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Today, philanthropy is the common relationship model between the academic and commercial worlds. Under this model, the university solicits charitable contributions and the business world responds with donations. This model is sometimes supplemented with business relationships where the university may perform contract research for its corporate partners and may also license some of its technologies to these partners for commercialization. Traditionally, these business relationship are executed on an ad hoc basis.
One way to deliver more value to the university and its commercial partners is to transition the relationship from a charitable foundation to a business basis. In this scenario, the university and its partners will form a research cooperative where they can work together to plan pure research, develop new technologies, respond to market requirements, create prototypes and commercialize inventions. This will all be performed under a more structured program that is established to foster an ongoing R&D partnership.
While the final terms of this program need to be developed with input from all parties, we envision a program that will contain the following elements:
Quarterly roundtables with faculty, researchers and corporate R&D management
A briefing program that enables university researchers to discuss their concepts with corporate partners
A briefing program that enables corporate partners to discuss market requirements with university researchers
Opportunities to form joint research programs between the corporate world and the university
A coordinated program to facilitate directed research grants from corporate partners to university researchers
A coordinated program to facilitate licensing of university technologies to corporate partners
A recruiting program that helps corporate partners identify, evaluate and hire UCI graduates and alumni