Purdue President France A. Córdova made these comments on March 31 to the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Innovation Workshop in Washington, D.C..

Purdue president: 'Driving the 3-D Highway, from discovery to development and delivery'

While this NSF Partnerships for Innovation program is now in its eighth year, this is the inaugural workshop. This is a wonderful opportunity to share best practices that have led to successes, and to be inspired to continue in this effort.

We need to work together to expand university, government, private sector, and nonprofit partnerships focused on innovation that can impact local as well as national and global economies. This NSF program supports innovation in our communities by developing the people, tools and infrastructure needed to connect new scientific discoveries to practical use.

American innovation depends upon university research more today than at any other time in our history.

Major corporate labs that drove innovation and research in the 20th century such as Bell, Xerox and RCA have virtually disappeared and industry is more frequently partnering with universities to create new models for research.

For example, Exxon Mobil has created a 10-year $100 million research partnership with Stanford University; BP has pledged $500 million in alternative energy research involving the University of California, Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois; Intel has launched collaborative labs with Berkeley, the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon.

In a New York Times article last December titled "Bell Labs is Gone: Academia Steps In," Intel Director of Research Andrew Chien (Chen) says universities "work on the frontiers in unexplored territory. We want explorers."

In the same article Berkeley business professor Henry Chesbrough, who studies innovation, says in today’s global economy American companies "need boots on the ground at universities." (When it comes to California, he should have said "sandals on the ground!")

This Partnership for Innovation program is helping to place those boots and sandals on our universities' campuses where we are excited about exploring uncharted territory. We are driving a 3-D highway of university discovery — with development and delivery to the economy.

Government, university, business partnerships focused on innovation have helped to shape the world we live in. Space exploration is just one of many examples and an important one to me as an astrophysicist and former Chief Scientist at NASA.

Fifty years ago a university/government partnership launched the United States into the space age. The Cold War had become very intense after the Soviet Union launched two satellites into space in the fall of 1957. There was tremendous pressure for the United States to assert leadership in space and a growing feeling that our nation had fallen behind the Soviets in science, engineering and technology. This feeling grew when a U.S. Vanguard rocket attempting to launch a satellite exploded on the launch pad in December 1957.

Finally, on the night of January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first U.S. satellite to orbit the earth. Explorer 1 was a partnership between the U.S. Army, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech where I did my graduate work, and a University of Iowa group led by Professor James Van Allen. The Army unit involved would later become the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Explorer 1 remained in orbit for 12 years and accomplished the first major scientific finding of the space age: the Van Allen Radiation Belts surrounding the Earth.

Explorer 1 launched a government/university/private sector partnership that took us to the moon and back and continues today with JPL exploration of Mars, the NASA space shuttle program and much more.

Our space partnerships are now international. The International Space Station is a joint project among the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and eleven European countries. The Brazilian Space Agency also participates through a separate contract with NASA. Numerous space missions are international; my own jointly built telescope experiment flies on an ESA satellite, XMM. 

Partnerships for innovation can have a very far-reaching impact, indeed.

During the eight years of the NSF Partnership for Innovation program there are 77 graduated projects and 64 active ones. Congratulations to all of you for the work you are doing and your leadership in creating these partnerships. This is a unique program that not only brings innovation to the marketplace, but also helps prepare our students for the "partnership world."

We are very pleased that Purdue has received two Partnerships for Innovation awards, one current and one that has graduated.

The active project is "Partnerships for Innovation in Laser-based Manufacturing." The principal investigator is Professor Yung Shin and the goal is to use partnerships to advance manufacturing techniques by bringing innovations in laser-based manufacturing to bear on U.S. manufacturing processes.

During the last two years, Dr. Shin’s team has formed partnerships with a number of industrial companies, such as Caterpillar, Chrysler, Cummins Engine, International Truck and Engine, Rolls Royce, General Electric Aviation, Mound Lasers and Photonics Center in further developing key enabling technologies for industrial implementations in a range of laser-based areas.

The graduated project is "ToolingNET: A Partnership for Enhancing the Tooling Industry in Indiana through the use of Information Technology in the Advanced Manufacturing Sector." This partnership, led by Professor Karthik Ramani, resulted in the licensing of 3-D Shape Search technology developed at Purdue to a company in our Research Park.

These are examples of the impact of this NSF program and I know all of you have many more great stories to tell about partnerships.

Two years ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the U.S. National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. While defense and safety were certainly central to development of our interstate highway system, the core rational that drove this nation-changing project was economic development. In the 50 years since, the economic impact of the interstate highway system has reached into every aspect of our lives.

