A Quiet Crisis: Endowed Chairs Transcript

MR. FROLIK: I would like to start with a question for everyone. As a matter of fact overview we'll start with President Cartwright. What role do Ohio's colleges and universities have to play in reinventing or reinvigorating this states economy, and are you up to it?

MS. CARTWRIGHT: Well, I think we have to play the key role and yes, I believe we are up to it in the sense of having the commitment to developing the discoveries that can be commercialized to producing the baccalaureate prepared individuals that are critical in a new work force. But in the end, we cannot do it alone. We do need the State to step up and provide appropriate support, and we're being to need help in key areas from private business, as well.

MR. FROLIK: Mauro Ferrari.

MR. FERRARI: The mission of the Ohio State University being a learning institution from the onset, was that or contributing in a very matter of fashion, of course, to the betterment of the economics of the State. Of course, in the times of old, the admission of a lingering institution used to be agricultural and mechanical. Now the times have changed, new dimension becoming more important. In particular, in more recent times we have seen that the most successful states and regions around the country have been those that have very intensely and successfully capitalized on intellectual property developed by leading universities.

And when looking at a case, for instance, of the Silicon Valley or the Austin area or Austin, Texas, of course, or Boston, and I believe that that is an example that we must follow at Ohio State together with the other universities in the state, have a leading role in leading responsibility, making sure that that happens. And help in bringing us as a state closer to the goal of having a strong presence of high-tech industry in the state.

MR. FROLIK: Chris Wolverton.

MR. WOLVERTON: Joe, I think historically, colleges and universities have been a seat of discovery of new knowledge and I think if we rely on faculty members, and especially scientists, as we talk about high-tech developments, we're relying on people who are by very nature at the cutting edge, and they're looking for ways to move their research skills and their scholarship forward. And so, to me, colleges and universities are, if not the hot seat, very close to being the hot seat for the development of new ideas that can be commercialized. And so, I think very clearly, that the Ohio-based colleges and universities are also in that same role. And we rely very heavily on the foundations of new technology to come out of colleges and universities. I think I would support President Cartwright's observation that we at Kent State are poised and ready to assist in the State economic development and growth by allowing incentives and rewards for the movement of faculty laboratory based technologies into the commercializable sectors.

MR. FROLIK: Mark Coticchia.

MR. COTICCHIA: Yes, Joe. Research institutions can be a major engine to fuel regional economic development, not only regional economic development, but national economic development. And I think it's very important that the research institutions do what they do best, and that is, research and teaching. And as a byproduct of what we do best, regional economic development happens.

MR. FROLIK: Chris Coburn.

MR. COBURN: I agree with Mark and the rest of the panelists. It's hard to overstate the potential and the significance of higher education in our economy. I think if you view it from the standpoint of, these are economic anchors and folks are coming to the region, either to work at those institutions and then hopefully have technologies spun off or in some cases like the recent symbiontics example, where a company moved to be in proximity to the research, in our case, the clinical capabilities of the Cleveland Clinic. So thinking about the future of Ohio, if you can visualize capital moving across borders, which does happen, it's important for local capital and even in some cases, entrepreneurs. If you don't have these institutions, you're not going to be able to attract the people, attract the companies, the technologies that the companies will be built from and create the opportunities.

MR. FROLIK: Do you feel, President Cartwright, we'll start with you again, that the message that the important role that the universities and the research centers in Ohio can play, is that, obviously, understanding in Columbus at Ohio State University; do they get it downtown in Columbus at the State Capitol and the State House.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: I think they get it, Joe, in many places where they didn't get it a decade ago. I now have the perspective of more than the decade in Ohio, as president of Kent State. And I watched in the early '90s what was happening to higher education, and I watched a public response among members of the general public, as well as, what you might call, influence makers, that basically, didn't much care. I see a very substantial difference now, in the year 2002, and in the last couple of years, as well.

The opinion leaders, the business leadership, influence makers of various types are stepping forth to say, what is happening with respect to our investment. It's really unacceptable if we want to operate in the new economy, and we simply must do better. I have seen surveys recently, where the public and the public who would call themselves somewhat informed about education has noted the same kind of finding, and not just about higher education as a sort of general opportunity, but higher education as a research engine, in that sense of very specific contribution to the economy. I think there is a well spring of support out there. I'm not sure that that level of support is as well understood by some key decision makers as it needs to be. And we still have to keep up the advocacy agenda in that regard.

MR. FROLIK: How do you sell that? How do you make that case to those key decision maker.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: Well, I think you do it in a hundred different ways. You put great people like this on the road to talk about specific concrete examples. You try to make sure that those who have invested in various ways, and I don't just mean with venture capital, I mean by being your advocate, get an opportunity to celebrate your successes. You make sure that those who can help you spread the word are with you and engaged in various kinds of promotional and marketing activities that help you spread the word. Literally, you have to have your antenna up and fine tuned all the time, and you have to be constantly looking for that moment. A kind of a teachable moment where you can say, wait a minute, do you understand what's happening here? Do you know what Mauro is doing? Do you know what Chris is doing? And do you know what the potential is for making a difference in Ohio. And I think, when you tell the concrete stories and you begin to really talk about results, and how you get some return on different kinds of investment, that you grow out the commitment and you grow out the advocacy.

MR. FROLIK: Chris and Mark, you both have extensive experience in the private sector, as well as working with university and research. Does the business community, particularly this region, but statewide and beyond, do they understand the role that of universities of sort of the basic research folks.

MR. COBURN: Yeah, I would think so. And I just to play off what Carol said, I think the situation in Ohio, in terms of understanding, is dramatically better today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Look at this forum, you look at coverage in the media, look at the quality of the discussion at the top leader level, business or just community leadership, I think people understand it. I think we still fall down on translating that general support in a specific action. What do we need to do? What are the steps? And again, there have been some potential actions discussed and many of them are good, but I think we still aren't yet at the point where we can translate a general sense of the importance of this to be okay. We have to take steps with Kent State, we have to take steps with technology commercialization that are of true significance.

MR. FROLIK: Mark.

MR. COTICCHIA: I think that, in general, at a certain level, the business community gets it. And if you take a look at the infrastructure, two key missing pieces, at least in Cleveland, were the setup of the operation that Chris is putting together and the one that I'm building at Case. We need to educate the business community as to how the process works, and how the licensing works, and what universities and other research institutions can do and can't do and how the business community can actually reach in and help pull out technologies while we are pushing out technologies. As a relative new comer to Ohio and northeast Ohio, from a state standpoint in Pennsylvania where I came from, the state was very aggressive with respect to helping in technology commercialization kind of activities. So, when I heard the Governor, as well as other state legislators, talking about novel programs that they could seed things to help Chris and I in the heavy lifting that we're trying to do, that was really welcome.

MR. FROLIK: Chris, as researcher, Mauro, do you have a sense -- are you or your colleagues, are you regularly, are you contacted by folks in the private sectors? Do you feel that they look to you and understand the role you can play in growing the economy or in helping them with their very specific tasks.

