innovation@umb

UMass intellectual property income soars

2009-10-24T13:49:00.000-04:00

University of Massachusetts licensing income from its intellectual property income climbed to $73 million during Fiscal Year 2009, a record and a performance likely to vault UMass into the intellectual property income Top 10 nationwide.

"Research and discovery are crucial to the Commonwealth's innovation economy and will drive economic renewal and recovery in this state and across the nation. Having a robust research program is a great advantage for the 63,000 students of the University of Massachusetts system, who have the benefit of learning from the very people who are expanding the boundaries of human knowledge," President Jack Wilson said.

UMass generated $37 million in licensing income from its intellectual property in Fiscal Year 2008 and saw its earnings soar in Fiscal Year 2009, which ended on June 30, largely as a result of UMass Medical School receiving a $30 million upfront payment from Merck & Co. as a result of the licensing of a human monoclonal antibody combination for clostridium difficile infection - a treatment developed at the Massachusetts Biologic Laboratories.

In recent years, according to the Association of University Technology Managers annual survey, UMass has ranked among the Top 15 nationwide in intellectual property income of reporting institutions and the past year's major jump in earnings is likely to vault it into the Top 10 nationally. Universities generate intellectual property income when they protect faculty discoveries through patents and trademarks and companies license those discoveries to produce innovative products. Universities may also generate income when they receive company equity and later sell stocks as emerging companies become more successful.

Boston slips in high-tech ranking

2009-06-05T08:20:00.003-04:00

While Massachusetts maintains the top state ranking in science and technology prowess, Boston has slipped.

In the Milken Institute’s ranking of top high-tech center areas in North America, Seattle passed Boston and became America’s second-ranking high-tech metro area. The number one spot belongs to Silicon Valley, which “continues to lead all other metropolitan regions in North America in the breadth and scope of economic activity it creates through technological innovation,” according to the study.

According to Milken Institute, the Top Ten North America high-tech centers are:

2007 Ranking (2003 Ranking) Metro Area Total High Tech Score

1 (1) San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 100.0 
2 (3) Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA 46.4 
3 (2) Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA 45.2 
4 (5) Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 41.8
 5 (4) Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA 40.2 
6 (6) Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX 21.8 7
(7) San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 19.3 
8 (11) Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA 17.7 
9 (9) New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ 16.8
 10 (8) San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA 16.1

The report, called “North America’s High-Tech Economy: The Geography of Knowledge-Based Industries,” was presented earlier this week at the 2009 IEDC Technology-Led Economic Development Conference.

Metro areas were ranked by “their ability to grow and sustain thriving high-tech industries.” The study compares wages and employment in the metropolitan areas, and adds a location quotient, which measures the concentration of high-tech employment or wages in the area.

Boston area still is number one among 381 metro areas in scientific research and development services, one of twenty high-tech industry segments. So, it has the potential to be number one overall if it improves its capacity to turn innovative ideas into plans, plans into operating businesses, and businesses into rapidly growing ventures. Moving research to ventures remains its major challenge. That is why programs like the Venture Development Center are important.

Persistence pays

2009-05-25T08:43:00.003-04:00

Last week I was asked how long it took to complete the VDC project. I smiled. There are several correct answers:

It took eight years. (From vision statement.)

It took four years. (From space assigned.)

It took one year. (From start of construction.)

The original vision for the VDC was put forward by us in February 2001 in association with planning for an environmental science and technology park on property owned by the city adjacent to the university campus. That larger plan was eventually abandoned due to delays related to land acquisition and financing.

Since one million in funds had already been appropriated by congress, UMass Boston had to develop an alternative plan. In July 2005 Chancellor Motley assigned the former 18,000 square feet cafeteria space in the Wheatley building for VDC, and the vice chancellor for administration and finance authorized planning for the demolition and renovation of the Wheatley Building space.

In September 2005, UMass Boston facilities management hired consulting engineers to draw up demolition plans and specifications. In December 2005 a contractor was selected for demolition work. The demolition was completed in May 2006.

In March 2006 Design Partnership of Cambridge, Inc. was hired for the feasibility study phase. In September 2006 Design Partnership issued the final VDC feasibility study and preliminary construction cost estimate.

In November 2006, an agreement was reached between UMass Boston and the UMass Building Authority to structure the management of the design and construction phase of the VDC project. Joslin Lesser & Associates, Inc. was hired by the UMass Building Authority for project management of the design and construction phase of the VDC.

In December 2006, the RFP was issued for architectural services for the design and construction phase of the VDC. In March 2007 Sasaki Associates Inc., was selected.

In August 2007, Chancellor Motley expressed his approval of the project plans and budget. Permission to proceed to construction documents development was given. The schedule had construction completed by June 2008.

In November 2007 construction documents and specifications delivered by Sasaki Associates to Building Authority and UMass Boston team. The bid process was begun, and in February 2008 the construction contract signed with J & J Contractors, Inc. In February 2009, the VDC project was completed.

In May 2009, after months of getting every system to work as planned, we launched in grand fashion, with 200 university, city and business leaders in attendance cheering us on.

Putting stories to work

2009-05-18T23:36:00.011-04:00

Storytelling is a technique on the rise. Use it to better engage your audience and ensure your message sticks.

A popular proponent is Robert Frank, an economist at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University, and author of The Economic Naturalist.

In a talk to Google employees, he argues that the study of economics is dismally taught and dismally understood. He suggests that rather than teach all the “horrible equations and graphs,” an alternative method should be deployed– that of storytelling and narrative. He says: “The form in which ideas are conveyed is important. Perhaps because our species evolved as storytellers, the human brain is innately receptive to information in narrative form.”

Frank says: “… in light of the low bar established by traditional courses, there seems little risk in trying something different.”

Organizational dilemma of stewards and creators

2009-05-08T08:01:00.011-04:00

In Bridging the Gap Between Stewards and Creators , MIT Sloan Management Review, authors Rob Austin (Harvard) and Dick Nolan (University of Washington) identify two personality types that are vital to successful innovation--but whose mindsets often clash. The major question addressed by Austin and Nolan is how do businesses consistently miss major innovation opportunities after pouring significant investments to create them.

After researching the movement of computing pioneers among various organizations during a period between the early 1960s and the mid-1990s, they conclude that when tensions between bottom line-oriented managers (stewards) and creative technical employees (creators) are not managed well, a company’s ability to innovate is at risk.

Stewards are usually managers; their goal is the careful allocation of the organization's resources, with an aim of achieving an optimal return on investment. Creators are often skilled, specialized employees whose have a grand vision and mission; they frequently view business concerns as secondary.

According to the authors, conflict between stewards and creators is, to some extent, inevitable. However, when such conflict is managed poorly, the organization's capacity to innovate effectively may be impaired. The authors suggest eight guidelines for managing steward-creator conflict. These guidelines include: (1) keep talented creators around, although they can be difficult to manage; (2) balance the influence of stewards and creators in the organization, so neither group always wins; (3) cultivate people who have credibility with both creators and stewards and can help resolve conflicts; (4) use peer review to more accurately evaluate creators' specialized technical work; (5) structure the innovation process so that creators produce tangible results regularly; (6) realize that there will always be some conflict between an organizations' creators and its stewards; (7) avoid overly prescriptive control mechanisms that may alienate creators; and (8) ensure that closure on projects is achieved neither too quickly nor too slowly.

A lively 28 minute discussion by the authors of the Organizational Dilemma of Stewards and Creators has been published by the Seattle Innovation Symposium.

Grand opening of the Venture Development Center

2009-05-02T11:12:00.026-04:00

Yesterday, Harvard President Faust rode the Red Line to join 200 city, business and education leaders to cut a ribbon and mark the official opening of UMass Boston’s Venture Development Center.

“The state-of-the-art R&D facility and business incubator...signals the Dorchester extension of the innovation, research, and development that occurs along the Red Line,” Faust noted.

Also participating were Chancellor J. Keith Motley, University of Massachusetts, Boston, President Jack Wilson, University of Massachusetts, and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

President Faust's remarks, "Innovation, collaboration and renewal – lessons along the Red Line" are posted on the Harvard University Office of the President's web site.

"The Red Line...is a highly useful reminder of...where we can go … if we commit to working together to get there," she said.

View the entire event on YouTube.

Universities among top bay state patent winners in 2008

2009-04-30T10:21:00.001-04:00

Patent awards are not a perfect barometer for an organization’s ability to innovate, but it can be one important measure of its investment in itself and its intellectual property—and its future competitiveness.