Today, American universities are building a new highway. It, too, is focused on economic development. I call it a 3-D highway because it focuses on discovery, development and delivery. This highway, too, is crucial to our nation. We are at a critical juncture where the United States will either reassert its economic leadership in the world or risk falling behind other nations and regions.

In the twentieth century American universities were imprinted with a research mission, a legacy of engineer and policy-maker Vannevar Bush, who in 1945 wrote to the president of the United States a report called Science: the Endless Frontier. It was the document that galvanized the federal government to invest in university-based scientific research.

This had an incredible impact. The second half of the 20th century was among the greatest periods of technological development in human history. And university research played a key role. Research universities produced top medical schools, assisted manufacturing through the development of innovative tools and new materials, fueled the rocket age with new talent, and discovered the molecular structure of the building blocks of life.

U.S. universities not only supply the basic and applied research so vital to new products and processes, but our discovery with its pathway to development and delivery is also helping to educate the next generation of leaders for our nation.

Today, universities accomplish 54 percent of all U.S. basic research. While this research is not necessarily aimed at developing a specific product that can be developed and delivered to the marketplace, basic research is the foundation of new products and processes.

According to the Association of American Universities, the average annual rate of return to society from academic research ranges from 28 to 40 percent. The laser, the Internet, magnetic resonance imaging, global positioning systems, and even the MP3 player are results of federal investments in university research."

But as New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman writes in "The World Is Flat," while Americans have been "sleeping (or) otherwise engaged," the world has been changing.

Friedman writes about the "flat world" that we live in today, leveled by the speed of transportation and communications technology; a world where the United States is facing tremendous competition for its position as the leader in innovation.

This new century and the rapid changes we see all around us require a new model for research universities. To meet the challenges and the needs and opportunities of our times, we need a model that includes a strong focus on discovery with development and delivery. And that translates to government/industry/not-for-profit partnerships with universities.

Friedman says the U.S. higher education system is ideally suited for leadership in the 21st century.

In an interview with Friedman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said: "Our university system is the best. We fund universities to do a lot of research and that is an amazing thing. High IQ people come here and we allow them to innovate and turn (their innovations) into products. We reward risk taking. ... It is a chaotic system. But it is a great engine of innovation."

According to Friedman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates have started 4,000 companies, creating more than 1.1 million jobs and $232 billion in sales.

"What makes America unique," Friedman says, "is not that it built MIT, but that every state in the country has universities trying to do the same."

 According to Friedman, there are 130 colleges and universities in California and only 14 nations in the world can match that. The United States has 4,000 colleges and universities. The rest of the world has less than 7,800.

But they are catching up! For example, Ethiopia alone has reported opening 13 new universities and a Science with Africa conference took place in that nation earlier this month. Among the Science with Africa initiative goals is to create synergies between U.S., European and African universities and provide a framework for using Science and Technology options to support economic progress on the continent.

Clearly the research capabilities of American colleges and universities are among this nation’s greatest assets as we work to retain world leadership in engineering, science, technology and innovation.

Having spent most of my life in California, I saw how areas such as Silicon Valley and the Biotechnology Corridor were created in the vicinity of major research universities, which partnered with the state. The enterprises thrived economically with global partnerships and investments.

The Association of University Technology Managers or AUTM, a global network of more than 350 universities, reports that before the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, fewer than 250 patents were issued to U.S. universities each year and discoveries were seldom commercialized for the public's benefit

The AUTM reports, "between 1991 and 2004, annual invention disclosures increased more than 290 percent to 18,178; new patents filed increased nearly 450 percent to 11,089; and new licenses and options executed increased about 510 percent to 5,329."

According to 2008 NSF Science and Engineering Indicators, U.S. universities spent $48 billion on R&D in 2006. Since 2000, the annual growth in R&D was stronger for the academic sector than for any other R&D sector. Meanwhile, R&D support from the federal government decreased in 2006 as funding growth failed to outpace inflation for the first time since 1982.

In a March 2008 report titled "Science as a Solution: An Innovation Agenda For the Next President," the AAU (American Association of Universities) calls for increased funding of key federal research agencies such as NSF, the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The report stresses the importance of the University-government partnership. It states: "Our government must continue to encourage the transformation of cutting-edge basic research into commercial products and medical advances for the public good. We can do this by continuing to abet collaboration between private sector firms and federal funded scientists at universities and federal laboratories."

Citing post World War II government/university partnerships as the "fundamental reason for American leadership in science and technology," the AAU reports states: “Recent developments threaten this unique partnership, undermining universities’ ability to conduct important research on behalf of the federal government and the American people. These include increasing federal regulations and associated compliance costs, arbitrary restrictions on reimbursement to universities for the cost of conducting federal research, and growing restrictions on communication of, and access to, scientific results."

The AAU is calling for a new federal advisory committee aimed at maintaining and strengthening the government/university partnership.