MR. WOLVERTON: I think that latter more than the former. Most of the calls I get are to assist the private sector in solving very specific problems and the occasional asking me relocate to their neck of the woods. But the important thing I would estimate is that, can the universities serve as resource base that allows the private sector to move their ideas and their products forward without investing in additional brick and mortar capital.

So in some sense, the universities have and continue to be, a very important resource for the private sector. And one of the things that I want to be able to make sure that I communicate to you is, and following up on the previous comment, is that I think it's important to recognize that research at the university level is a chronological event, and so things happen over time. You can't just walk in and say oh, I need this product, produce it for me tomorrow. The research process is a discovery process and as such, it takes time.

And so if businesses are going to give us a call and say, you know, can you produce this product for us, normally, our response is, come back in about five years and we'll let you know how we're doing. Unfortunately, what I think is misunderstood is that that five year process as an example, needs be fed, it needs to be fed with intellectual concepts from the investigators. It needs be fed with money. It needs be fed with library support. All of those things that go into the successful production of some capitalizable product at the end of that time period.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: If I could hitchhike on that a little bit, because the conversation has drifted just a little bit from your original question, Joe. But there's been some statements made that cause me to want to say that I think it's complicated inside the institution because of the sort of things that Chris has just talked about, the sort of ongoing investment that has to be made and the willingness to have a long term perspective, not knowing really what is going to payoff because you have got a lot of really creative talented people, and you've let them follow their instincts on the science. But from the outside, I think it has to be simple.

I think the institution has to present a very obvious focal point to outsiders who want to get in and figure out what's going on in the institution. We just created with Partners in Northeast Ohio, a new website that, in fact, Kent State and CWRU were the lead partners with the Cleveland Clinic on putting that together and then other partners got invited into the consortium, primarily to say stay here is a critical mass. Here is a one stop point for you to go looking for technologies to invest in. And at the institutional level, we have to do the same thing by having a very, simple to the outside, not so simple on the inside, infrastructure that is designed for technology transfer.

MR. COTICCHIA: I think it's real important that folks understand that universities faculty direct their research and which way they go, picking up what Carol had to say. One university president put it to me this way, it's like having 2000 CEOs running around the institution. And so, sometimes it's very difficult for you to push things in a direction towards commercialization. And keeping in mind with what Chris has to say earlier, a lot of this is basic research, working on things that are cutting edge 20 years out. So, there aren't necessarily ready markets for the technology to go into. So, this whole process takes quite a bit of time, and understanding that is very, very important.

MR. FERRARI: I would like to go back to a question that you raised at the beginning here, that is of the relationship with the political leadership around the state. If I may personalize that a little bit for a second. I was at Berkeley, University of Berkeley, California, for ten years on the faculty, prior to joining Ohio State, three years ago or so. And I had a company at the time, the company was called iMEDD, that we had just started, smack in the heart, of that is considered by many, to be perhaps the most favorable location, geographical location for an entrepreneurship, that is in the Silicon Valley. I agreed to come here and as part of the operation that brought me here, the company iMEDD, also they're located here now, happily situated not far from the west campus of the University and we are working together very closely. What does the political leadership have to do with that.

The reality is that the conditions that made it possible for iMEDD to move, or relocate here, have a lot to do with political acts, the creation of Technology Action Fund from the Technology Action Board of the State, which provided financial incentives for iMEDD through a competitive process, to relocate. So, these are the things that actually make a big difference. Something else that I saw early in my interviews, of course, in the possibility of coming to Ohio State, was the openness of the community, including the political community, around Columbus and in the State. I have found, again, by comparison with California, that there is this wonderful opportunity here in the state of Ohio to actually discuss directly, interface directly with the political leaders in the House, in the Senate, in the Governor's office and with the Governor, on things that are of importance for the creation, of course, of these entrepreneurial spirit and possibly uplifting this economy, adding this component of high-tech industry. I found that everybody that I've talked to, by and large, and I've had many contacts with different political bodies, has been very interested, very willing, very interested in learning about this new game.

The reality is, of course, the knowledge base that we are starting from here, given the historical differences between the two states, is not the knowledge base that you started from in California. Nevertheless, here people I find are very desirous of creating the opportunity, and to work for the betterment of the community in so many different ways. And so, coming back to Carol's point, that gives us a wonderful opportunity to educate the various leaders because their certainly very willing to talk. Of choices, difficult choices have had to be made in the recent past. I certainly hope that the state is not going to go back into a stop and go type of mode in promoting high-tech culture. Nevertheless, many important steps have been made and I think they are yielding great results because the best way to proceed with the education process, the mutual education process in trying to find ways to move the community forward is by successful example. Successful examples are, of course, are bred, are generated by successful investments, and I believe that the State has been active in a way that is consistent with that on several occasions.

MR. COBURN: Chris, just to pick up on the point of the role on the business community, I think folks need to remember that Ohio's gross state product is in excess of $250 billion. So if you think about what portion of that is controlled in this region, it's an immense amount of money. And so we think about, how is that controlled? Well, government certainly has a role, but the bulk of it flows through the private sector. So I think about the business community in two ways. One, as a potential investor. We can find all the capital we need to grow these startups here in our region. It's a question, is the capital going to be tied up doing other things or is it going to be deployed for this.

So we need the business community to commit greater resources, hopefully. And I don't want to be critical, because there's been a lot of great new steps that have been taken over the last few years, new funds. Early Stage Partners is an example. But second thing is the business community also, I think, sets the tone. I think folks have to remember that, you know, a lot of the marketing, you know, when we talk about our region, is the word that we carry ourselves when we travel around the country. So it's the people who work in the companies, the people that lead the companies that then communicate into Southern California or communicate into North Carolina that the kind of region we have. And I think more the knowledgeable our leadership is about what the issues are, what the pacing of technology commercialization is, and Mark's right on.

A lot of these deals take a long time. It's heavy lifting. It takes quite a while to fill the pipeline. If people have a realistic understanding of that, I think it so much better helps the community than to just have a kind of a warm and fuzzy technology commercialization is good, therefore, let's do it. By the way, what is it?

MR. FERRARI: I need to follow up quickly what Chris is saying, of course there's a very important point here. We shouldn't be expecting everything to be fed down from the government, of course. And private entrepreneurship is what we're going to be getting at the end of the story. Now, what I find in my personal experience, again, is that somewhat to my surprise, I am contacted pretty continuously by the private sector, by the venture capital sector, and venture capital is one major component that we need to develop more fully in this state, but the vast majority of my contacts, even on a percentage basis, are from out of the state and many times out of the country. It is as if, for whatever reason, there is a syndrome about trying to develop activities that are not your backyard, so to say, not in my backyard syndrome. So I'm sought for advice, for investment advice, by outfits in the country and outside of the country more that I am from Ohio.