According to figures Xconomy obtained from Wilmington, DE-based IFI Patent Intelligence, here’s the top 25 list for Massachusetts:

1. EMC (IT) — 192
2. MIT (academic research) — 138
3. Analog Devices (semiconductors) — 122
4. Raytheon (defense) — 122
5. Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (electronics) — 86
6. Acushnet (sporting goods) — 78
7. Massachusetts General Hospital (medical research) — 53
8. Harvard University (academic research) — 51
9. Osram Sylvania (lighting manufacturing) — 46
10. Vertex Pharmaceuticals (biotechnology — 45
11. BBN Technologies (technology R&D) — 42
12. Millennium Pharmaceuticals (biotechnology) — 37
13. 3Com (network infrastructure) — 34
14. The MathWorks (software) — 32
15. Varian Semiconductor Equip. Associates (semiconductors) — 32
16. Teradyne (semiconductors/test equipment) — 27
17. Gillette (consumer products) — 26
18. The University of Massachusetts (academic research) — 26
19. Axcelis Technologies (semiconductors) — 24
20. PerkinElmer (healthcare/analytical sciences) — 24
21. M/A-Com (RF/microwave products) — 23
22. Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials (specialty materials) — 23
23. Children’s Hospital (medical research) — 23
24. Bose (audio equipment) — 22
25. Cabot (chemicals) — 21

Academic institutions contributed an impressive 21% of the patents.

Taking bigger—but smarter—risks

2009-02-28T13:19:00.005-05:00

At a time when organizations should be taking bigger innovation risks, their bias is in the other direction. Avoiding risky projects altogether strangles growth. The solution is to pursue a disciplined, systematic process that will distribute innovations more evenly across the spectrum of risk.

George S. Day of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia identifies tested evaluation tools in his recent article "Is It Real? Can We Win? Is It Worth Doing? Managing Risk and Reward in an Innovation Portfolio" in HBR Spring '09.

I use the R-W-W Screen, adapted to my university setting. It helps expose faulty assumptions, knowledge gaps, sources at risk, and problems suggesting termination. The screen is a series of questions designed to help evaluate the potential for success:

I. Is it real? 
a. Is the market real? 
i. Is there a need or desire for the product? 
ii. Can the customer buy it? 
iii. Is the size of the potential market adequate? 
iv. Will the customer buy the product? 
b. Is the product real? 
c. Is there a clear concept?  
d. Can the product be made? 
e. Will the final product satisfy the market? 

II. Can we win? 
a. Can the product be competitive? 
i. Does it have a competitive advantage? 
ii. Can the advantage be sustained? 
iii. How will competitors respond? 
b. Can our company be competitive? 
i. Do we have superior resources? 
ii. Do we have appropriate management? 
iii. Can we understand and respond to the market? 

III. Is it worth doing? 
a. Will the product be profitable at an acceptable risk? 
i. Are forecasted returns greater than costs? 
ii. Are the risks acceptable? 
b. Does launching the product make strategic sense?  
i. Does the product fit our overall growth strategy? 
ii. Will top management support it?

The screen also provides a "just the facts" checklist that will help prevent personal excitement and passion from clouding decision making. To gain the most value from this tool, try putting your entire portfolio of new initiatives to the test.

Compete or cooperate?

2009-02-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

Trying to outmaneuver an incumbent is not always the best way to succeed as a new company. A study by Scott Stern at the Kellogg School of Management and David Hsu at Wharton revealed that the return on investment tended to be higher for a cooperation strategy than a competition strategy when one or more of three conditions existed for the start-up company:

1) The firm has strong patents
2) The firm is backed by venture capitalists
3) There is a high sunk cost requirement for the firm to compete in its industry

If patent rights are valuable in your industry, strong patents increase the validity of a competitive threat against the incumbent if negotiations break down and cooperation fails.

Start-ups that enjoy venture backing increase their credibility in a negotiation by evaluating and certifying the company’s innovation.

In an industry such as biotechnology, distribution channels, brand recognition, regulatory knowledge, and production expertise make it expensive for start-ups to enter alone. This situation makes leveraging the assets and resources of an established firm a more viable option.

Cooperation may be achieved through several mechanisms, such as licensing the innovation, forming a strategic alliance, or selling the technology outright to a competitor.

Deciphering the developing mind

2009-02-04T09:51:00.003-05:00

When you look into a child’s eyes, what do you see?

Zsuzsa Kaldy, assistant professor of psychology at UMass Boston, sees innocence and adventure, purity and mischief, helplessness and determination, anger and pride, envy and happiness, impatience and endurance, serenity and resentment.

She also hopes to see the precursors of mental disorders.

Eye movements provide critical insights to analyze human behavior. Eye tracking is used to answer an endless array of research questions in many fields, including developmental psychology. Kaldy and her colleagues at UMass Boston, Alice Carter and Erik Blaser are developing screening tools for early detection of anxiety disorders.

The team’s research project focuses on the creation of standardized behavioral assessment tools that can be used in the diagnosis of anxiety disorders in young children, ages 2-3. Its specific objectives include the identification of early neurocognitive markers of anxiety disorders and subsequent development of a new clinical test, with accompanying support materials, for use by health care professionals. The faculty team is well-positioned to claim a leading role in this largely-neglected area of study. The effort is consistent with priorities identified by the National Institute for Mental Health for pediatric mental health, and it is strongly aligned well with the campus's emphasis on developmental science. Research partnerships exist with National Institutes for Health intramural researchers and scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital.

For decades, developmental psychologists have tried to decipher the developing mind by looking at eye movements, but it has not been easy. The gaze of a yound child is infuriatingly difficult to track with any kind of speed or precision. They squirm and if they are fitted with headgear to help track their movements, they tend to reach up and pull it off.

Advances in eye tracking are beginning to solve these problemssuch as the Tobii Eye Tracker, that can track eye movements unobtrusively while keeping up with a bobbing head. A computer does in seconds what could take hours to code previously. In an effort to support innovative research and development on campus, UMass Boston’s Venture Development Center recently purchased this research tool for the Kaldy research team. Erik Blaser is developing the customized software that underlies the screening tool for early detection of anxiety disorders.

There are only ten to fifteen research labs across the nation that have invested in eye trackers for young children, according to Bob McMurray, a psychologist at the University of Iowa. Already, data from the new tools is challenging assumptions about how and when young children learn about language, people and objects in their world.

UMass Boston team’s first aim is to focus on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which has a high heritability component and currently cannot be clinically diagnosed until early school age. Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder have persistent, upsetting thoughts (obsessions) and use rituals (compulsions) to control the anxiety these thoughts produce. Most of the time, the rituals end up controlling them. The disorder affects about 2.2 million American adults according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

The course of the disease is quite varied. Symptoms may come and go, ease over time, or get worse. If it becomes severe, it can keep a person from working or carrying out normal responsibilities at home. Those affected by the disorder may try to help themselves by avoiding situations that trigger their obsessions, or they may use alcohol or drugs to calm themselves.

Based on adult studies of the disorder, Kaldy hypothesizes that tests that the team develops can be used to detect early precursors (behaviors that may not yet reach the level of clinical symptoms) in young children.

Their second aim is to use these ﬁndings to design a cost-effective, patentable screening tool: a new clinical test with an accompanying manual for professional pediatricians and clinical psychologists. Such a test would have tremendous clinical impact.

Their third aim is to leverage their results, deepen expertise, and expand
research capacity to increase chances of procuring significant external funding.

Kaldy, Carter, and Blaser were among the recipients of the 2008 prestigious Science and Technology Initiatives award from UMass President Jack Wilson to support their research and development. The team will be presenting their first findings at the Society for Research in Child Development’s meeting in Denver in April 2009.

Identifying the university’s innovators

2009-01-28T14:11:00.007-05:00

There are two kinds of people that make innovation initiatives successful - those who focus on building the internal platform required to develop organizational innovation capabilities; and those who turn ideas and research into new programs, products and services. The former are more strategic and tactical, the latter more operational and rare.

I try to build alliances with my colleagues in the former group in order to support the later group. How do I identify this latter group? Here are some things I look for:

People who can make things happen rather than people who have lots of ideas.

People who have created results as an individual.

People who make decisions even when they feel they do not have enough information.

People who like provocative questions versus becoming defensive and combative.

People who keep a user group in mind when doing their research, and actually interact with them.

Those who are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns that point to opportunity.

A great way to find potential innovators is to look at who is applying for internal development grants, from our campus as well as the university system. They have a vision and are prepared to do the hard work required to make it a reality.

