Kauffman Foundation, Commercializing University Innovations: A Better Way. In a nutshell, this report argues that university innovation can be moved to the market faster if university tech transfer offices shift their program emphases from licensing/revenue to a “volume model” (based on quantity of innovations moved out the door).

The report offers four ways (or perhaps some combination thereof) this dynamic could happen: free agency among faculty, regional alliances among schools, Internet-based approaches (such as iBridge Network), and faculty loyalty (e.g., giving back via donations to the institution). 

Along this line, The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) offers balanced coverage of the report, including some substantive feedback from officials at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and WARF, as is well known in research and commercialization circles, together continue to be national leaders in developing innovation.

On this front, here’s an interesting piece of personnel news related to Wisconsin and WARF: John Gee, former founder and director of the NASA Ames Technology Commercialization Center, has been named president and CEO of the Information Technology Association of Wisconsin. Gee’s career experience – which along with NASA Ames includes stints as a tech-focused entrepreneur – certainly ought to fit well in helping WARF further accelerate its research-commercialization program.

Just to round out our coverage of the Nano Nexus 2007 conference at TN’s Oak Ridge National Lab, here’s the update on the graduate student business competition — the Nano I2P Competition. The team of graduate students from the University of Texas have won the $25,000 first prize for their early-stage commercialization plan of their technology called NANOTaxi. (Photo: Abiola Ajetunmobi, co-inventor Cristal Glangchai, Jakub Felkl, ORNL Director Jeff Wadsworth, and Nicolas Rojeski.)

NANOTaxi is a nano-based drug delivery system that is designed to take a specific payload to any part of the body. NANOTaxi, which has its patent pending, initially will target cancer treatments, particularly lung cancer, which has the lowest survival rates among all cancer afflictions.

The nano aspect of this is almost alarmingly simple. The technology essentially acts like a taxi in bringing, say, a cancer treatment straight to diseased cells in the body. The nano device is injected into the body via the bloodstream, heads to the trouble spot, and then releases its payload.

The team says its next steps are to seek federal grant or angel funding to help fuel further product development. In the near term, they aim to round out its core team by adding an expert in the FDA approval process. Later they’ll hire a CEO who can take the company passed its in vivo clinical trial stages into full commercialization. NANOTaxi is a student-faculty collaboration project within the University of Texas. 

There’s no doubt the people at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) understand the importance of its research to the marketplace. Jeffrey Wadsworth, the outgoing director of ORNL, honed in on this point in his keynote remarks at the Nano Nexus 2007 conference taking place April 2-4 at ORNL. (Photo: Manu Bhardwaj, iBridge Network Team, and Jeremy Stipkala, at Nano Nexus.)

Wadsworth, who’s ending a four-year term here to take an executive position with Battelle, focused on the lab’s integrated research in nano, bio, and supercomputing. And he emphasized how he and his team are adamant about working to move ORNL’s advances into industry and among entrepreneurs. Over the last five years, ORNL has spun out 74 companies. In addition, roughly $80 million in venture funding has been invested in technology companies in the Oak Ridge/Knoxville region.

The centerpiece of all of this activity is the lab’s work in nano. As a result of the federal government’s commitment over the last several years to fuel research in nano, ORNL has become one of the leading centers for research in this space. And it recently opened its Center for Nanophase Materials Science, which operates as a so-called “national user facility.” That is, the center allows researchers from all over to apply to be selected as users of the facility.

Meanwhile, here at Nano Nexus 2007, fifteen universities are competing today in a graduate student business competition focused on nanotechnology. The six finalists were just announced an hour ago, and they are: Vanderbilt, two teams from Georgia Tech, Louisiana Tech, University of Texas, and Florida State. The overall winner, which pockets a $25,000 prize, will be announced this afternoon.

The perennial rush is on for the new round of U.S. H-1B immigration visas, the permits that allow U.S. companies to hire foreign skilled employees. 

Beginning tomorrow (technically April 2), the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services opens the doors for applications covering FY2008 (which begins October 1, 2007). The cap on these visas — long the crux of an important ongoing debate in Congress and around the country — currently is set at 65,000 permits for skilled workers with 20,000 extra visas set aside for those with advanced degrees.

Most of you likely are aware of the H-1B issue relative to whether the U.S. should raise or lower the overall cap on visa permits. Many are starting to argue that there should be no cap at all, that skilled immigrants contribute inestimable value to America’s innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

As it stands, Congress is in the middle of sorting out a new policy in regard to the cap. One question is whether a real groundswell arises in the short term among U.S. companies to pressure the government into dealing substantively with the cap. 

Policy issues notwithstanding, take a look a this informative article in workpermit.com for more on the H-1B. 

As with the technologies contained in the iBridge Network, nanotechnology covers a range of disciplines from chemistry and physics to electrical and mechanical engineering. Nano, of course, is of and about these disciplines but all at the sub-atomic level. (Wikipedia can you tell you a lot more on nano for anyone looking for a refresher.)