MR. FROLIK: That's been your experience, right, Chris, with your company?

MR. WOLVERTON: Yes, Joe. We initially had our technology transfer office setup 15 or 18 individual meetings with Ohio based companies, to share with them the technology that was developed at Kent, and asked them if they would like to become early stage partners. And almost all of them said, wow, great idea, come back to us when you had a prototype. They were unwilling to come in and contribute early stage dollars, to help get us to a prototype. And then, out of the state, actually, a Seattle based firm, venture capital firm, came to the door, same idea, great technology, who do I talk to about giving them this check? So it was very clear that the Seattle people, the Boston people and then now the Virginia people are very excited about early stage university technologies and are much more willing to bear the burden of what, I think, a typical angel would step up to the plate to do. And so, yes, we were very much in that same experience as Mauro, in that out of state companies were much more interested in funding the development of our technology.

MR. FERRARI: I think.

MR. COBURN: It is clear. I think it's important to say the situation is improving. It's much better than it was five years ago. Five year ago was much better than it was ten years ago. I think there are other steps. Again, we've talked about some of these funds. The Clinic, it's important to say about our model. It's much different than the typical academic model. Our management, our trustees, have allocated resources so we can actually play some of the seed investor role. We provide the Clinics backbone to support these companies in terms of physical services or HR or just making cash flow. So it's, I think, at least in our view, kind of a reaction to the environment that we're finding. It's an improving environment, but, I think, every institution has to have its own approach to drive that environment forward. So I don't think any of us can afford to be reactive. I think the institutions need to step up and try to shape the landscape as much as they can.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: We were talking about this just the other day at Kent State. I was talking to the director of our Liquid Crystal Institute, John West, about this very early stage issue because we have spun off a significant number of companies based on new liquid crystal technology and they're staying in the region. And many of them received what Chris received from out of state investors within the Liquid Crystal Institute. Because we're hypothesizing of the momentum, we gather there around our NSF-sponsored science and technology center on advanced liquid crystal and optical materials. There was so much critical mass there and there was enough small buckets of discretionary research support money that we were able to take some of these ideas through that first prototype stage within the legitimate business of that science and technology center.

Now we're at the end of 11 years of funding and, essentially, we were talking about how do we continue that trail of activity as that particular source of funding is over. But it's similar to the model that Chris is talking about, in a sense, finding some vehicles within the organization to get through that first critical stage.

MR. COTICCHIA: I just wanted to say one word about how that situation has improved --.

MR. COBURN: Just a real-time example, we have a relationship with a person in Cleveland who is high net worth, who has never done biomedical investing. But we started to deal with him about a year ago and it's to look at young investing all around the country, and investing overseas. I really like the idea of doing something local. Why should I get on a plane when I can drive to see these deals. So, we've had several discussions, he actually came in on one of the deals that have occurred in the last few months, but we have an exciting new technology that is still extremely early stage. We haven't even filed on patents. We had identified someone to run the company, he's got a great background, would move to Ohio. This person committed $3 million on a handshake and still the technology and a company are still not even formed. We're not sure if that technology itself is going to hold up with competition from other prior-issued patents.

Just to give you a flavor, I do think things are changing. This is an example of a person who is done extremely well in other areas, and now, I think, is excited by the prospect of working locally, working with Case, working with us, Kent State, hopefully. And, you know, I think the landscape has improved.

MR. COTICCHIA: I want to mention something about expectations, which I think, is really, really important here. And everybody is a stake holder in this. It's important for stake holders to understand this, for ever 100 million dollars worth of research, you can expect 50 invention disclosures. You can expect 10 license agreements from those invention disclosures that will produce money, and potentially, a future in an existing product or a product. And only one will really be a spin-off company. So, if you run the numbers and take a look at that, the stake holder shouldn't be expecting Case or the Clinic or Kent State to be producing dozen of companies per year.

I think it's really important to understand that, and the kind of companies that we will be producing are going to be very early stage and take a lot of nurturing and take a lot of care and feeding. And there's two things that the business community can help us with, okay. While we're pushing out the technology, we need very early stage capital to move things along from a university prototype to a commercial prototype. We need help in putting together the business cases in a business plan. And we need the entrepreneurial business management talent to marry with the technical talent to pull these things out of the university.

MR. FERRARI: I beg to disagree slightly on the numbers, on the basis that, of course, the numbers are correct. However, I would like to compare the number of patents that come out, and companies that come out of the money invested in specific sectors, that is strategizing, I think, is the name of the game here. If you look at the overall investments in university research, of course, the numbers can be somewhat gloomy. Nevertheless, if you strategically focus your effort as a university on academic center or clinical center in certain areas, where, you know, you guess or you decide that you have a hunch, these are going to be the area where there is actually a likelihood of a rapid significant return. I think the numbers would look better than that, in my opinion, and based on that --.

MR. COTICCHIA: In previous patenting, but in my experience, when I was at Carnegie Melon, we didn't put an emphasis on patenting because a lot of information technology company's life cycle was so short, 3 years period. It wouldn't be worth doing that. So, sometimes that can be a difficult measure to use, to gauge.

MR. COBURN: One thing about the strategic level, I agree with Mark. There is a business leader who recently, in Cleveland, has been talking about, let's commit to a number. How many new companies do we want to create in the next five years? He's saying 100. Whether 100 is the right number or 150 or 50, I don't think it really matters. But if we say, what is it we want to achieve, then you start to step back from that and say okay, well how many spin-offs realistically can I expect from the institutions. If they are going to produce that many, how many do I want to recruit from foreign shores, Israel, Italy. We have some good discussions with Italian firms that are interested in coming to Cleveland. And I think it shapes much more outcome, oriented community approach. What is it we want? If it's 100 companies, in five years, what's that going to take? This person who has been pushing it likes a say, okay, there's a role for the banks, there's a role for the foundations, let's crystallize that as much as possible. And picking up on some points Mark made, you factor, what's the realistic expectation from the institutions. I made the point before, I think, clinical centers like the Cleveland Clinic, actually, are much closer to the market than the typical university. So, we would expect that we will have a greater flow of spin-offs than might be suggested by the traditional formula that Mark sighted.

MR. FERRARI: To me, the notion is that it takes several ingredients to be successful. Of course, in this exercise, all important exercise. One ingredient is the strategic focus for the City of Columbus. Many leaders have spoken about the focus, a very important focus being that of biomedical products, biomedical technology research. It takes a community effort and synergizing and, of course, the political end of things we talked about a moment ago, for the case of iMEDD, again, case in point, the transfer of iMEDD from California here was facilitated not only by the investment of State dollars, but also, by investment by local angels, by community leaders that invested out of their own pocket. Serving both, of course, their personal investment before you, as well as a community mission or responsibility which, I think, it really is, in my opinion.