Measuring innovation

2009-01-15T18:41:00.003-05:00

How do you measure the return on investment in innovation? Recently, there was a good discussion in the Leadership+Innovation community at LinkedIn comprised of people working on the intersection of leadership and innovation in large and established organizations.

I like the way Jeff Murphy, an Executive Director at Johnson & Johnson suggests how to manage expectations:

1) Initially, focus on engagement, training and participation of individuals.

2) Then, as you begin to build a critical mass of capable individuals, the focus shifts to your innovation pipeline (e.g., flow of projects through concept, development, launch, etc.) and early wins.

3) Finally, as your initiative begins to mature, your focus shifts to the end goals - return on investment, successful new programs launched, impact from new launches, etc.

Jeff Murphy says that if an organization gets ahead of itself in the metrics area, it can lead to unrealistic expectations during the early stages. On the other hand, if it gets behind on implementing the appropriate metrics, it leads to under performance.

I couldn't agree more. Everyone it seems is itchy to get to number three but struggles because the groundwork has not be laid.

Innovation blossoms where the sectors converge

2009-01-12T18:04:00.005-05:00

The celebration of social entrepreneurs and enterprises - reaching a zenith in 2006, when Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank—the pioneers of microfinance—won the Nobel Peace Prize, tends to obscure the mechanisms that result in positive social change—the innovation itself—according to the authors of Rediscovering Social Innovation, an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review Social.

They think the advantage of examining the pursuit of positive social change through an innovation lens is that this lens is agnostic about the sources of social value. Unlike the terms social entrepreneurship and social enterprise, social innovation transcends sectors, levels of analysis, and methods to discover the processes—the strategies, tactics, and theories of change—that produce lasting impact. Social innovation will certainly require understanding and fostering the conditions that produce solutions to social problems.

The mechanisms of social innovation—the underlying sequence of interactions and events—change as a society and its institutions evolve. Nonprofits, governments, and businesses have had various roles. These social innovations during the 1930’s were driven by a more expansive and direct role of government. The devolution of public services which began in the 1980’s such as day care, nursing homes, even military services to the private and nonprofit sector continues today. Since the 1960’s, pressure on the private sector to consider the social impact of its conduct has grown tremendously.

The authors believe that we increasingly see the three sectors joining forces to tackle the social problems that affect us all based upon a better appreciation of the complexity of global problems such as climate change and poverty. They do so by exchanging ideas and values, shifting relationships, and the integrating private capital with public and philanthropic support.

An example is socially responsible investing which simultaneously considers the social, environmental, and financial consequences of investments, applying the ethos of the nonprofit sector to the most purely financial of decisions: investment.

In principle, many people accept the trend of dissolving sector boundaries; in practice, however, they continue to toil in silos.

The authors say that to support cross-sector collaborations we have to examine policies and practices that impede the flow of ideas, values, capital, and talent across sector boundaries and constrain the roles and relationships among the sectors.

Optimizing multicultural teams

2008-12-29T09:41:00.010-05:00

Traditional models of multicultural R&D collaboration fail to draw most effectively on individual team members’ skills and experiences. Jeanne Brett, a professor of dispute resolution and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, thinks the key to multicultural teams is coexistence of differences and meaningful participation.

In Cultural Intelligence in Global Teams, she explains how she has observed that most multicultural teams collaborate in one of two ways. In the dominant coalition model, there might be a minority group or even a single person who directs the team’s decision making. Brett explains: “We saw how that model shut out certain members of the team who had contributions to make.”

Alternatively, the integration model requires team members to sublimate the identity of their own cultural groups to that of the entire team. However, members might yield some of their their tendency to think differently in the interests of unity.

Brett asserts that the team leader should undertake formal interventions to balance the power equation. Such interventions might encourage more questioning among team members. Alternatively, the leader might appoint individuals or subgroups to work on a particular problem independently and then share their solutions with the entire team.

Brett also believes that one of the ways to get people to participate is to make the size of the groups smaller, and to seed each small group with someone who is likely to support the team member who has not been participating.

To maintain its creativity as its tasks change, the team should continually reconstitute the subgroups.

What makes a successful research team?

2008-12-28T11:29:00.012-05:00

The availability of online databases containing millions of papers, as well as analytical tools from network science have turbo-charged studies of collaboration patterns among researchers. These studies typically try to answer the question: "How do you assemble a network and figure out where to plug in your ideas to get the best return?"

A recent article by John Whitfield in Nature summarizes the researchers' tentative tips on what their work reveals:

If you team up with someone from another institution (of equal or higher tier to your own), the resulting papers are more highly cited than if you team with someone from your own institution.

If you specialize and work mostly with people in your own field, or you become a big generalist and work with people in a wide range of fields, you get highly cited papers. But in the middle (people who work with an intermediate number of other fields) you get less successful papers.

In large interdisciplinary groups, the more diverse they were, the less productive they were, but groups where the authors had previous papers together were much more successful than others.

Large collaborations (say a team of around 20) were more successful if they had a high rate of turnover, but small groups (say 3 to 4) were more successful if they were stable. But stable small groups tend to publish lower impact papers over time.

Research is increasingly collaborative

2008-12-27T15:26:00.025-05:00

A recent study at the Kellogg School of Management by Brian Uzzi shows that high impact research is now more likely to arise from large, distributed teams. Published in the journal Science, the study says though that the benefits of this evolution are concentrated largely among the nation’s most elite universities.

The authors examined thirty years worth of the publications tracked by the Institute for Scientific Information’s Web of Science. Multi-school collaborations were relatively rare in 1975. Over the thirty years that followed, multi-school collaborations grew steadily to account for 35 percent of publications in 2005.

The authors found that multi-school collaborations are more likely among the top universities. Lower tier schools, where research isn't cited as often, participated in only 18 percent of multi-school collaborations. Top schools where research is cited more often, participated in 60 percent of multi-school collaborations.

The authors noted that single-author papers have become increasingly rare, down from roughly 30 to 10 percent for science, 60 to 40 percent for social science.

Entrepreneur as a change agent

2008-12-05T18:58:00.009-05:00

When we say the word “entrepreneur” at the university, everyone immediately thinks we are referring to someone in the business school, technology transfer office or a start-up company.

So we avoid saying the word - - - - - - - - - - - -, until later in the conversation. It gets in the way of discussions we like to have about the potential of entrepreneurship as a lever for creating positive change, which most people at the university, especially students, embrace.

We think there is an eager audience for education focused on understanding and developing entrepreneurial behaviors, skills and attributes in many different contexts. Business is just one context. Others are social and creative.

The essence of entrepreneurship lies in creating and exploiting opportunities and pursuing innovation in practice. This involves learning, often by trial and error, how to design organizations of all kinds in different contexts and how to operate them successfully.

Universities are moving towards a more holistic concept of entrepreneurship, transcending the pure business focus.

We admire how the University of Rochester is equipping its students across the university to be successful in that regard. According to an AAC&U article “Building a Better Entrepreneurial Education,” it is aggressively fostering entrepreneurial skills in fields like education, engineering, nursing, and music—and in the business department, too. Courses in entrepreneurship are found in six schools on campus. The goal is to foster leadership, management, and team-building qualities.

Rochester’s brand of entrepreneurship is the “transformation of an idea into an enterprise that creates value—economic, social, cultural, or intellectual.” It focuses very little on the profit portion of the field.

In the AAC&U article, Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship Duncan Moore proudly points out: “Most of the projects being proposed by the students are not around business entrepreneurship, but social entrepreneurship,” he says.

“If we want to be sure our students will have a long career…they should have either international or entrepreneurial experiences," Moore says. “That’s not going to get outsourced.”

Next time you hear the word “entrepreneur," think attitude - towards engaging the world, and changing it.

Universities are more entrepreneurial

2008-11-30T13:02:00.022-05:00

Dr. Allan Gibb, University of Durham, in “Towards the Entrepreneurial University?” offers some observations on the emergence of the entrepreneurial university, one which has taken on a third mission, that of contributing its knowledge generated to society more directly.

Gibbs claims that entrepreneurial universities have a culture that is open to change and to the search for, and exploitation of, opportunities for innovation. They are managed by a strong steering core that helps them respond flexibly, strategically and coherently to opportunities. Across academic departments there are entrepreneurial champions. Key aspects of entrepreneurship education are embedded across the curriculum.

A great example is the University of Rochester. According to “Building a Better Entrepreneurial Education,” it is aggressively fostering entrepreneurial skills in fields like education, engineering, nursing, and music—and in the business department, too. Courses in entrepreneurship are found in six schools on campus. The goal is to foster leadership, management, and team-building qualities. Rochester’s brand of entrepreneurship is the “transformation of an idea into an enterprise that creates value—economic, social, cultural, or intellectual.”

