TN universities forge ties to corporate world

Research partnerships are a win-win

By Jennifer Brooks and Kevin Heim
THE TENNESSEAN

If you're a Tennessee college student, you don't have to graduate to start working in the corporate world. The corporate world comes to you.

Hundreds of millions of dollars a year flow into state schools from corporate and military interests. Businesses sponsor research, share technology, take in student interns, lease space on http://utrf.tennessee.edu/entrepreneur/companies.php ">university campuses and, eventually, hire their graduates.

The University of Tennessee is the 500-pound http://www.engr.utk.edu/cbe/pages/single-pages/partners.html">research gorilla. At any given time, the university is bringing in more than $100 million from its http://mlt.bus.utk.edu/corporate_partners/corporate_partners.htm ">corporate research partnerships ? from the $10 million a year it gets to help operate the http://ut-battelle.org/ ">Oak Ridge National Laboratory to the $25 million contract it just signed with the Air Force to train top officers in modern corporate business practices.

Gov. Phil Bredesen made a point of writing a corporate partnership into the higher education reform legislation he signed into law this week. The bill turned 200 Oak Ridge researchers into UT faculty members and made provisions for 400 UT students to intern at the cutting-edge research facility.

But these town-gown partnerships thrive on every campus.

"We're part of Tennessee's Silicon Valley," said Todd Gary, director of undergraduate http://www.tnstate.edu/interior.asp?mid=77 ">research at Tennessee State University.

As Gary talked Tuesday, a group of students wrapped up a videoconference with nanotechnology researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and crowded around the school's laboratory equipment to watch the principles put into practice.

"The whole field of nanotechnology is huge right now. To have students who are being trained on the same equipment the industry uses makes them very employable," Gary said. Nanotechnology, the ability to manipulate elements on an atomic level, holds the promise to revolutionize everything from medicine to computing to engineering. "We've been manufacturing big things in this state ? Nissans, Saturn cars. The future is going to be small things."

U.S. funds research

The federal government is the single largest source of research and development dollars to universities in this country. In 2008, according to http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvyrdexpenditures/">National Science Foundation estimates, the government spent $31.2 billion on academic research and development.

At TSU, federal research backing takes the form of rooms filled with robots. In professor Amir Shirkhodaie's tactical mobility robotic lab, the center of the room is taken up with a futuristic sandbox, covered with red rocks that mirror a Martian landscape and shattered bits of piping that mimic hidden unexploded ordnance that one of the squatty wheeled robots is being programmed to detect.

Down the hall is another room full of robots, also backed by government grants. A box full of hockey-puck-sized units scoot around randomly, protected from crashing into each other by sensors that may someday allow the auto industry to produce cars that can steer themselves.

Around the engineering building are high-tech surveillance cameras, guided by software the university has developed that allow the cameras to independently track suspicious vehicles and individuals without input from a human operator.

But it isn't only TSU's engineering department attracting business agreements.

The agriculture department partnered with Tennessee's nursery industry to develop new ways to protect fragile seedlings from diseases and marauding fire ants. In a tiny research lab next to the greenhouse, doctoral student Sasikiran Sangireddy is working with Nashville-based Gene Hunter Corp. to develop a tomato resistant to stress ?one able to thrive in acid or alkaline soils.

Both groups benefit

In the private sector, partnerships between the business community and universities usually spring up organically. An industry needs brainpower and manpower; a school needs research funding and real-world experience for its students.

When the Hemlock Semiconductor Group decided to build a plant in Clarksville, Tenn., it knew it would need skilled workers to assemble the solar panels the plant would produce.

Neighboring http://www.apsu.edu/ ">Austin Peay State University obliged by creating a new major ? an associate's degree in http://www.engr.utk.edu/cbe/pages/single-pages/partners.html ">chemical engineering that should graduate its first class just as the plant is opening in 2011. Hemlock, in turn, donated $2 million worth of equipment to the school so the students can train on the same technology they will use on the assembly line.

Not every university-corporate partnership involves massive grants or donated equipment. Businesses throughout the region welcome students into their offices through internship programs.

Valuable experience

At http://www.mtsu.edu/ ">Middle Tennessee State University, a dozen science majors are interning at local biotechnology firms this semester. The companies pay the students' tuition or pay them an hourly wage for their work.

"Most of the students are interested in real-world experience," said Rebecca Seipett, director of MTSU's Biotechnology Resource Group.

One of those students was recent graduate Prashant Singh, who now works as a research assistant in the department of pharmacology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He fondly remembers his internship at Nodality Inc. of Franklin, not just for the real-world work experience, but for the mentoring he received from veteran researchers.

"When I was there, my supervisor, we did experiments for two hours but talked for four hours about the experiment," he said. "It helped me a lot in getting this job."