Where’s the money?

With limited federal budgets, the Commonwealth
can play an increasingly critical role in the quest for major research center awards

Convergence: What do you see as the major barriers to capturing downstream economic benefits of research and innovation in Massachusetts?

NEWELL: There are lots of great ideas for developing new technologies at universities, but sometimes there isn’t enough money to bring those ideas along to a stage where they can attract venture funding to make the transition to commercial applications. Some research institutions try to put together their own venture funds.

Convergence: Why isn’t the money available? Is it a matter of decreasing budgets? Or, more competition?

NEWELL:  It’s both. Many institutions, including ours, rely heavily on grants from NIH to fund our research.  With those funds effectively decreasing over the last couple of years, it has been more challenging to support research.  It’s a very competitive environment.

Convergence: You recently served on the Research Center Task Force for the Innovation Institute, and you helped to develop a resolution calling for the creation of a Joint Academic Research Council. Why is this so important?

NEWELL: Increasingly, the opportunities for funding from the federal government require collaboration between universities. One institution by itself just doesn’t have the resources to compete successfully for some major awards.

It’s not a matter of getting institutions to talk more to each other; faculty will collaborate regardless of where they are. Rather, the Joint Academic Research Council provides a vehicle to put things together in a more strategic way, one that’s beneficial to the Commonwealth in attracting and winning federal research dollars.

Convergence: The final resolution called upon the Legislature to provide the resources necessary – at a minimum of $100 million – to enhance and secure major collaborative R&D partnership awards. Why is it important to name the figure?

NEWELL: The magnitude of the investment is important. Other competing states are making investments and stepping up at that level.

Today, the federal government wants to be your partner, not your sole source, for federal research awards. They are looking to see what resources you can put on the table.

In a time of shrinking resources, it’s hard for universities by themselves to come up with the kind of cash needed to be successful.

Convergence: From your perspective, how has MTC’s John Adams Innovation Institute changed the landscape of economic development?

NEWELL: I come to the table as both a citizen of the Commonwealth and the representative of a major research institution in Massachusetts.

A good amount of my career at Tufts has been devoted to securing resources from the federal government for research. I haven’t spent very much time focused on the Commonwealth. Clearly, the Innovation Institute has increased the consciousness and awareness of how Massachusetts as a state can do more in a strategic way to secure resources.

The Innovation Institute’s funding awards have proven to be very, very helpful [in winning federal research awards.]

Convergence: One of the worrisome trends identified in the 10th annual edition of The Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy, which was released this week, is the exodus of young workers from the state. Why do you think that is happening?

NEWELL: The employment opportunities are not as good as they could be, and the costs of living are extraordinarily high here. It’s the reality; to live here, you have to make a pretty good salary. People are going to go out of state to seek out opportunities, and it correlates with the lag in job growth.

Convergence: From your perspective, what are the challenges and trends facing research universities today?

NEWELL: There is a definite trend away from funding basic research towards looking at research that will have a more direct impact, towards more clinical research that translates directly into practice and use.

The focus today is on interdisciplinary research, encouraging scientists to work across boundaries that they were traditionally in.

The income stream from intellectual property becomes an extremely valuable source of revenue – it allows you to invest in more research and start new initiatives.

The difficulty we face at the federal level is that there is a relatively finite amount of money, and much more competition for it. As long as we have to pay for a war in Iraq, there will be less money available for scientific research. It’s a reality, regardless of your beliefs; the war costs money.

And, the NIH budget  has been leveling off.   I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future.

Convergence: How will the Joint Academic Research Council make a difference for Massachusetts research institutions?

NEWELL: The new Research Council will allow us to respond more quickly when there are moments of opportunity. If you had to start from scratch [to organize for a large federal award submission], you’re not going to be able to get it done on the strict time schedule often required.

There is critical knowledge that each of us from the academic research institutions will be bringing to the table. In particular, we know what our own institutions can do well. It makes it easier to get all the parts, the pieces of the puzzle, to fit and work together, to make the collaboration a reality.

Convergence: Is there a key message that you think needs to be communicated better about the work of Massachusetts’ universities?

NEWELL: The contributions which universities make to the economy are often overlooked. We are training the workforce that will serve many parts of our knowledge economy. Most of our budgets pay salaries for people; education is very labor intensive. We’re contributing greatly every day to the economy, buying goods and services.

Ideally, our research is advancing the health and well-being of the public, and leading to the discoveries that will spawn new products and new industries that will contribute to the Commonwealth.

Return to front page of Convergence.

Resolution to Create ‘Joint Academic Research Council’

(Continued from front page)

In the resolution, the Governing Board also called upon the Legislature to provide for the resources necessary—at a minimum of $100 million—to support efforts to enhance and secure major collaborative R&D partnership awards.

Voicing his support for the $100 million figure, Governing Board member Christopher R. Anderson, President of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, said that the amount needed to be “significant enough” to create a long-term, sustainable program of state-supported investment in winning competitive federal research awards. “There is no risk to the taxpayers,” Anderson continued, because the money will only be spent contingent on the awards being won.

The resolution spoke to the success of the John Adams Innovation Institute in piloting a matching grant program, investing more than $12 million, which, in turn, has leveraged more than $45 million in R&D funding from federal agencies and industrial partners, achieving a better than three-to-one return on investment.

These investments have also enhanced the ability of Massachusetts’ companies, through collaborative initiatives with academic research centers, to compete successfully for business, talent and opportunities in the global marketplace. Researchers and engineers at the Bernard Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems at Northeastern University worked with Massachusetts-based companies to develop new detection systems to thwart smuggling of nuclear materials and to detect suicide bombers at a relative distance, each representing about $1 billion in potential market opportunities.

The resolution had been prepared by a Research Center Task Force, including: Mitch Tyson, CEO of Advanced Electron Beams, Inc.; Peggy Newell, Vice Provost, Tufts University; Michael Cronin, President and CEO, Cognition Corp.; Phil Cheney, Northeastern University; Jeff Brancato, Associate Vice President for Economic Development, University of Massachusetts;  and S. ‘Sri’ Sridhar, Ph.D., Vice Provost for Research, Northeastern University.

The need for the resolution emerged from a discussion of immediate, large-scale funding opportunities with the potential to leverage more than $125 million in federal investments in academic research centers in Massachusetts, far exceeding the size and scale of existing investment funds of the John Adams Innovation Institute.