And the third part, has to do with focus the creation of infrastructure, not only commercialization infrastructure, but also basic intellectual property development infrastructure. So what we have done at Ohio State University, is the establishment of this unique facility, the Ohio MicroMD lab, which is actually a facility which is opened to anybody around the state or academic or clinical researchers around the state. It is the only facility in the world, as far as we know, that marries micro-engineering technology research with biological research, life science temporary research and developments in a facility, the cost of which is quite high, that is accessible to academic researchers, as well as private sector companies.

So the investment there was done with strategic vision that the creation of an infrastructure, there would be very high costs for no matter who it is that wants to put it together, can be used to offset some of the initial investment costs that will be necessary for any company, anywhere in the world, that wanted to get in the field of biomedical micro-engineering technology and the ability to have free access with the retention of intellectual property. Free, not in the sense it doesn't cost, but to have, of course, access for an access fee with the retention of intellectual property that is already built, could be a great attractor for the city and for the state.

MR. COBURN: Do you mind if I ask, how expensive is the facility.

MR. FERRARI: The cost of the facility is about $27 million.

MR. COBURN: How much of that was paid for through state government or through OSU.

MR. FERRARI: OSU spent the majority of the funds for that. I can't answer exact because I don't know exact numbers. But significant, the majority of the investment was made by OSU, and it was also an investment by the City of Columbus and by the State in support of the initiatives.

MR. COBURN: Proximity matters in this game. That is a wonderful facility, it will mean a lot to central Ohio, but I'm willing to bet there won't be a tremendous amount of use from the Cleveland area or from Cincinnati. We need to get facilities like that at Kent State or at more appropriate private universities like Case Western Reserve. It is a challenge for us to have so much of the States capabilities at a distance from Cleveland. We need more of it here, at least from my experience.

MR. FROLIK: Let me talk in terms of the States role. And let me address the point you just made, Chris. Governor Taft talks about this third frontier project. Part of it investment in laboratories like that throughout the state. Also, part of it is, a significant part of it would be to endowed share and recruit top flight researchers. How important is it to bring the star researchers, the Mauro Ferrari's to Ohio? What does that do for us, in terms of the economic future or the status of the state.

MR. COBURN: At least from my experience, it makes an incredible amount of difference. In terms of bringing more talent, bring the secondary and tertiary level folks moving up the ladder. They take a cue when they see folks, the stars who are flourishing at those institutions. Right now, there are five members of the National Academy of Sciences living in Cleveland. Mark and I were just in a session with a scientist who hopefully will be elected a Case/UH professor some point in the future, but he was making the point, we're still subcritical. Look at Stanford or Cornell where these folks work together to get each other more heralded. In this community, we're, at least from my view, we're still not yet at the level where these folks can reinforce themselves. It matters when you're raising money. Look at how many business plans show a noble lawyer or member of the NAS on their scientific advisory board. That stuff helps and it directs resources.

MR. COTICCHIA: These star researchers attract huge amounts of monies for centers, for programs, in areas that we have core competencies. They bring graduate students and more research means more research results that can potentially be commercialized, and more people working on interesting things that will go off and seek commercial opportunities. So, it really is a key strategy, in my opinion, to go for star researchers to build areas of core competencies and leverage on the areas which we are good in.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: Absolutely. And it's also very important to have the tools available to hang onto your rising stars because there are stars that can be brought in and can instantly seed a program, but there are also rising stars that can be wooed away by someone else. Well, someone like Chris is on a lot of people's lists and you can bet your lucky stars that he's on my list as somebody that we really want to support and retain at Kent State and in Ohio, because he's working on some very, very exciting technology that is strategically linked to things that we already do very well. So, it could be, win, win, win.

MR. COBURN: It helps everyone when one institution gets better. You have, Kent State is better, it helps the Clinic and frankly, if UH and Case are better, it helps us. The tide goes up for everyone, and when you're recruiting a researcher, this has happened for us, recruiting someone to run a company where we can say, okay, there is talent and here's some talent at these other institution. The easiest way to assess that is to look at the vitals of the top stars.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: I could not agree more with that basic notion that -- but there is some level of competitiveness, and as long as that is directed towards really polishing your special jewels, it makes a lot of sense. But, if it interferes with the collaboration and the sense of all of us benefiting when one of us does well, then I think it's a real problem for us.

MR. COTICCHIA: It comes full circle then. One of the reasons why universities do tech commercialization, tech transfer, if you will, is to get their research results adopted widely into society. It's just another mechanism, but it is also a key strategy to attract and retain stars, okay, because stars look for good commercialization avenues for their research results. They realize this is away for them to get the research results adopted. And frankly, by having top notch technology transfer operations at our research institutions are going to help us with that strategy.

MR. FERRARI: There's so much, I don't know where to start. Let me just take issue for a moment with my friend Chris, here for a second, when he says we need to deploy facilities, in particular, was he referring to MicroMD all over the state. To me, what we need do is to be able to coordinate and make sure that we don't duplicate these very expensive facilities all over the place beyond what the actual user need for those facilities are. Meaning, of course, that there's a bit of history of reorganization of investments here in the state of Ohio, as I have learned.

That can be a treacherous, of course, pathway to take because the resources are always limited and you want to make sure you invest strategically and you reinforce evenly and fairly, of course, all the segments of the population, all the geographical areas. So, perhaps something good that we should be getting even better doing is coordinating investments, so as not to duplicate effort, especially if those facilities of the efforts have to be paid by the taxpayer or mainly, the majority by the taxpayer. So I would make a call for increased levels of collaboration in and among the institutions. I think that here in the northern part of the state, these alliances we have seen being formed and developing even further are a great sign.

Now, in terms of the notion of bringing people in. One of the thing, if I can bring from the outside, one bit of the little stories that are told about the state of Ohio, is that the State of Ohio has finally decided to allow, after a long, of course, resistance, to allow for motorists to take, to go to the red light until it turns green, make a right turn and go, like the rest of the country has adopted, sometime ago. Once the decision was made, then all sorts of signs went up at approximately every intersection in town that said, you can do that, but not at this particular light. Now, translating that notion, so there's a little bit of pushing for change, but at the same time, being afraid if change, if you will. What I have seen happen from time to time here around the state is that people, they can actually bring a significant amount of change and progress and they have the potential to be good team players, are brought in and given initial resources, and then there is a notion of fear that they, actually, may be doing perhaps, too much of this new thing that they were brought in to do. So to me, the notion of continuity, the notion of retention is going to be as important and, of course, Chris here, you were referring to keeping your stars, I'm sure that is a very important thing. If you bring people in, let them run.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: None of these things are either or. There are a lot of buts and ands that need to be connected in here. I think, if we think that we only need one of a kind of something in the state, without asking for what purpose, to what capacity, et cetera, we will miss the point. We may need one of X, but we may need 8 of Y, and then we may need 25 of Z. And we need to be thinking about the goals, and they ought to drive then, what we decide we need to investment in. And so much of what happens in discovery is at the intersections of fields of study. And if we start saying that liquid crystals is only going to happen at Kent State, and biomedicine is only going to happen somewhere else, we'll be dead in the water. We'll never get moving at all, because the excitement is letting people talk across boundaries and making sure that you create a culture that enables that and supports that. And then, if you decide you're get an area that is so specialized that you can really only afford one of something within a particular geographic area, then make that as a very thoughtful deliberate decision, but not just the only automatic we must only need one of those.