At entrepreneurial universities, engagement with the stakeholder community is actively pursued. Funding is obtained not by pursuing philanthropy but by building credibility with key stakeholders. By such engagement the university becomes more of a learning organization.

Knowledge transfer programs are a feature at entrepreneurial universities. Interdisciplinary research and partnerships with external stakeholders are more important in terms of their contribution to innovation than patents, licensing and spin-off activity.

The latest evolutionary stage of the university as an institution is generating debate and tension in academia, similar to what took place a hundred years ago concerning the emergence of the research university. At that time, many argued that the demands of research would compromise the university's teaching mission.

Today, who would argue that knowledge generated by research doesn’t infuse teaching with relevance and vitality? Similarly, the ambivalence to universities' added entrepreneurial role is likely to change.

Gibb thinks the new dimension to its mission is rather Victorian, revisiting the 19th-century view that higher education is for imaginatively using knowledge.

Overcoming barriers to producing multidisciplinary knowledge

2008-11-27T19:30:00.008-05:00

Knowledge sharing among researchers within interdisciplinary communities may be critical for new discoveries. In spite of this, biologists tend to talk to biologists, economists tend to talk to economists, and psychologists tend to talk to psychologists. Co-locating them may be a helpful but insufficient step to generating multidisciplinary knowledge. Disciplinary subgroups hold contrary assumptions about the appropriate questions to be asked.

How can this be overcome? Kathleen L. McGinn gives and answer in in “Incompatible Assumptions: Barriers to Producing Multidisciplinary Knowledge in Communities of Scholarship”. A Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, she argues that interdisciplinary communities must first attend to the compatibility of assumptions held by sub-groups within the field. Understanding may stem from the potential for members to recognize the relevance of others' findings to their own scholarship.

In collaborative consortia, relate first, then act

2008-11-27T12:04:00.021-05:00

Upfront negotiation regarding roles, resources, governance and so on might interfere with progress in collaborations addressing complex societal issues. So conclude Benyamin Lichtenstein et al., University of Massachusetts Boston, College of Management in Relational Space: Creating a Context for Innovation in Collaborative Consortia.

The authors completed a case study of The Sustainability Consortium – a voluntary association of about a dozen member organizations that have an interest in tackling sustainability. Initially focusing on relationships encouraged a higher degree of innovation in action projects.

In the Sustainability Consortium, it was nearly two years before the first project was clearly articulated. During that time participants met together in three three-day meetings. The focus of attention was the formation of what the authors call “relational space”: face-to-face personal interactions through which participants pursued open inquiry and learning, developed strong peer-based relationships, asked for and received help and support, and inspired each other in a variety of ways. Gradually, problems were articulated and framed, and action projects emerged.

What makes the bay area so cool?

2008-11-22T18:04:00.108-05:00

The bay area, envied the world over for its industry of ideas, consistently grabs about 44% of the nation's venture capital investment. What is it about the bay area that makes it a hub for innovation?

Paul Graham ought to know. He is the founder of Y Combinator, a blend of boot camp, commune, and investor designed to help start-up companies get off the ground. Y Combinator used to alternate its activity between Boston and San Francisco every six months.

In "How to Start a Start-Up," Graham says the bay area “has the right kind of vibe.” It attracts a special kind of talent, the younger scientists, programmers, and creatives who drive innovation.

The bay area has everything they want:

Authentic personality. Young-feeling, but not new.

Smart people, which means universities, still tethered to their professors.

An environment that tolerates oddness in which they feel they can best be themselves.

Neighborhoods which are cheap, fun, and near the subway.

Nerds don't like to work in dreary office buildings that are a wasteland when the sun goes down. They like to head out for dinner then take the subway back to the office or lab to get some real work done, instead of going home to watch television. That's why creating business parks in the suburbs is futile.

When start-ups grow into big companies, and move to the suburbs, they still keep an r&d center near the Red Line. Otherwise they'd loose the younger talent.

What is unique about the bay area is the support system in such areas as finance, law, accounting, headhunting, and marketing, tuned to help ventures form and grow.

Ventures operating outside the bay area certainly succeed. But who would be willing to claim that a venture elsewhere wouldn't benefit from moving to the bay area?

Graham's advice to start-ups? "Get a place on the Red Line."
________________________________________________________________
Red line life line
To younger talent, the Red Line is pure magic. Its convenient, and quirky. Listen to their banter on Yelp.

Molly says: “It's supremely easy to get to anywhere worth going...I can hear the trains from my apartment, but it's worth it just to know they're there.”

John says: “I would have a difficult time functioning without it, and for that I am grateful.”

Kelly: “I like it, it's homey. I look up from my reading or video game to watch the city arrive and recede as we cross over the river. It's calming.”

Victor says: “And hey, you can go under the bay. How cool is that? It's pretty damn cool.”

Sarah says: “The seats are SO much more comfortable on the BART than on the T. :)”

But Jeffrey says: “Reupholster the seats. They're gross.”

Helen says: “I LIKE the gross aspects of public transit.“
_______________________________________________________________

Graham has his favorites start-up places along the Red Line. He especially likes Berkeley, Davis, Inman, and Central.

In “Cities and Ambition” he says he always imagined that Berkeley would be the ideal place to be—that it would basically be Cambridge with good weather.

But when he finally tried living there a couple years ago, it turned out not to be. He says “it's not humming with ambition.” Its message is "live the good life."

“The people you find in Boston...are the kind of people who want to live where the smartest people are, even if that means living in an expensive, grubby place with bad weather."

There are plenty of smart people in the south. But he thinks the universities there are too spread apart, therefore diluted, while in the north, they are clustered, dozens withing a few miles of each other.

Lately, he thinks the north has the edge on ideas (in the whole world), the south the edge on ventures. Why? Investors tend to be more conservative in the north, more aggressive in the south. Facebook was started in the north. Boston investors had the first shot at them. But they said no, so Facebook moved to south and raised money there.

But for now, Graham says, "Boston just doesn't have the startup culture that the Valley does. It has more startup culture than anywhere else, but the gap between number 1 and number 2 is huge; nothing makes that clearer than alternating between them."

Since ideas are only one step upstream from economic power, says Graham, it's conceivable that the north will one day regain the edge.

How do you pitch a venture?

2008-11-20T09:29:00.016-05:00

Here are the steps, and the likely questions you have to address to get funding, at each stage of the venture development process. The farther along you are, the more likely you will achieve investment.

1. Good product/service idea
Key questions: Is it a solution to a job users are trying really hard to get done? Who is the competition? Will they fail fast?
Most important point to make: About your market insight.

2. All-star team
Key question: Has the team succeeded in the past? Do they have special knowledge or skills in the area? Are they committed to the idea?
Most important point: Why the team you have assembled is the right one.

3. Breakthrough technology
Key question: Who owns the patents? Are there any good substitutes?
Most important point: Barriers to entry.

4. Prototype product/service
Key question: What will it take to launch a working product or service?
Most important point: Show a prototype or engineering resumes.

5. Working product
Key question: What does the product do? What’s the launch plan? Who’s on the marketing team?
Most important point: Live demonstration.

6. Micro-scale results
Key question: Who is the customer, and how do you know? What is the potential market size? What are the business economics?
Most important point: Lessons learned.

7. Promising results
Key question: Can you monetize that traffic (or drive traffic to that profitable destination?) Do you know why you’ve achieved those results?
Most important point: Revenue potential.

You can see that few individuals possess the necessary range of skills to accomplish all of these steps on their own. You need deep thinkers who conceive the vision - you, plus those who can get the innovation really to work, and those who communicate the advantages of the innovation so it is used.

Ventures come in all flavors

2008-11-17T07:42:00.013-05:00

Some cast enterprise as the enemy of social concerns. Here are examples of what can be accomplished by joining social concerns with private enterprise:

Diagnostic-For-All, that will deliver affordable point-of-care diagnostic solutions to the global medical community.

Seeding Labs, which reclaims and refurbishes laboratory equipment from universities, hospitals and biotechnology companies in order to equip talented scientists and clinicians living and working in the developing world.

Social Venture Lab, which provides a program to share ideas on best practices for businesses or organizations that consider their community contribution as part of their product or service.

CleanFish, which works with artisan fishing communities around the world to help bring their sustainably harvested fish to a global marketplace.

