Encouraging innovation and commercialization as an academic leader

Given the fierce global competition for jobs in the high-growth industries of the future, the US needs to do everything it can to prime the pump of innovation through our extensive research enterprise.

As academic leaders, we have a key role to play by supporting breakthrough research at our institutions and the commercialization of the best inventions that emerge from our laboratories.

My own experience as a researcher and entrepreneur taught me important lessons that I brought to my leadership roles as Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY) opens in new tab/window from 2017 to 2020 and as President of The Ohio State University opens in new tab/window from 2020 to 2023. At Ohio State, we increased research expenditures by nearly 50% in just three academic years, from $968 million to $1.45 billion, with a smart strategy for growth. That moved us from 24^th to 11^th on the National Science Foundation (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD opens in new tab/window) rankings — and 7^th among public universities.

An indelible lesson on the power of cross-disciplinary research

The earliest lesson I learned about academic research was in college: the value of cross-disciplinary collaborations in solving previously intractable problems. During my senior year at Stanford opens in new tab/window University, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system that less than a decade earlier had been considered a universal death sentence. Fortunately, in the early 1950s, Stanford radiologist Henry S Kaplan had been hearing what he called “cocktail party conversations” about the world’s most powerful particle accelerator opens in new tab/window being built at Stanford for experiments in high-energy physics. He invited opens in new tab/window one of the designers, Dr Ed Ginzton, a professor of electrical engineering and physics, to lunch opens in new tab/window — and, as legend has it, complained that the radiation he was using to treat his cancer patients wasn’t strong enough to actually kill the diseased cells.

So the two came up with the idea for a medical linear accelerator, or LINAC, one that had the power of Ginzton’s beam but that would fit in a hospital room. By the time I was diagnosed, the LINAC was part of the “Stanford protocol” for treating Hodgkin’s disease. But for this partnership between physics, engineering and medicine — I would not have the pleasure of writing this column.

I’ve observed since that whenever a research university has its own medical center and medical schools, there are always questions about whether the medical center should be somehow split off from the rest of the university, since its economics are so different. As I learned while being treated for cancer, at the frontiers, medicine cannot do without physics and engineering and many other disciplines. So it’s important for academic leaders to defend those structures that encourage unity and cooperation.

My cancer treatment inspired my own doctoral work, which involved the use of holographic methods to visualize computed tomographic (CT) scans of the human body in 3D. The idea was to give oncologists, surgeons and radiologists better images of cancerous tumors in patients to better plan a course of treatment. I used my own CT scans in my thesis, which required me to understand medical imaging, physiology, materials science and laser physics.

As you can see, I developed a great respect for cross-disciplinary research early in my career. But it was really an anomaly at American universities until 1985, when the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched the Engineering Research Center (ERC) program opens in new tab/window, which helped to upend the model of the lone professor doing research in a laboratory with her or his own graduate students. At the time, the US was losing ground in manufacturing semiconductors and other high-tech products to Japan, so the concept of the ERC was to fund cross-disciplinary research, with industry supplying the problems and needs to accelerate advanced manufacturing methods.

Lessons learned in commercialization

As a new assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder opens in new tab/window in 1987, I was part of the team that proposed an NSF/ERC grant in Optoelectronic Computing Systems opens in new tab/window. We won it in part because we had an ambitious dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science in Richard Seebass, and he made sure to throw his full weight behind our proposal by coming with us to Washington, DC, to support our pitch. So I learned the value of having university leadership backing the faculty when they are vying for major grants.

Our ERC — where I was co-principal investigator and associate director and later became director — was very successful. It spun off my own company, ColorLink — which modernized projection television and developed the 3D technologies used in movies like Avatar — as well as companies that produced fundamental work on QR codes and miniature liquid crystal displays. And it educated students in multiple disciplines, from materials science to advanced optical communication systems.

I also helped devise CU Boulder’s first model for tech transfer, after the administrators who had been tasked with licensing faculty research almost derailed my first company while trying to maximize short-term revenue for the university. This taught me that the goal of university tech transfer offices should not be immediate profit but instead moving fundamental breakthroughs into the marketplace, where they can do some good.

As Chancellor of SUNY, I discovered that the most important aspect of running a vibrant research and tech transfer operation is a great team. I was especially lucky here: Dr Grace Wang opens in new tab/window was beside me twice, serving as Senior Vice Chancellor of Research and Economic Development at SUNY and as Executive VP for Research, Innovation and Knowledge at Ohio State. She was tremendously successful in both roles, and I admire Worcester Polytechnic Institute for its great wisdom in tapping her as its president in 2022.