We bring this up to mention a major nanotech-focused conference taking place April 2-4, 2007 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The big event is Nano Nexus 2007, and sponsors include ORNL, east Tennessee’s Technology 2020, and the Kauffman Foundation. The iBridge Network will be there with an information booth, and we pledge to do plenty of blogging of the proceedings.

For quick background on this conference, its aim is bringing entrepreneurs, government, and universities under one roof to spur connections and networks on all things nano-related.

The event has three tracks: a graduate-student business competition (“Nano Idea to Product Competition”), a nanotechnology industry forum where researchers will share information and latest work, and a VC forum for nano-focused startups. To be sure, ORNL is doing a lot of work in this space (besides helping mind our nuclear stockpile), and has recently opened two major nano-related facilities, including its Spallation Neutron Source and its Center for Nanophase Materials Science.

On a final note, Nano Nexus 2007 organizers announced yesterday that 15 teams from 12 universities — including Duke, Georgia Tech, Texas, UVA, and Imperial College (UK) — have been selected to present their ideas as part of the conference’s “Nano Idea to Product Competition.” These university teams will be competing for a $25,000 grand prize.

In the “we couldn’t say it better ourselves” department, we’re posting here for your quick consumption a summary of the newly released FY 2005 AUTM U.S. Licensing Survey (thanks to the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship e-letter)

“The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) has recently released its latest numbers on university technology transfer and commercialization. The data (from Fiscal Year 2005) show that the process of moving research into the marketplace seems to be getting smoother. In FY 2005, 527 new products were made available to the public and both invention disclosures and patent applications increased.

Total spending (based on reports from 228 institutions) reached $1.1 billion. Washington is still the primary investor as federal funds accounted for 67% of this research support. Private sector funds accounted for only 7% of the total. AUTM has also begun tracking how university spin-off companies obtain their start-up financing.

Friends and family continue to be the primary source of such investments, but this year’s survey also shows an increase in funding from angel investors, institutional support and from the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR). Venture capital firms provide support for less than 20% of these start-up firms.”

Once in a while, a major rankings and policy report comes out that becomes a must-read (in part because the rankings are by turns comprehensive and laser-like in their focus and the authors enjoy respected reputations). And so it is with The 2007 State New Economy Index (full disclosure: the Kauffman Foundation cosponsored this report) prepared by Dr. Robert D. Atkinson and Daniel K. Correa, both with the Washington, DC-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

This report, which has appeared twice before in 1999 and 2002, is a sprawling affair and covers nearly every nook and cranny in regard to how the U.S. states rank relative to their technology, innovation, and entrepreneurial assets. 

For this post, rather than focus on the rankings exclusively, it may be more of interest to readers here to see what Atkinson and Correa say in regard to universities relative to technology transfer and entrepreneurial activity across the 50 states.

On this front, Atkinson and Correa proclaim that “innovative capacity (derived through universities, R&D investments, scientists and engineers, and entrepreneurial drive) is increasingly what drives competitive success in the New Economy.” And when it comes to understanding how to evaluate properly economic growth in a state, the authors offer the reminder that it’s not about job creation — instead, it’s about per capita income. And the driver for growth in this metric is “innovation, not [by] capital accumulation.” 

In regard to colleges and universities and their respective state economies, the authors make several pointed recommendations focused on how to build dynamic innovation and entrepreneurial-based economies. First, they urge states to “enhance the role of colleges and universities” in spurring regional innovation and growth. “Between 1991 and 2004,” say Atkinson and Correa, “the number of patent applications filed by United States universities increased from 13.7 applications per institution to 57.8, licensing income increased from $1.96 million per university to $7.06 million, and new university-based start-ups increased from 212 in 1994, to 462 in 2004.”

In addition, the authors urge states to match their investments in their universities to prevailing state industry clusters. The report also recommends universities create programs to develop and recruit “star” scientists (“more than 90 percent of of the most significant university R&D is performed by just 10 percent of the faculty”) as well as urges states to “focus on commercialization of research” out of its university-based labs (and cites Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center and the Iowa State Innovation System as good examples of programs that spur connections between researchers and industry).

As the AUTM 2007 Annual Meeting roars along through this weekend in San Francisco, a new white paper simultaneously has been released that should be of interest to all involved in technology research and commercialization.

The paper is titled In the Public Interest: Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology, and was authored by a collection of technology transfer directors at some of the U.S.’s leading reseach universities (including Cal Tech, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford).

For a good overview of what’s contained in this report, take a look at this week’s SSTI Weekly Digest. Among the report’s contents, according to SSTI, is a nine-point set of principles for how university technology licensing should be undertaken today, and includes recommendations such as “(e)xclusive licenses should be structured in a manner that encourages technology development and use.”