The Environmental Insurance Agency, which creates pay-as-you-drive auto insurance, to reward low-mileage drivers.

Eyebeam, a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists actively engage with culture, addressing the issues and concerns of our time.

Partners for the Common Good, a wholesale loan participation network which serves the needs of low-income communities.

Revolution Foods, a daily meal service in schools featuring meals that have no high fructose corn syrup or trans fats and contain only the highest-quality organic ingredients.

Sweet Beginnings, helping ex-offenders fully reenter society by providing assistance in securing and retaining employment and developing a career path.

Windows of Opportunity, a lead-safe window replacement business that protects children from lead poisoning and provides supportive employment training to youth ages 17-24 at risk of chronic unemployment.

OneWorld Medical Devices addresses the large vaccine wastage problem that often results from improper temperature control.

Mobile Medics, a traveling health care service that provides private sector, high quality, and affordable medical care through mobile clinics to paying villagers in India.

Samasource aims to harness the world's untapped talent through socially responsible outsourcing.

MyC4 raises capital for African entrepreneurs, and in so doing is striving to become a significant tool in the fight to end extreme poverty.

MicroPlace makes socially responsible investments in microfinance to alleviate global poverty.

RootSpace, promotes and celebrates entrepreneurship as a powerful force for economic, social, and environmental development around the world.

Better World Books is a global bookstore that harnesses the power of capitalism to bring literacy and opportunity to people around the world.

Benetech harnesses the power of technology for social benefit

Living Cities brings opportunities and the power of mainstream markets to urban neighborhoods and residents historically left behind.

Inveneo.org provides technology solutions to remote villages through non-governmental organizations and through commercial or government owned organizations.

E+Co invests in local energy businesses in Africa, Asia and Latin America to support clean energy.

AfriCeuticals strengthens Africa’s private health sector with certified human and veterinary products and services developed, sourced, manufactured, branded, and/or distributed in Africa.

GeoOptics establishes a new model of community-based space development for the public good that could change the way the world collects and disseminates earth observational data.

Enterprise comes in all flavors, including social.

Two sides of the river

2008-11-15T13:55:00.050-05:00

On the north side of the river, people stay up all night working to invent things. On the south side of the river, people wake up in the morning thinking how to change things. They are just as smart and interesting, and really good at what they do. They too push boundaries, break down needless conventions, and defy expectations.

On the south side, they don’t run a model railroad club that meets on Saturday nights, or have a cappella group called the loga-rhythms. But they do have subversive knitters whose software people use all around the world to protest sweatshop labor.

On the north side of the river, people closely watch the fate of commercial ventures like A123Systems, which manufactures high-power lithium ion batteries. They excel at private entrepreneurship, but try really hard to be socially responsible. Their commencement speaker last year was Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer in the microlending movement.

On the south side of the river, people closely watch the fate of social ventures like the Entrepreneurs for Peace, a training program for Arab-Israeli ventures. They excel at creating value for society as a whole, but are trying hard at private entrepreneurship. Their commencement speaker, two years ago, was Barack Obama.

On the north side of the river, they are trying to de-nerdify their reputation. Going to great lengths to do so, such as producing calendars featuring scantily clad students in the arts to show how well-rounded they are. On the south side of the river, they are trying to attract nerds, the really hardcore math/science types. And going to great lengths to do so, such as building a venture center.

Frankly, I don’t see the attempts to totally normalize either the north or south will get all that far. Nor should they. Well-rounded people don’t push the human race forward.

Academic entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial academics

2008-10-25T14:33:00.012-04:00

Quiz: Which one of these faculty members is the innovator?

One publishes a book so students can learn object-oriented systems analysis and design in a highly practical and accessible way.

Another invents a miscoscope so every teaching lab can enjoy advanced imaging at an affordable price.

Answer: Both. But most would pick the latter.

Martin Meyer, in "Academic entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial academics? Research-based ventures and public support mechanisms" argues one may indeed distinguish at least two breeds of innovation agents at a university: the ‘entrepreneurial academic’ and the ‘academic entrepreneur’, the latter being the archetypical start-up entrepreneur and the former resembling the ‘innovative’ faculty member.

Innovators do not necessarily have to set up a fast–growing company but can use other avenues to create impact. Both types of innovators move the university towards being a significant actor on its own terms.

What are we doing for students?

2008-10-25T13:31:00.010-04:00

Everyone asks this question. Even Sen. Jack Hart, during an interview he and I were doing for the Dorchester newspaper, asked how are you helping students get good jobs in the innovation economy?

Thanks to our Entrepreneur in Residence, Dan Phillips, we are doing a lot. Just a few weeks ago, over 80 students, with some having to be turned away, came to hear Dan talk about what it is like to work in a venture backed start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at a paid internship. Students lined up to give Dan their cards following his presentation!

Dan has spent the last 25 years as an executive with four venture capital backed software companies. The most recent was as CEO of SilverBack Technologies which was acquired by Dell Inc. Dan has a great appreciation for the quality and culture of UMass Boston students as he has self funded his own Scholarship/Mentor program for our students over the last 15 years.

Two students, Wararat Tipwimolratchai and Wei Tang, have already been selected by Brighton House Associates, a venture backed start-up company in Marlborough. Much more to come in this one year pilot effort.

Finding quality start up internship opportunities is extraordinarily difficult. Students at places like MIT and Stanford line up for jobs. But for the first time, UMass Boston students have the opportunity. They are a perfect match for start-up companies.

With the opening of the VDC in early 2009, we will be able to house the venture backed firms and internships right here on campus, in Wheatley where our 18,000 sf center is in the final stages of being constructed.

We’ve reached out to Student Affairs as well as the deans to locate interested students with marketing, finance, information systems, computer science and economics backgrounds. Dan plans to run a session for students every two months.

How do you find time to work with us?

2008-10-25T12:53:00.006-04:00

Faculty members tell me over and over again that they have dozens of other priorities and have precious little time for innovation.

Well, what’s your vision for what you’d like to create at the university? I believe that if you don’t have something worth doing, that you are absolutely passionate about, you won't find a way to make it happen.

Even so, everybody is busy and there is the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality. So the university has to be part of the solution.

So I constantly advocate for measures to make it easier for faculty members to pursue their vision:

1. How have they been equipped to be an innovator? What training have they received? What tools have they been supplied with?

2. Do they have access to an innovation coach or mentor? Is there an innovation expert in their department who will help them develop their breakout idea?

3. How easy is it for them to get access to experimental funding? How long would it take to get a few thousand dollars in seed money? How many levels of bureaucracy would they have to go through?

5. Do the university’s management processes—budgeting, planning, staffing, etc.—support their work as an innovator or hinder it?

The truth about the university is there’s no shortage of ideas bouncing around. The trick is to align incentives to execute them. Its how a university advances. Or not.

When should you engage with the VDC?

2008-10-25T12:37:00.007-04:00

Most of the time, faculty come to us with just a few days left before they publish their research results, wanting to talk about a patent, or with a year left of a five year project, looking for continued funding.

The time to talk to us is before you think you have to, meaning at the beginning of your project, when you are designing it.

When we engage then, we can talk about doing something with anticipated research results beyond a publication. Novel dissemination plans are key. Funders like them because it shows you have thought through your project.

There are lots of possibilities, such as a subscription newsletter or journal, webinar, videos, research, testing, or design operation, or even a product, many of which can become revenue generators.

Engaging us early means learning how to expand your concept of your project team. Success these days in every field requires a range of skills, including ours. We can save you lots of headaches and heartaches.

What is it like working with us?

2008-10-25T11:20:00.012-04:00

As in as in all partnerships, we work hard to earn each others' trust. Because sometimes the conversations are difficult.

But we do have a distinct style of working. Its more like a start-up than a service unit. So its not for everyone.

We feel more like impudent underdogs instead of stuffed shirts, and that is exactly the spirit we encourage.

We say we are a are lean team. Like you, we try to spend as little money as possible to achieve great results.

Like a start-up, everyone does everything, no matter what title they have. There is no sense of entitlement, also the spirit we encourage.

We subscribe to learning by doing. We are more of a coach than assistant.

Fact is most entrepreneurs want to implement, reflect, take action and step-by-step, achieve their own results. But they do appreciate the effective questions we ask and the feedback we provide. Because we excel on the execution side - the “how are we going to get there, and keep it going” - the stuff they feel kind of lost trying to deal with at the university.

So we make great partners.

We underscore that you’ll not find more passionate allies. When you think you are ready to fly, we pull out all the stops - find allies, leverage resources, locate space, whatever it takes to move forward.