MR. FROLIK: I want to build on a point that you just made, having, if you will, bright people together in the laboratory. Chris, talk a little bit about, you were not a liquid crystal specialist when you arrived at Kent State. As I understand it, obviously, your background was in microbiology. They had the Liquid Crystal Institute. You went to what was just a lecture; right? That spurred was has become the basis of your company. Can you tell us a little bit about that, and kind of an idea of how people in different disciplines can work together.

MR. WOLVERTON: There are two issues there. To address your question directly, I attended a seminar that was put on by the Sigma XI chapter at our university. The content of the seminar was the director of the Liquid Crystal Institute giving a lay persons analysis of how laptop displays and cell phone displays and other liquid crystal displays worked, just to help the rest of society understand the technology. It was during that presentation that a thought occurred. When John kept using the term piezoelectric electric force to drive a liquid crystal, a synapse fired in my head that said, wait a minute, biological systems have approximately, the equivalent of a piezoelectric type of force. We wouldn't call that this in biology, but it's close, so I asked kind of naively, has anyone ever married a liquid crystal system to a biological system to see if you could replace that piezoelectric driver with a biological driver and answer was no, but let's talk more about that.

And had John West and his colleagues at the Liquid Crystal Institute not allowed me to pursue that, then the final product that became the company MicroDiagnosis would never have come to fruition. It was in that very serendipitous moment where an idea came to the forefront simply because two areas of science were allowed to merge in a conversation about a discipline for which I had no knowledge. And I don't want to speak for John West, but I think he would clearly say, he's not a biologist. And so, we were allowed to have that conversation. I think to reflect on other comments that were made a moment ago though. As faculty members, I look for critical mass. When our research team first got together, we began as people who could contribute to a common goal of developing a biosensor technology that would produce real-time results using liquid crystal amplification system. That couldn't have happened if there wasn't a critical mass of people who thought about those issues and who were able to put their best analysis forward to the table.

I think Dr. Cartwright is absolutely right. If we pat ourselves on the back and say we're doing well in these areas, and, therefore, we don't need additional mass, I think we shoot ourselves in the foot. Great ideas happen when people brainstorm, they come together with very naive questions, as I asked, and not knowing the state of the art of liquid crystals, ask that what appeared to be a stupid question. I dare say, one of the liquid crystal experts probably would not have asked that question because it wouldn't have come to a situation where the question would have been begged because their knowledge is very specific in one area, mine was very specific in another. So the bridge occurred very fortuitously.

MR. FROLIK: Mauro, you also, your appoint also at Kent State, I'm sorry, at Ohio State.

MR. FERRARI: I didn't know I had one. That was the way to break the news. Thank you.

MR. FROLIK: It was also, it was the engineering and medical school deans, right, talking about creating a new position.

MR. FERRARI: Exactly right. Actually, the history of that is that my chairman at Berkeley became the Dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State and in his early part, the early part of his tenure here, his name was David Ashley, it still is David Ashley, that was back in California. Early part of his stay here he got together with Bernadine Healy and they compared agendas and it seemed like they were both interested in fortifying their program and mutually collaborating and creating a strong interface, so they decided that they would go out and try to recruit and try to develop a biomedical engineering program, which historically had been quite successful at Ohio State, perhaps at a different level and this is how this came about. They called me up, I came over, I liked it immediately. It felt like home, as I say, it felt like home more than home ever did, and I was delight today accept the offer.

MR. COBURN: It's exciting to see that same approach in medicine. Our chairman of surgery, Joe Hahn, several years ago, created and thrust a minimally invasive surgery and once a week, at 7:00 a.m. Every Friday, folks from a whole set of different disciplines meet to talk about miniaturization, less invasive approaches to the treatment of the disease and diagnosis of the disease. And it's just exciting as it can be to see this change between these folks from someone from cardiac surgery talking over issues with folks from the GI world where it's a common approach where they're energizing each other. It's really become a hallmark, I think, in at least our community to have this kind of exchange.

MR. FERRARI: That would be an important point to make for our university leadership. We need to help bring down the systems in which academic knowledge is typically divided.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: I have a great story in that regard.

MR. FERRARI: I'm looking forward to hearing that.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: We have a very strong core competency in computer science, very strong computer science department driven from mathematics rather than engineering, so that creates a special set of opportunities. They invited me over to have a little departmental visit and usually that ends up with a request for funds, as it did this time. But they were saying, you know, we have so many embryonic ideas about things we could connect to, but we feel that we just can't get over the hump to get some of these things done because we don't have the funds to do it.

So I threw a little challenge out and said, tell me what you need. I have a small amount of discretionary money that I can use to seed new academic programs. What do you need? Well, in the end, they needed something like $10,000 to bring a couple of key speakers that they thought would spark some ideas to buy coffee and cookies and lunch and things like that when they brought people together. And out of that meeting has come a very significant group and a new institute for computational science where they're doing four dimensional cellular analyses based on the ability to analyze the data sets from computer science and the interaction that they are having with faculty in biology, chemistry and physics. So as we moved from genomics to proteinomics, we've really got the technology to look at what's going on in the cells in terms of how the proteins are behaving or misbehaving. And that's as far as I can go with my science of proteinomics.

But the point is, it would not have happened without a little bit of encouragement that just basically said here's some support for bringing people together. You have a sort of instinct that if you get these people together, things are going to happen that will be productive and I'm willing to help you invest. And it took a very modest level and it probably wasn't the dollars, really, in the end but the sense we're on somebody's radar screen, and if we get this rolling, it's going to go way beyond our wildest dreams. And, in fact, it is moving in that direction.

MR. WOLVERTON: If you'll allow me just to piggyback on that, to add just a little bit more science to the equation.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: Thank you.

MR. WOLVERTON: What came out of that very naive set of questions, can we bring groups of people together who normally would not come together because they study very specific disciplines and ask different types of questions, if we bring them together into a room and ask them to approach a problem from their own basis, from their own discipline, would that spur ideas in the minds of others? I think the answer that we're starting to see very, very successfully at Kent is yes.

And when we had one of these powwows that was funded by University money, put physicists and chemists and biologists and computer scientists and physical chemists in the room and asked the question how could you simulate a cell in three dimensions, if not four, using data stream that's coming from a confocal microscope, again, a very specific question coming from biologists and chemists and physicists, how would you do this and the computer scientists say, well, we would do it this way and the physicists said, wouldn't you do it that way. And so this dialogue began and all of a sudden out of the dialogue spurred new ideas that resulted in a very successful research grant.

