Ties Between Academic Research and Industry Should Be Strengthened



Read Full Report Date: Oct. 9, 2003 Contacts: Patrice Pages, Media Relations Officer Christian Dobbins, Media Relations Assistant Office of News and Public Information 202-334-2138; e-mail <news@nas.edu> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Ties Between Academic Research and Industry Should Be Strengthened WASHINGTON -- Whether in the form of advanced surgical techniques, improved aircraft design, or upgraded Internet browsers, academic research is having a long-term impact on industrial performance, says a new report from the National Academies' National Academy of Engineering. But the benefits of academic research could be expanded by increasing the number and scope of collaborations between industry and universities. The report explores the growing imbalance in federal funding among various scientific fields of academic research; the underdeveloped links between research universities and service industries, which make up about 80 percent of the U.S. economy; and conflicts between industry concerns -- such as management and protection of intellectual property -- and university missions of teaching, research, and service. The committee that wrote the report assessed the relationship between academic research and industrial performance in five sectors, selected for their importance to the economy in terms of sales and employment, their extensive use of technology, and their expected growth rates: network systems and communications; medical devices and equipment; financial services; aerospace; and transportation, distribution, and logistics services. Academic research has had a significant impact on performance of the first three, but only a moderate impact on the last two, the committee said. The network systems industry has a history of capitalizing on fundamental innovations from academic research and testing concepts that have become the underpinnings of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and e-commerce. Future innovations in this sector will be more likely if collaborations between universities and industry increase. For example, high-caliber industry researchers and engineers should be encouraged to take sabbaticals to work at universities, and universities should ensure that students have the skills they need to work in industry, the report says. Universities also must be aware that valuable innovations and engineering in the field of computer networking are often not channeled through traditional peer-reviewed publications, the committee said, but rather through collaborations between academic researchers and their industrial counterparts. Therefore, these collaborations should carry more weight in decisions about academic promotion and tenure, the committee added. The medical devices and equipment industry has taken advantage of multidisciplinary research at universities -- especially in the physical sciences and engineering -- and has used university medical centers both for the development of medical devices and for clinical trials. The contribution of academic research to new medical technologies could be optimized by increasing interactions between faculty in engineering and medical schools, the report says. Universities should develop interdisciplinary centers that would generate new knowledge which could lead to the development of innovative diagnostic, therapeutic, and other devices, the committee said. In addition, funding agencies should carefully evaluate interdisciplinary initiatives in biomedicine and engineering, and support the most promising ones. Despite the financial industry's lack of a well-developed research and development infrastructure, academic research in economics, engineering, and mathematics has contributed to the development of new financial instruments and tools. Nevertheless, financial firms need to better communicate their needs to universities and encourage technical personnel to monitor and take advantage of advances in academic research, the committee said. At the same time, academia should track issues important to the financial industry and incorporate them into research. To achieve these goals, more research exchanges – such as sabbaticals in industry for university researchers, and teaching opportunities in universities for industry practitioners – are needed, the report says. Also, an engineering research center for financial services should be created, modeled on the engineering research centers supported by the National Science Foundation. In the aerospace sector, government support is generally declining, and industry's support for university research naturally tends to be focused on programs with clearly identifiable impacts on industry performance. University-industry collaborations have been further complicated by intellectual property rights issues. Resolving these issues will require compromises between the industry's need to protect intellectual property and academia's need to maintain a free and open intellectual environment, the report says. Also, a relatively high percentage of students who study aerospace engineering at U.S. universities are from foreign nations. For reasons of security or competition, both the government and industry often place restrictions on these students' research. The report suggests that these policies may have to be eased, especially because many foreign students will stay in the United States and subsequently contribute to the industry's competitiveness. Academic research has had only a moderate impact on the transportation, distribution, and logistics (TDL) services industry -- which involves the transportation and distribution of freight and passengers -- despite the sector's sales revenue of roughly $1 trillion and a work force in 2000 of more than 3.6 million people. The flow of people between academic research and the TDL industry should be greatly increased, the committee said. As a step in that direction, industry should establish sabbaticals to encourage industry practitioners to teach in universities, the report says. At the same time, academia should improve curricula and programs in logistics, change its incentive and reward systems to stimulate interest in the TDL industry among students and faculty, and encourage industry participation, the report adds. Academic research in a single discipline often contributes to more than one industry and, conversely, a single industrial innovation is usually the result of complementary advances in many fields of research, the report notes. A major challenge for universities is keeping pace with the rapidly changing research and human resource needs of industries, while continuing to pursue basic research to generate ideas that will provide the foundation for industries in the future, the report concludes. The study was sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Academy of Engineering. The National Academy of Engineering is a private, nonprofit institution that provides technology advice under a congressional charter. A committee roster follows. Copies of The Impact of Academic Research on Industrial Performance are available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu. The cost of the report is $45.00 (prepaid) plus shipping charges of $4.50 for the first copy and $.95 for each additional copy. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above). [ This news release and report are available at http://national-academies.org ] NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING Program Office Committee on the Impact of Academic Research on Industrial Performance Jerome H. Grossman (chair) Senior Fellow, and Director Health Care Delivery Project John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Cambridge, Mass. Lillian C. Borrone Assistant Executive Director Port Commerce Department Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (retired) New York City Colin Crook Chief Technology Officer Citicorp (retired) New York City Donald M. Engelman Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Yale University New Haven, Conn. David J. Farber Alfred Filter Moore Professor of Telecommunications Systems University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Annetine C. Gelijns Director, International Center for Health Outcomes and Innovation Research, and Associate Professor of Surgical Sciences Columbia University New York City Daniel Gregory Partner Greylock Management Corp. Boston George Heilmeier Chairman Emeritus Telcordia Technologies Inc. Morristown, N.J. Adam B. Jaffe Fred C. Hecht Professor of Economics, and Dean of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Waltham, Mass. Jack L. Kerrebrock Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Massachusetts Institute of Technology (retired) Cambridge Kent Kresa Chairman Northrop Grumman Corp. Los Angeles H. Donald Ratliff Regents' Professor and UPS Professor of Logistics, and Director of the Logistics Institute Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta J. David Roessner Professor of Public Policy, and Co-director of the Technology Policy and Assessment Center School of Public Policy Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta Robert F. Sproull Vice President and Fellow Sun Microsystems Laboratories Burlington, Mass. Morris Tanenbaum Vice Chair of the Board and Chief Financial Officer AT&T Corp. (retired) Short Hills, N.J. NAE Program Office STAFF Proctor P. Reid Study Director