We are happy when your program grows in size, strength, and impact. When we help you get to the top of a mountain, we will arrive there also.

Tour by Goody Clancy

2008-10-25T09:31:00.003-04:00

Another day, another tour. But this one was very special. The project managers and architects retained to do the feasibility study for UMass Boston’s new integrated science building visited the soon to be completed Venture Development Center.

This is a different team than the one which designed the Venture Development Center, which is Sasaki Associates and RDK Engineers.

The tone was set by John Benson, senior program manager at the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management, who said “This is a big bet for the campus.” He said its not hard to envision UMass Boston becoming the dominant campus in the system.

The Venture Development Center represents state-of-the-art in design for research and development, an intensely social activity, according to many on the team. Experience with similar projects at other universities has been positive, according to Chris Cowansage principal of sst planners.

The team thought we struck the right balance between supplied plug and play infrastructure and specialized equipment users would supply.

Benson also said the VDC is a good example of the new model in research and development parks “of” the university versus “at” the university.

The team had never seen video conferencing and broadcasting integrated in a lab, and did not understand why there were two plasma screens in each. We explained this is an advanced feature permitting remote collaboration.

The team also liked that private offices were not integrated into the labs, rather, being adjacent, allowing assignment flexibility. Not all will want an office. The team thought up to six persons could use one of the labs comfortably.

The team was really impressed by the measures taken to reduce energy use with high-efficiency lighting; advanced heating, ventilating, and cooling equipment; and many passive solar features. These will generate savings more than offsetting the cost of operating the facility.

What did they enjoy most of all? The vast expanse of glass and terrace overlooking the harbor. Bernard Dooley, senior associate at Goody Clancy, thought we’d be overwhelmed with people wanting to use the facility.

What services do we deliver?

2008-10-23T18:09:00.029-04:00

With a puzzled look, I am often asked, by faculty, what services does the VDC deliver?

And I always answer by first saying who our client is. The client always is the entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is an innovator who recognizes an opportunity to introduce something valuable, and who raises the necessary money, assembles the team and organizes an operation to exploit the opportunity.

In our university setting, entrepreneurs are easily recognized, the ones who create a new program, consortia, center, organization, product, process or company. Their motivation varies - might be social impact, commercial gain or creative expression. But all want to make a genuine different.

But they have a powerful vision for what they’d like to create at the university. And they want to find a way to make it happen.

A large organization's bureaucracy is not kind to entrepreneurs. It wears them down. We love entrepreneurs, though, because they are moving the university forward. We are really good at mobilizing the university behind them, lighting their load, speeding their progress, getting them recognition.

Usually we meet with the entrepreneur every month or so, helping them:

Build a business case.
Identify and obtain funding.
Develop proposals and budgets.
Create operational plans.
Experiment with what works and doesn't.
Set financial sustainability as an outcome.

We also recognize that for big thinkers, its the little things that make for out and out success, like help with university rules, regulations, agreements, the stuff they feel kind of lost trying to deal with.

What do you want to accomplish?

2008-10-21T08:19:00.009-04:00

In conversations with faculty members, I hear over and over again that they have dozens of other priorities. The conversations inevitably move to what to throw overboard to make room for innovation.

Those seeking external funding for research really don't have choice: Not a day goes by without seeing a request for proposals from a funding agency looking for the transformative, the translational, the sustainable. But the fact that everybody says they are too busy to innovate demonstrates the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality.

Conversations about what to stop doing are inherently difficult and divisive. Conversations about the best ways to pursue a specific goal are much more productive. They begin only if you have something worth doing, otherwise we won't find a way to make it happen.

The right question is: What do you want to accomplish? Decisions about how to assign resources are much easier when you have a great idea.

These questions seem to get the wheels turning in a positive direction, and unearth their real priorities:

1. What motivates you to go to work everyday?

2. When was the last time you proposed a new idea to your dean? How was that idea received?

3. If you could run the university by yourself for a day, what changes would you make and why?

4. If you could take a sabbatical, what would you do and why?

5. If you could work for any university of your choice, which one would it be and why?

6. If you could create your own business, what would it be and how would you run it?

I also ask these questions of myself to figure out how to make it easier for that faculty member to pursue their idea:

1. How have they been equipped to be an innovator? What training have they received? What tools have they been supplied with?

2. Do they have access to an innovation coach or mentor? Is there an innovation expert in their unit who will help them develop their breakout idea?

3. How easy is it for them to get access to experimental funding? How long would it take to get a few thousand dollars in seed money? How many levels of bureaucracy would they have to go through?

4. Is innovation a formal part of their job description? Does their compensation depend in part on their innovation performance?

5. Does the university’s management processes—budgeting, planning, staffing, etc.—support their work as an innovator or hinder it?

The truth about the university is there’s no shortage of ideas bouncing around. Like just about everything else, execution is the result of collaboration, decisiveness, discipline and hard work. All of which faculty members are quite good at when they are driven by a vision.

Social venturing for activists

2008-10-14T18:26:00.023-04:00

so·cial en·ter·prise (n.)

An organization or venture that advances its social mission through entrepreneurial, earned income strategies.

This is a new model some non governmental organizations and donors are trying in the search for more powerful, lasting social impact. This model seems tailor made for a university campus like UMass Boston that prizes its engagement with the community to improve the human condition. I see growing interest in social enterprise as a strategy for addressing some of our most pressing problems.

It is not that hard to put together a for-profit arm, but to have it be a significant contributor to the core mission requires considerable strategic work. But my hunch is that the biggest challenge is that most social activists struggle to make the culture change that is required within the organization to even explore this model.

A social enterprise is one where the social aims are of equal importance to its commercial activities. Like any business, a social enterprise focuses on generating an income through the sale of goods and services to a market but the added value of a social enterprise comes from the way in which it uses its profits to maximize social, community or environmental benefits.

An announcement of this year's the winner of the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition represents a coming of age of sorts for social ventures. A social venture won the grand prize of what is arguably the leading business plan competition in the world. Diagnostic for All is a not-for-profit venture from Harvard University aimed at delivering cheap, dispensable diagnostic tests to impoverished countries.

Harvard Business School gave legitimacy and gravitas to social ventures by creating the Social Enterprise Initiative in 1993, which has published more than 400 cases and teaching notes on topics related to social enterprise. It was the first formal academic program in the field. HBS has a great article called The Future of Social Enterprise on the current state of the field.

On the donor side, social venturing is picking up steam, especially as a number of high-profile business leaders (like Bill Gates) adopt this model for their charitable giving.

On the seeking side, the competition for donations and gifts seems to get tighter every year. And so-called donor fatigue seems to be becoming almost epidemic. That is in part why organizations are exploring ventures.

Investors like it when you're making just enough to pay your program expenses. It shows you've thought about sustaining your venture; it shows you have the discipline to keep your expenses low; but above all, it means you don't need them. The reason they like it when you don't need them is because that quality is what makes ventures succeed. The more you don't need them, the more they will invest.

Non profits are actually really good at identifying unserved needs and opportunities for programs and services. They also know best how to tailor a service for their particular client base, and can provide the kinds of supports required to make such a venture work. These attributes can result in community-changing ventures.

Fourth Sector Network has teamed with the Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest to produce a new edition of A BUSINESS PLANNING GUIDE TO DEVELOPING A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE, a pragmatic tool to assess if the venture model is right for you and the range of stakeholders that have a connection with your program.

Interview with Mass Media

2008-10-11T22:28:00.007-04:00

This interview with UMass Boston's student newspaper follows the post Standing Room Only about our new program to hook up students with ventures:

Mr. Brah, my name is Greg Bluestein and I report for UMB's Mass Media. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions on the upcoming program that you are working with concerning getting UMB students getting first picks on highly competitive internships.

Greg: What exactly is this program?

Bill: It’s a paid internship program that connects UMass Boston students with venture capital firms and their portfolio companies in the Boston metropolitan area. It was conceived by Dan Phillips, our Entrepreneur in Residence.

Greg: How can students become part of it?

Bill: They can attend the next session in two months where students can hear what it is like to work in a start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at an internship. We'll be sure to post the information in a variety of places in an effort to reach out to as many students as possible.

Greg: About how many students per year will be able to benefit from this program?

Bill: Its a pilot program so we'll know after this year. There are lots of opportunities and lots of students interested. Two students have already been selected by a start-up company. We are going to run a one-hour session every two months where students can hear what it is like to work in a start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at an internship. Over 80 students attended the first session on October 1st, and 30 submitted resumes.