MR. FERRARI: Actually, what we are doing now -- that is a wonderful concepts. What has happened at Ohio State, we have for the first time I believe in the history of the university, a major investment mechanism in the recruitment of new faculty has been given to a program which doesn't really have a house is a program that we call cardiovascular bioengineering or cardiovascular bioengineering initiative. The university has dedicated essentially a million dollars a year for indefinite funds forever, hopefully, or whenever I die, whichever comes earlier, and for the hiring of significant number of faculty. Could be 10, 15 faculty, all of which will be 50 percent appointments in, say, biomedical engineering and cardiothoracic surgery or cardiology or new heart and lung research institute so as to bring different competencies together and essentially create this type of interactive environment where you don't have to be shy or worried about asking the wrong question because typically there is not such a thing as the wrong question.

And coming from a different perspective is many times the spark that allows you to see the way you are supposed to be traveling.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: And that's exactly what you were talking about. It's a little different, Chris, in the sense that they're not academic disciplines, but they are certainly highly-specialized fields of medicine and you get that same sense of catalytic activity when you get people together talking about some interest that may be somewhat common but not completely.

MR. COBURN: And it's just, again, where the outcomes are so demonstrable in the sense of the clinical approach, a new surgical approach, a new technology. To see it happen and see it happen real time is really, I think, wonderful for the community.

MR. FROLIK: To get back a little bit to the role of the star researcher, you have in the eminent scholars program, you had two appointments approved although not funded. You're waiting for the next round of funding. How do you decide how to use those and how do you go about shopping, if you will, as a university president.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: Well, we had a very elaborate internal review process where we ask programs, research areas, academic disciplines, interdisciplinary programs -- it was a fairly broad and inclusive invitation -- to advance proposals to the research vice-president and the provost where they believed an eminent scholar could take a program to the next level. And then we sat down and had to make some very strategic choices about where we were most ready, where we could most benefit, and we prioritized our list and sent it forward to the Board of Regents.

They then brought in external peer reviewers that did a kind of big first cut through all of the proposals that had been submitted, and then they brought in specific teams to do site visits and look in a lot more detail at the specific ideas before they put a kind of super-review panel together to once again sort through them on the basis of statewide priorities. And they had a published list of criteria. We also understood what those criteria were going to be and we were able to use versions of them as we did our internal competition.

MR. FROLIK: Mark, the process that culminated last week with the hiring of the scholar from Los Alamos, I assume that was underway before you got to Case. Would you talk a little bit about how that fit in and how you decided that that was the person you were going to go after.

MR. COTICCHIA: It was well underway before I arrived at the scene. We went through a very similar process that Carol had eloquently outlined, and the bottom line is we have a world class fuel cell research team at Case Western Reserve and the gentleman from Los Alamos has, in addition to that, really does emphasize and underscore that fact now. And that is one of the techniques that I plan to deploy to help increase our research base at Case Western Reserve.

One of my charges is to increase the research base as well as to vastly improve our tech commercialization activities. So going after star researchers, identifying your core competencies, what you really do well and leveraging on that and building upon that is a strategy to build your research base.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: In fact, the eminent scholar proposal that we were talking about from Kent State was really broader than Kent State because it would have been a theoretical liquid crystal physicist who would have been shared with also with Case Western Reserve and the University of Akron because of the alliances that we have already built among the institutions around a new generation of advanced materials.

And we knew exactly -- I'm sorry, Chris, just one more sentence. We knew who we would go after and we're still looking to try to put that funding together even though it hasn't yet been funded from State sources. Because as you develop those proposals, you have got a short list in your mind. You are always saying somebody like. In your case, Mauro, somebody like Mauro.

MR. WOLVERTON: I just wanted to add an additional comment that I think while core competency is an essential part of looking to who those scholars are going to be, I think having some flexibility built in to allow the natural bridging and collaborations with people who aren't specifically in that tight discipline is essential so that you can see what's going to be coming down the pipeline five, ten, twenty years because you are naturally going to allow for interactions between people.

MR. FERRARI: And to lead the role of endowed chairs is really extraordinarily important for them to talk about because endowed chairs typically come with a little bit of discretionary money, discretionary funds which allow faculty to seed programs that could be truly interdisciplinary that could be not off the wall that could be in areas for which the federal agencies have not found a home for funding, for issued funding yet. So that allows you to create competencies and get ahead of the game in the areas that can become physically important.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: And you have an uneven history in terms of the opportunities, a sort of implicit permission to raise private support within different kinds of institutions that is bridged a bit if there is some support from the State. Historically, public institutions have been discouraged from raising private dollars and donors would often say, you get public support, so I'm going to direct my resources elsewhere.

Within the last couple of decades, that has changed substantially because it's now much better understood that private institutions are, in fact, getting public money and it's also understood that public institutions can't operate without some private support and certainly can't operate at the margins of centers of excellence that they want to without the private support. But we have got quite a long history that has created a lot more endowed chairs in some kinds of institutions than in others.

MR. COBURN: I think Carol's point underscores the important role of government as catalyst. It's not that the State is going to underwrite the cost of these chairs, but it gives Carol a wonderful opportunity to go talk to sponsors and say, look, you can co-invest rather than starting from scratch. And if it's a private sector, equity investment or if it's philanthropy, people always like to see others in there with them. It reassures them.

MR. FROLIK: Carol's counterpart at OSU, Brit Kirwin, talked about the statement targeting investment in centers of excellence. Chris, when you were in the Celeste administration, you put the eminent scholars program together in the '80s. That was definitely one of the goals, one of the things you talked about.

How important is that for the State and for the individual institutions to do and, also, politically, how difficult is that? We have a state university within driving distance of everyone in Ohio.

MR. COBURN: Within 30 minutes.

MR. FROLIK: With only so much money to go around.

MR. COBURN: 23 two-year colleges, 32 regional campuses. I think the importance of an eminent scholars program, and I have to say I was Governor Celeste's science advisor, but I did not personally directly participate in the design of the program. But I think the importance of something like that is, again, it's the concept of a rising tide. You can have people focus strategically. You can get to where you want in the future if you have incentives like this versus using a stick where you say, we're going to assess all these programs and Kent State, you have to get rid of these three areas or Ohio State.

I think it's so much better to do it where you are giving the institutions new resources and saying, okay, identify your priorities, let's direct future investment and Ohio gets to where it needs to go I think more quickly that way than using I don't want to say a punitive approach, but certainly using the approach of a shrinking pie.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: Let's not think of center of excellence as one physical organization. Let's think of it as a group of scholars that are networked together around an area of mutual interest and are committed to working together on ongoing discovery and problem solving in their field.

In today's world, that makes a lot of sense because the scientists all know where they are and our challenge really is to put our arms around them and identify them as a group, whether they're all sitting in one building somewhere or whether there are ten of them one place and five somewhere else and six somewhere else.