While it’s crucial to rely on great people, sometimes as an academic leader, you have to step in simply because you have the connections to make things happen. When I became Chancellor of the SUNY system, SUNY Polytechnic was still reeling after its former president was charged with criminal bid-rigging. The school, which included the Albany NanoTech Complex — one of the world’s most advanced semiconductor research, development and prototyping facilities — needed to retain the existing corporate partners to make use of its magnificent facilities and attract a new partner to the Marcy, New York, campus. Unfortunately, the Austrian sensor chip company ams AG had backed out of a deal to serve as the anchor tenant at SUNY Polytechnic’s Marcy Nanocenter opens in new tab/window after the state had already spent many millions getting the site ready.

Moore’s Second Law holds that as the transistor count on a microchip increases exponentially, so does the cost of a semiconductor factory. Today, a fab for the most advanced silicon chips can exceed $20 billion. I knew that by itself, New York was unlikely to come up with incentives sufficient to attract one. But I also knew that it was possible to build a factory for silicon carbide chips for power electronics for an order in magnitude less ($1 billion to $2 billion).

I asked people in state government why they were not talking to Cree, which had announced that it would expand its Wolfspeed silicon carbide chip production capacity 30-fold to meet the needs of electric car manufacturers and other customers. They said, “We tried. They are not taking our calls.” Well, I knew the former Cree chairman from my time as Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke opens in new tab/window: Bob Ingram, a true prince. I convinced him to have Cree take a look at the Marcy Nanocenter. Cree chose the site for Wolfspeed opens in new tab/window and committed to a package that included $30 million in R&D spending in partnership with SUNY.

How we doubled research funding and boosted impact

When I accepted the presidency of Ohio State, Research reported to one senior VP, Tech Transfer to another, and Corporate Sponsorships to another. My experiences as an entrepreneur had taught me this is not the way to accomplish something we all talk about: making sure university research gets out into the world where it can have a positive impact. So I brought these functions together by creating the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge opens in new tab/window, headed by Grace, to make sure our best inventions flowed unobstructed towards commercialization.

I was thrilled to recruit Grace to Ohio State. Given our success at SUNY, we believed we could double Ohio State’s research expenditures within the decade. We decided to first test out this goal by consulting with the distinguished faculty who made up the President and Provost’s Advisory Committee (PPAC). PPAC was extremely enthusiastic and asked us to support research and provide resources for the faculty to carry out early-stage explorations. So we developed the President’s Research Excellence Fund (PREF), which offers seed grants for two kinds of projects:

Catalyst grants of up to $50,000 per year for small teams to pursue high-risk, high-reward ideas that could lead to larger federal grants down the road

Accelerator grants of up to $200,000 per year for cross-disciplinary teams hoping to establish Ohio State’s leadership in an emerging field.

We also trained our faculty in assembling large cross-disciplinary research proposals that could expand the impact of our research. As a result, we added 10 major centers in just a few short years — including both NIH- and NSF-funded centers — and research expenditures soared.

Knowing when to step in — or step back

The moral of this story? Listen to your faculty. They will tell you what they need to create and innovate.

I’ve found that if you intend to oversee a successful research operation as a university president, it is sometimes crucial, despite the demands on your time, to get involved in making things happen. At other times, nothing more is required of you than just to support the people who know how to produce. The art is in knowing when to do which.

In 2022, Ohio State was competing with other universities for the leadership of a new ERC. In partnership with four other universities and more than 70 collaborators in other sectors, our team was proposing a center for Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing Moving from Evolution to Revolution — or HAMMER opens in new tab/window — to develop revolutionary intelligent manufacturing systems. I certainly did not write the grant for this ERC, but I knew it was important for me to be there at the NSF site visit and to deliver opening remarks. I had the background and the knowledge to help a fantastic team win one of the largest research investments in Ohio State in a decade.

A way forward with or without the government funding we hope for

Without question, if the US hopes to invent and build the industries of the future, its universities could use more resources to support the ideas of their faculty and students. The federal investment opens in new tab/window in research nationwide has not grown in tandem with increasing global competition.

But barring a larger overall commitment to research nationally — we academic leaders still can do a great deal to encourage innovation at our institutions by hiring dynamic administrators in research and tech transfer, by listening to our faculty, and by advocating for them whenever we can.