Greg: How were you able to put this program together?

Bill: The Venture Development Center likes to say that it brings the innovation economy to the campus. We are beginning with our students. Phil Quaglieri, Dean of the College of Management, introduced us to Dan Phillips.

Dan has spent the last 25 years as an executive with four venture capital backed software companies. Two of these companies executed IPO’s and two were acquired by fortune 200 companies. The most prominent was as COO of Concord Communications which attained an $800,000,000 market cap and the most recent was as CEO of SilverBack Technologies which was acquired by Dell Inc.

After a few meetings, Phil and I decided to support Dan and offer venture internship opportunity to all students at UMass Boston.

Greg: How long will this program be running?

Bill: Its a one year pilot program. Dan is already trying to raise funds to scale it up for next year. A program like this must be staffed in order to be successful. Ideally, the students would receive academic credit too, so the challenge is to integrate the internships into the academic programs at UMass Boston.

Ideally, over the next three years, we’d like the venture backed firms to come to our students! With the opening of the VDC in early 2009, we will be able to house the venture backed firms and internships right here on campus, in Wheatley where our 18,000 sf center is in the final stages of being constructed.

Greg: Why was it created?

Bill: We want to establish UMass Boston as a key producer of talent needed by the innovation economy. UMass Boston students have all of the qualities venture backed start-up companies look for. They are smart, hungry, loyal, and work hard for everything they achieve. Yet they are overlooked. Venture firms normally go hunting for talent at places like Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Chicago, Stanford and Berkeley, where students literally line up for the opportunity. But Dan's connections to the area's venture capital firms allow UMass Boston students to be first in line for chances at internships at the portfolio companies they invest in in the Boston metropolitan area.

Greg: Has UMB ever created any program like this before? Where did the idea come from?

Bill: This is a first for UMass Boston, thanks to Dan Phillips. He has a great appreciation for the quality and culture of the UMass Boston student body as he has self funded his own Scholarship/Mentor program for UMass Boston students over the last 15 years. What a gratifying sight, students in a cue to give Dan their cards following his presentation on October 1st!

Greg: If there is anything else you think I should know that I have not asked about, please feel free to tell me.

Bill: Venture capital is a highly competitive industry and an internship can give students the experience needed to secure a good job in the future. Furthermore, an internship will allow them to meet people in the industry who they can later network with. Finding quality start up internship opportunities is extraordinarily difficult. Now UMass Boston students have the opportunity to hook up with a venture and live happily ever after!

Capitalism to the rescue

2008-10-11T19:43:00.015-04:00

On Sand Hill Road, the wide avenue in Silicon Valley lined with some of the country’s most powerful venture-capital firms, hundreds of millions of dollars pours into green technologies, according to a feature in the New York Times.

Doing well has always been about timing. Many a sound plan has failed because it was too early or too late. But progressive investors could see this day coming, and a few of them now will make a lot of money.

In a stint a little over ten years ago with the Environmental Business Council of the US, we labored to rally the business community around the Clinton-Gore environmental technology strategy (Bridge to a Sustainable Future: National Environmental Technology Strategy) which we helped shape. Its gratifying to finally see the investor interest.

Some dismiss the greening of venture capital as their latest effort to make a lot of money, not to save the environment. Others are saying that the venture capitalists are recklessly betting the firm on perhaps an idealistic quest. If the results are positive, I say: What’s wrong with doing-well-by-doing-good?

Interview with Public Purpose magazine

2008-10-10T07:20:00.006-04:00

Chancellor Motley, my name is Cheryl Fields, a writer for Public Purpose magazine, published by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. I am getting the perspectives of presidents and chancellors involved in developing innovative partnerships with business. I have spoken with Richard Antonak, William Brah, and Christine DePalma, so I have background information on what is going on with the Venture Development Center.

Fields: One thing I'm interested in is whether you see the VDC as more of an outlet to extend and commercialize your faculty members' research--or whether the overall aim is more in terms of the institution's commitment to (or the expectation from the state) to aid economic development.

Motley: I see the Venture Development Center as adding a powerful new dimension to our long-standing commitment to make a difference in the communities the University of Massachusetts Boston serves – locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Top faculty and students want the results of their research put to use for both social and economic betterment.

Fields: Is a major goal to attract more basic research funding for traditional faculty research?

Motley: Attracting more basic research funding is an ongoing goal here at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and certainly the Venture Development Center will strengthen our reputation as a research university. Equally important is that the VDC will help us attract top faculty and students who are interested in research and development.

Fields: Do you see the VDC as helping to use the advantage of your urban location to assist in the developing ideas from faculty or entrepreneurs in other areas of the state, for example, UMass-Amherst?

Motley: The University of Massachusetts Boston collaborates closely with the four other campuses of the UMass system. For example, the campuses recently completed a joint strategy for life science research and development, and we will continue to look for ways to collaborate and share the unique strengths of our individual campuses. We have encouraged the other campuses to use the Venture Development Center, and we will continue to do so.

Fields: In developing the center, did you receive advice froom other presidents involved in incubators and the like about what NOT to do?

Motley: Whenever you take on a project like this, you get a lot of suggestions and opinions. I think the greatest encouragement has been around thinking of and planning for the Venture Development Center as an investment in the future of the University of Massachusetts Boston, realizing that the benefits to our research efforts, reputation, and recruitment will be great.

Fields: Five years from now, what would success look like? What benchmarks will you use to measure the VDC's success?

Motley: What we are trying to do at the University of Massachusetts Boston is to build a more collaborative, more innovative urban research university. We have identified the areas of strength where we think we can grow and partner with others, including industry. So I look for the Venture Development Center to help catalyze this growth and collaboration, and when we start to see the benefits of that growth and collaboration, that will be an initial benchmark for success.

Fields: Thanks very much for your help with this story.

Why time begins at the end of your project

2008-10-07T13:23:00.026-04:00

Why time begins at the end of your project

Satisfied with research results? Great. Have you thought of doing something with them that generates value beyond a publication? You work long and hard to secure a competitive grant. But you rarely stop and think of what is possible. Probably in part because it is beyond your experience, so it seems like a hugh mountain to climb.

But not any more. Sure, its still hard work, but you’ll have a partner. For us, research results are the beginning of the journey you thought was over.

We are good at putting results into motion through a variety of pathways to make a genuine difference.

Value creation is collaborative since few individuals possess the necessary range of skills to accomplish it on their own. You need deep thinkers who conceive the vision - you, plus those who can get the innovation really to work, and those who communicate the advantages of the innovation so it is used. We put this team together.

Some try do this on their own. Its possible, but mighty hard. Here on campus, the Boston Science Partnership is a great example. A little coaching from us can make what you are doing more competitive, more productive, and more impactful.

Why? We possess maniacal focus and drive and a willingness to take risk; move very quickly (after all, “better to fail quickly then to succeed too slowly”), and are motivated by limitless potential to make a difference. Its in our genes.

We call what we do innovation through collaboration. Why should you care? Because you want to see something come from all of your hard work and creativity. Its rewarding. How do we know? We've done it before, many times.

Reason #1 - You need to be connected

2008-10-06T09:18:00.008-04:00

What’s impressive about Boston is not just scientific advances or technological breakthroughs. Instead, its edge derives from a habitat that is tuned to turn ideas into products and take them rapidly to market by creating new firms.

So why you want to be in Boston is to be connected to this ecosystem. At the VDC, you are connected. To leading research universities that interact with industry, an exceptionally talented and highly mobile work force, and experienced support services in such areas as finance, law, accounting, headhunting, and marketing, all specializing in helping ventures form and grow.

The VDC works closely with 31 other universities in the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Organization and the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center. We also work with the John Adams Innovation Institute, the Massachusetts Life Science Board, MassInsight Corporation. This network shapes strategic alliances among public and private universities, teaching hospitals, government and industry which expand the state’s research, development and economic leadership in emerging technologies, and translates these capabilities into commercial development activities.

Researchers investigate carbon neutrality

2008-10-04T20:41:00.003-04:00

In a race for the greenest of the laurels, not a day goes by without another announcement about going “carbon neutral.”

Carbon neutral organizations are those that measure CO2 emissions, work to reduce or eliminate them, and then attempt to offset those that cannot be eliminated through schemes such as the purchase of carbon offsets, tree planting and clean energy alternatives.

Among the world's 195 nations, the starting pistol was fired earlier this year in Monaco at the annual meeting of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Program. Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica formally signed up to go zero carbon, competing to be the first to go entirely carbon neutral.