MR. FERRARI: Allow me to -- actually, I think that a good paradigm was followed in the case of Ohio MicroMD. Ohio MicroMD was born as a consortium of several institutions around the state. As a matter of fact, the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western, Ohio State, Buchtel and a number of other places. University of Cincinnati, University of Akron. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you. I just didn't know. It was a few years back. So we got, again, the role of the State in that particular case, we put together request for funding for equipment and the equipment was distributed to all of these locations for the scientists that are there to be able to employ of course to do their research.

And on top of that, of course, Ohio State put together the money to create an infrastructure to put certain number of critical pieces of equipment in and we added to that additional components down the road so it would be a facility that integrated all of this but not at the expense of the research centers everywhere else. We got all of the equipment at the various affiliated facilities and we are working together. That really created a lot of interaction, collaborations.

Based on that, we got money from Department of Defense that we're sharing with the Cleveland Clinic. So I think that this approach, if you are able to play this as a team sport and be best buddies, which is what we need to do, and take the lead sometimes and the second spot and third spot in other occasions, that's what it takes because of the rising tide.

MR. COBURN: Mauro makes an excellent point. If you look back to the mid-80s, just to pick Ohio State, at least when I was working with the University, you would see them collaborate frequently with other Big Ten schools, if it was pursuit of federal money or if it was industrial consortium. I think the role of the State government here and it's not so much a resource question as a question of helping the community identify itself and set an agenda. So if today it's MEMS, in the '80s and early '90s it was the materials network, of course the Ohio supercomputer center, it pulls this community together.

So now they're more likely to have collaboration between Ohio State and UC than, let's say, Ohio State and Northwestern or Indiana. So it does help to I think shrink some of the geography in Ohio.

And again looking back on the 80s, I think one of the interesting dynamics back then was people were waking up and saying, you know, I'm part of a community here in Ohio. We can share opportunities. We can be good for each other. I have to say, at least during my time in Columbus, that was a new idea. Now it's kind of taken for granted. We have local groups like NEOSA and we have statewide groups, but that really was not the case and I think it's an affirming role for government. It's a very important one.

MR. FERRARI: Yes. Absolutely. And to give credit where credit is due, of course our political leadership has taken a lot of flack because of this crap, you know, the Ohio Plan. But let's look at things that are happening for a moment. Now, with the tobacco money initiative and plus with the new initiatives, the emphasis has been put on collaborative proposals from multiple institutions and a major contribution, a major role to be played by the private sector.

So again, I hear that the State, this course that Chris was talking about, put into practice using the State money and state infrastructure is a way to catalyze collaboration between the parties and to get the private sectors to come in and contribute because the private sector is really the key player, the key enabler in all of this. Well, the government should do, in many ways, should do more of that as much as possible, subject to the contingencies of the situation has created the opportunity. But then it's really up to the players and not the coach.

MR. FROLIK: Let me ask you as a parent, as a taxpayer in Ohio, if I'm sending one of my children to Kent State or Ohio State, you have these excellent faculty members, but you guys both have companies that you started, you're very involved in your research. I'm thinking again as a taxpayer and a tuition payer, where does teaching fit in, and in this talk about universities as economic engines, where does old-fashioned classroom work fit in for you guys and just overall in terms of the role of the institutions?

MR. FERRARI: Well, I have been teaching now as much as I ever taught. I always taught in particular because I really love teaching. I always taught more than the average of every place I've ever been and now with a company and as the director of my center, I continue to teach more than most of my faculty because, let's look at it this way, people in this line of business, they really love what they do. People tend to love to talk about things that they love doing and that is the case I think for the vast majority of faculty.

But this is perhaps somewhat besides the point. I would like to answer to you with an observation. Whether we like it or not, what does the word, in common parlance, what does the work academic mean? Many people take the word academic to mean useless, and I take that as an offense, of course, perhaps a deserved insult, but it is something that really reflects what happens in many cases. Not that the knowledge becomes tough. Your teaching becomes routine. The renewal of the knowledge base of instructors is limited, is not stimulated enough.

Entrepreneurship is a wonderful way to keep our faculty really with their hands in the trenches and fighting the wars with the foot soldiers and understanding what is happening out there and keeping up to speed with what is happening in the real sector and understanding where the opportunities are. And that really flows directly. That's a very important part of education and instruction, of course, for your children coming to school with us because we allow such as a faculty to teach them what is really important and what is happening out there and it is learned firsthand and by people showing that they have the scars that prove they have practical knowledge. So I think it is a great investment for the taxpayers.

MR. COBURN: CWRU did a study a little more than ten years ago that said that more than 85 percent of the work force, future work force in Ohio is being educated in Ohio's institutions today. It's hard to imagine a more important investment both in terms of actual skills but also cultural issues.

If you think about where we need to be 20 years from now, we need entrepreneurship to be in the water, and that's going to come through the educational system. People are going to see these opportunities. They're going to be made aware of them. They're going to be working a cross-disciplinary setting and we really need to count on our institutions.

MR. FROLIK: Chris?

MR. WOLVERTON: I think to answer your question very directly, I left a fairly lucrative industrial position to come to Kent State and I did so because of my feelings of commitment and a sense of payback to help upcoming scientists learn what it was to do science and to do it in an environment that was safe that allowed them to fail but not be penalized for failing so that they could learn from their mistakes.

I came to Kent State specifically because at the time it was catalogued as a Carnegie Research II institution, which meant that the university valued equally undergraduate education as well as research and graduate education. To me, that was one of the most important reasons for my coming to Kent State. Could have gone elsewhere. In fact, one of my goals and actually turned down a position at a medical school. My goal was to make sure that I could inspire undergraduate students the way I was inspired when I was in college. Because if I didn't have a professor who taunted me and forced me to ask questions that the average student might not have asked because, well, it just wasn't on the test, then I wouldn't have pursued graduate school, and if I didn't pursue graduate school, then I wouldn't have come to be a professor at the University, and if I wasn't a professor at the University, I wouldn't have had the opportunities that resulted in a technology which is going to become one of the first of its kind to do real-time diagnosis.

And so I think it's all hand and glove. The research and the entrepreneurial activities validate me as a scholar, at least to myself, so that I can communicate that enthusiasm and that support to my students and hopefully inspire them to become the next if not better professor or better entrepreneur that's then going to take the next invention out to where they would not only recoup the benefits commercially but then go on to inspire others.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: Chris' use of that research II university is interesting kind of academic shorthand for talking about mission, and now that Carnegie foundation has changed their classification. They sort of rolled us in with Case and Ohio State and Cincinnati, so we can't rely on the shorthand anymore to tell the story. We really have to talk about the balance between the teaching and the research and the undergraduate and graduate programs.

And I think we have found some effective ways to do that. We do talk about one being implemented for the benefit of the other. We want the undergraduate program to be different because there is a research program in place and we also want the research and graduate program to take on different characteristics because we have a commitment to undergraduate education. That's, actually, one of the main components of our strategic plan is to really try to leverage both components for the benefit of the other.

