Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1994 [PAGE 631]

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1996]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

619

that these master sponsored research agreements include the means for administering exchanges of staff, publication review, completion of graduate student research that is for a thesis or dissertation, and an intellectual property pre-arrangement for purposes of technology transfer. Dr. Dick explained that it is expected that these agreements will be extended in future to more corporations and that it is expected that eventually there will be such agreements with 10-12 corporate partners with whom the college and the University will develop extensive relationships for research and technology transfer. The next presenter was Dr. Larry Smarr, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). He described the efforts of his center to bring corporate partners into relationships with them. He explained that the NCSA was initially funded by the National Science Foundation to support academic research and by this to increase U.S. competitiveness. He described partnerships with 16 corporations and NCSA to further research and improve their competitiveness. He estimated that NCSA had received about $35 million from these partnerships. He also described work with Professor Thomas DiFanti at UIC that is a cooperative project with the Chicago and Urbana campuses. He then shared a presentation on video tape that described the development of a new photo compact disc in collaboration with the Kodak company. Dr. Smarr took pains to explain that supercomputing is not all the NCSA does, but that this center is engaged in all manner of technology development. There was brief discussion of this presentation then Dr. Manning took questions from the trustees on the entire presentation. There were questions about why the level of revenue to universities for this activity is so low and about procedures followed by other universities for technology transfer arrangements. Dr. Manning explained that the University of Illinois' history in this area is generally consistent with other peer institutions, with the University of Wisconsin research foundation being quite unique. President Stukel commented on a policy perspective for this saying that rather there is a tendency to focus on what the University gets out of collaboration with industry in terms of royalty incomes and that in fact might deter industry from being interested in investing in University research. He stated that the University ought not be so concerned about self-protection that it drives industry away from pursuing collaborative relationships for research. Chancellor Aiken then commented that universities in China were creating their own businesses for intellectual property management. He noted that the enterprises managed by such universities are in some cases not directly related to the universities' missions.

BOARD MEETING, THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 1996

The board reconvened in regular session at 10:40 a.m. The members of the board and the officers of the University as recorded at the