Industry, too, has weighed in on what it needs to remain on the competitive edge.

Purdue alumnus Michael L. Eskew is former chairman and chief executive officer of United Parcel Service. He has talked about the need for American industry, universities and communities to partner for economic development with a focus on educating new global innovators.

He said: "Roads, bridges, harbors and airports are critical but so too are those information highways and intelligence infrastructures. The communities that will win global business in the 21st century are those that are laying down the cable, the fiber and the digital switches. The communities that will win are those that are pouring resources into primary education, university research, and prized teachers. The communities that will win are those that are attracting young entrepreneurial minds who will craft the technology innovations that grow new companies. And the communities that will win are the communities that support life-long learning."

Purdue is fostering an entrepreneurial mindset among its faculty and students.

In the past seven years we have created a $375 million interdisciplinary research complex named Discovery Park. It includes 11 centers including nanotechnology, biosciences, e-enterprises (selling things online), advanced manufacturing, cancer, health-care engineering and learning. All our Discovery Park Centers and research are connected to a Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship to develop ideas into marketable products and deliver them to the economy.

Discovery Park focuses on real-world problems such as climate change, the energy crisis and cancer.

Discovery Park is working to accelerate the time it takes to commercialize the university's intellectual property and give rise to new companies and jobs. Since its start only a few years ago, Discovery Park has aided the launch of 24 companies. Discovery Park also has formed partnerships with more than 20 corporations and is collaborating on global projects with researchers in South Korea, China, Australia, India and other countries.

The Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Development at Purdue University is privately endowed with $100 million and located within our Discovery Park. The university-based institute is designed to accelerate the commercialization of innovative biomedical technologies that improve human health. (It's not the sign of innovation that's important; it's the derivative!)

Purdue owns or manages several commercial research parks that create a 3-D highway running the length of Indiana, promising new jobs and economic benefits for our state. These are places where new companies can start and grow and where established companies can take advantage of university research.

The Purdue Technology Center in our West Lafayette Research Park has nearly 150 companies employing nearly 3,000 people. Some companies are faculty-student startups. The integrated infrastructure linking the basic research done at Discovery Park on campus with the pathway to development and delivery at the commercial research parks sited throughout the State, make this a 3-D highway.

Let me give you an example of what is taking place at Purdue. Several years ago Purdue researchers discovered a technology, called S-I-S (Small-Intestine Submucosa). It is now being developed and marketed by Cook Biotech in our Research Park.

S-I-S transforms a portion of pig small intestine into strong, sterile, pliable sheets that work as a scaffold to facilitate the growth of new tissue. This technology has now been used successfully on more than 500,000 patients in more than 25 countries.

The Purdue Technology Center of Northwest Indiana opened in Merrillvile in December of 2004, and it is already home to 19 companies.

Construction is beginning on the Purdue Technology Center for Indianapolis in the central part of our state. This 78-acre development is expected to grow to 75 companies creating 1,500 jobs.

The Purdue Technology Center of Southeast Indiana will open this fall in New Albany with a learning center, a business incubator, four new Purdue bachelor degree offerings and more.

Many universities across the nation have or are developing research parks focused on development and delivery of discovery to the marketplace. Some of them have met with enormous success such as the Research Triangle in North Carolina.

Just last week another important university, government, private enterprise initiative was launched in my state of Indiana. Governor Mitch Daniels joined executives from IBM and the Semiconductor Research Corporation to announce plans to site a new $60 million nanoelectronics research center on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. This will create new research opportunities to develop nanoscale technologies that will drive future breakthroughs in computing.

The center will link Notre Dame and Purdue with other universities outside the state, and with the development resources of national laboratories and the trillion-dollar per year informational technology industry.

This is an exciting time filled with opportunities. We have only to reach out to meet them. American universities must continue growing their partnerships with government agencies, the private sector and not-for-profit organizations focused on economic development.

And, of course, we need to engage students, both undergraduate and graduate, along every sector of the 3-D highway!

This NSF Partnership For Innovation Program is a leader in helping to bring different sectors together focused on the enormous potentials of the 3-D highway.

At the end of his book, "The World Is Flat," Thomas Friedman says: "Economic competition in the flat world will be more equal and more intense.  We Americans will have to work harder and run faster and become smarter ... But let us not underestimate our strengths or the innovation that could explode from the flat world when we really do connect all of the knowledge centers together. On such a flat earth, the most important attribute you can have is creative imagination — the ability to be the first on your block to figure out how all these enabling tools can be put together in new and exciting ways to create products, communities, opportunities and profits."

What I like best about this vision is that the 3-D highway is maleable and opportunistic; it is bounded only by our imagination.

Thank you!

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