When I go on the road to talk to you and your fellow parents and your about to become college students, I tell stories about students working in Chris' lab, undergraduate students and about undergraduate students working in other professors laboratories and benefiting from participation in the discovery process and sometimes making their own discoveries. We had a biology student recently who was working on a project in Florida's fragile scrub ecosystems and discovered a new species of spider.

So here is a published scholar at the undergraduate level because an institutional mission was really focused on enabling those undergraduate students to get close to the professors who are doing the research and to sense not only the scientific method but the passion which you heard both in Chris and Mauro's comments.

MR. FERRARI: Not to mention the fact that having been a published, of course, researcher as an undergraduate, of course, it opens up incredible opportunities and helps beef up the value of your, if you are applying to med school, to grad school, if you are going looking for a job, so having been exposed to creative thinking and problem solving as documented by research, academic research publication is a great value for somebody's personal portfolio.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: But even for students, undergraduates, who are not headed to graduate school, employers tell us that these kinds of skills are extremely valuable.

MR. WOOLVERTON: We run a program that is a cooperative agreement with Akron based and, in fact, state based hospitals. It's a Bachelor of Science degree in medical technology, and one of the consistent comments I hear from the directors of the hospital-based programs is, please send us students who can do problem solving, because in the lab, in the workplace in general, we want students who are not just a pair of hands but are a pair of smart hands, that they can do problem solving and are able to think critically.

And I think certainly one of my personal goals as an educator and one that I see very often taught at Kent State is the whole concept of can you think critically about a situation regardless of the discipline.

MR. FROLIK: We talked quite a bit today about technology transfer, that finding those things, the Mauro Ferraris, the Chris Wolvertons of the world are coming up with and pushing them out into industry and into the real world, to the hospitals and things like that.

Mark and Chris, if you'd talk a lit about, how does that work? How do you find out what is going on in all those laboratories at Case or at the Cleveland Clinic so that you know there's something that has commercial potential?

MR. COTICCHIA: It's no small challenge, and, frankly, a lot of organizations, research institutions alike aren't very good at it because they don't have enough of the right kind of resources mining the opportunities.

Tech transfer happens many ways. Graduated students, publications, seminars, education, training, all kinds of ways to get research results disseminated out into society. And so when we talk about tech transfer, we're really focusing on the commercial aspects of it, the licensing, the spin-off companies.

And how does it happen in practice? Well, the best way for it to happen is ultimately a tech transfer person which is typically a business person that can bridge the gap between technical and business, sits down and works with the faculty members to identify ways to get his or her research results adopted into society by using commercial means. The mechanics of this, and I'll oversimplify, is basically the researcher or faculty member or staff member fills out an invention disclosure, describes the research results, if you will, and then the business person and the technology transfer office assesses the technical merit by using external or internal peer review kind of processes, looks at the market aspect of it and, frankly, puts a lot of emphasis on the market aspect of it because this is a commercialization process, and then takes a look at the opportunity to potentially patent or protect the intellectual property.

A decision is then made as to is there a licensee, is there a way for us path forward to commercialize this technology, keeping in mind that most of the stuff that we're looking at, as we mentioned earlier, is basic research. So we're really fortunate if we find something that can be a feature in an existing product that is out there, let alone the basis for a product let alone a spin-off company.

MR. COBURN: I think Mark has well described the mechanics of the system. I would just add that underlying all of that is a cultural dimension which cannot be, again, overstated. Having folks understand that this needs to be part of the everyday environment is what's going to I think drive this part of our economy in the future. So rather than having the invention kind of occurring or the commercialization occurring at the tail end after all this work has been done, it needs to be considered right up front.

And I think it's an important challenge for the institutions to carry that out and for the community at large. I have to say, at least based on my experience, it's much better in northeastern Ohio than it has been in the past, but we still have a ways to go. And so I think a key to being successful, and if you look at the successful regions, it is the fact that it's recognized as part of the culture.

One small thing. I was just passing this out to Mark earlier today. We're having our first ever commercialization series at the Clinic and this is a set of top flight speakers both from internal to the Clinic, so peers who have done it as well as venture capitalists. In other words, we've brought in to talk to our folks and help to shift the culture, alert people that you need to be thinking about this early on. Again, our environment is a little different. Clinical outcomes are a part of everyday life. But nonetheless, it needs to be as much a part of the culture as it possibly can be.

MR. WOLVERTON: I think Chris is right on target. The culture has to be there. Coming from an industrial background, we got yearly seminars. When you think you have got something novel, when you think you have done something different that's better, faster, stronger, talk to the technology transfer person. In general, I think the culture at institutes of higher education is let's pursue a publication, let's pursue a textbook, and it's not an immediate thought towards commercialization and certainly not towards intellectual property protection.

And I think as more emphasis is placed on the amazing rewards that come back to the universities and to the inventors by delaying the publication process only slightly so that the invention disclosure can be filed, that more and more faculty members are beginning to see that this little extra step can payoff big for the university and in general for society as that product rolls out. So I think the culture is not quite there yet but it's slowly coming around to a climate where faculty members, especially in sciences but all disciplines, are starting to step back and say, gee, I wonder what else I can do with this idea besides writing a publication.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: As a leader of an institution, you can see that culture. You can, knowing these goals, you can bring in people like Chris who are real life examples of how you get it done. You can put a focus on the businesses that are spun off by way of spotlighting them or celebrating them within the organization. You can make a lot of hoopla around hiring the right people in the technology transfer office, and all of those sorts of things begin to add to that changed culture that encourages more people to get involved.

MR. COBURN: That also occurs on a community basis. I think that's an important point. Within the institution and, again, programs like our own and the others you have heard about are helping to change the culture, but we're all aided by the fact that if more good things happen at Case or Kent State or take the Hunt Willard example at Case/UH and Athersis. He came from Stanford. He created a tremendous success here and that's a message that is carried throughout the region. We need to celebrate more of that and carry that message throughout.

MS. CARTWRIGHT: You made that point earlier and I'm glad you came back to it because it is a good one. There are cultures and then there are larger cultures, and in this case, we really want to try to create those broader, deeper cultures.

MR. COTICCHIA: And just to add to the culture piece, I agree with everything that was said. And really, it takes a lot of missionary work to change the culture. It has to be something that the institution values, and that's from an internal standpoint. It has to be something that the faculty and researchers are rewarded for that kind of activity and it's something that we all celebrate.

But also out in the business community, it's about understanding that it's making the pie bigger and not slicing it up. And that's a kind of culture that you see in Boston and Silicon Valley and in Austin and some other pockets around the nation, but it's also one that is starting to be adopted by other regions and it's one that we need to adopt in our business culture.

MR. FERRARI: These concepts about cultural shifts are very much to the point and I just could not express them more eloquently than all of you have. That's exactly right. I would like to add