One United Nations member state already claims to have beaten them all. The Vatican announced last year that it was becoming the world's first – but is widely held to have cheated since it failed to count the carbon emitted by its traveling officials.

Among the many other entities that have made the carbon neutral pledge are Abbott, Dell, the Super Bowl, the Whole Foods, the World Bank—even rock bands like the Rolling Stones and Coldplay, and surfer Kelly Slater. New Hampshire University claims it is the first carbon-neutral university campus.

In the face of widespread concern about global warming, many organizations are going carbon neutral. Or are they?

Professors Amanda Ball and Markus Milne of the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) have been awarded a Marsden research grant ($824,000 over three years) to examine claims of being carbon neutral. Along with colleagues Professor David Levy (UMass - Boston) and Professor Kevin Anderson (Tyndall Centre at Manchester, UK), professors Ball and Milne will investigate organization and agency claims, policies, and practices in relation to carbon neutrality. This will be achieved through a series of in-depth case studies of organizations that are pursuing this goal, along with evidence from certification agencies, auditors, and others involved in measuring, managing and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.

Credible carbon neutrality programs require serious attention to emissions reduction prior to offsetting. So far, however, little work has attempted to systematically understand the actual dynamics of organizational emissions reduction programs, key motives that drive or inhibit action, or critically scrutinize obvious tensions and paradoxical motives between organizational desires to reduce ecological impacts and desires to grow and succeed economically. Achieving carbon neutrality requires organizations to think differently as well as change their practices. The researchers aim to uncover exactly what managers in an array of organizations mean by ‘carbon-neutrality’, and how they believe it can be achieved in their organizations. This side of the issue has not yet been examined as fully as the economic and technological aspects.

New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has already set her country the goal of being the world's first carbon-neutral country. It aims to generate 90 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025, and to halve its transport emissions per head by 2040. But the country has a particular problem with agriculture, which accounts for half its emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Marsden Fund supports excellence in leading-edge research in New Zealand. Projects are selected annually in a rigorous process by nine panels of experts who are guided by the opinions of world-leading referees. The Fund is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Levy has co-edited two books, titled, “The Business of Global Environmental Governance”, (MIT Press,2005), and "The Business of Climate Change", (Greenleaf Publishing, 2005).

Reason #2 - You are ready for action

2008-10-03T21:35:00.019-04:00

The second reason to collaborate with the Venture Development Center:

We are better at action than anyone else. Talk is important. But when the time for talk is over, you turn to the VDC. We are passionate about putting into action creative ideas to make a genuine difference.

You are excellent at starting novel things. We excel on the execution side, the stuff you feel kind of lost trying to deal with at the university.

So, we make a great team.

Standing room only

2008-10-01T21:24:00.008-04:00

Thanks to Entrepreneur in Residence, Dan Phillips, over 80 students, with some having to be turned away, came on October 1, 2008 to hear him talk about what it is like to work in a start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at an internship.

The firms like what they see at UMass Boston. Two students, Wararat Tipwimolratchai and Wei Tang, have already been selected by Brighton House Associates venture backed start-up company in Marlborough. There is much more to come.

The College of Management and the Venture Development Center are supporting a university-wide internship program targeted at students who want to work for venture-backed start up companies in the Boston metropolitan area.

These companies are in a range of businesses including novel cancer therapeutics, home care services to the elderly, natural pharmacy, low-cost battery system, advanced microarray instruments, on-demand social media platform, and digital semiconductors.

Students can step into a job needing no more assistance than any other senior level employee. All students are welcome.

There's no doubt that venture capital is a highly competitive industry and an internship can give students the experience needed to secure a good job in the future. Furthermore, an internship will allow them to meet people in the industry who they can later network with.

Finding quality start up internship opportunities is extraordinarily difficult. Students at places like MIT and Stanford line up for jobs. But for the first time, UMass Boston students have the opportunity. What a gratifying sight, students in a cue to give Dan their cards following his presentation!

Dan has spent the last 25 years as an executive with four venture capital backed software companies. Two of these companies executed IPO’s and two were acquired by fortune 200 companies. The most prominent was as COO of Concord Communications which attained an $800,000,000 market cap and the most recent was as CEO of SilverBack Technologies which was acquired by Dell Inc.

Satisfying two masters

2008-10-01T16:33:00.001-04:00

Not a day goes by without seeing a request for proposals from a federal science agency seeking “interdisciplinary efforts to address scientific challenges leading to a new and truly transformative approach.”

Arguably, the most dynamic research at disciplinary frontiers and in novel terrains is interdisciplinary. But you have to defy gravity to achieve it. Because every day, biologists just talk to biologists, economists talk to economists, and psychologists to psychologists.

Even in notably successful interdisciplinary research programs, where there is a concerted effort to integrate of knowledge and modes of thinking, the approval of peers sways assessment. Researchers often are forced to evaluate the degree to which their work is reasonably consistent with antecedent disciplinary knowledge.

This is the conclusion of a paper entitled “Assessing Interdisciplinary Work at the Frontier” by Veronica Boix Mansilla and Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In their study, they looked at the way in which the quality of interdisciplinary work is determined at exemplary interdisciplinary institutes and programs around the nation.

At the end of the day, success of faculty is tied to disciplinary recognition. Sure, there is a tremendous sense of freedom associated to breaking disciplinary rules, and trying to transform understanding.

But interdisciplinary work takes a lot of effort. A lot of compromises and negotiations are in order. Members of interdisciplinary research programs have to spend time to recognize the relevance of others' findings to their own scholarship.

The authors conclude that interdisciplinary work gains its strength from its keen awareness of the provisional status of its findings. When you are at the cutting edge of anything, by definition you're taking risks that most do not take.

Reason #3 - You need a navigator

2008-09-15T19:58:00.016-04:00

Another reason to collaborate in the Venture Development Center:

You just can't sprinkle your idea with pixie dust to make it happen. You know that. But you wish you could, don't you?

Nine times out of ten you are better explaining where you want to go but not how you are going to get there.

Not to worry. This is where the VDC's team of professionals come in. We excel on navigating the execution side, the stuff you feel kind of lost trying to deal with. As part of your team, we work with you to assemble everything you need to be successful.

We will adeptly steer you around those who will tell you that what you are doing can't be done, shouldn't be done, and isn't necessary. And then of course there are the university policies and procedures we know how to comply with.

Our team has a few internal center start-ups under our belt. And our entrepreneur in residence has done four software companies. Need we say more?

Reason #4 - You prefer to work in a team

2008-09-14T19:43:00.010-04:00

Another reason to work in the Venture Development Center:

From the moment you step through our doors, you'll know that this is not business as usual.

We vanquished the solo investigator lab, substituting open labs. We shrank offices to the minimum, substituting work pods for teams. (To underscore the point, we even included two stand-up private offices.) And we provided lots of places where researchers can congregate outside their labs or offices to talk with one another, exchange ideas and write-up results.

Why did we do this? Because modern research and development is an intensely social activity. So the VDC’s designers delivered a program that facilitates interaction, flexibility and sharing.

The program supports research clusters, designed to enable scholars to better exchange ideas and explore emerging research areas and to work more effectively with industry, other research organizations and the community. We've learned that collaboration creates synergy, excitement, and creativity. Besides, we hear from students that employers want graduates who are prepared to meet the multidisciplinary needs of the world, integrating what they have learned in disparate fields.

We really pushed the concept. As networks connect people and organizations, sharing data within a team and with other research teams becomes key. Our technology enables you to include your colleagues scattered around town or the world, even in the labs.

Reason #5 - You need speed

2008-09-14T13:57:00.007-04:00

Another reason to work in the Venture Development Center:

We told our IT folks: “Big science will be done here. Have at it.”

They delivered. The VDC is the fastest place on the UMass Boston campus. Universal CAT 6A connections everywhere linked by fiber optic cable to the data center which is connected to Internet2.

The IT folks did not stop there. Because you also have to be able to dynamically visualize data, not just process or store it, we installed a full high definition plasma display, at 103”, the largest in the world.

Now you can take advantage of the new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, and experience a whole new way of understanding the world. So go sequence an entire ecosystem.

We think big so you can too.

Think like a sponsor

2008-09-14T11:55:00.003-04:00

You are pitching a sponsor whether a program officer from a foundation, science agency or a private investor. Instead of thinking about you, think about them. Everything then changes, in your favor.

What is the sponsor most interested in? We can answer this question with a few observations from our experience being both funding seekers and givers.

Contrary to popular belief, the sponsor is not thinking, “Is this venture going to make a lot of money?” or “is this venture going to have an impact?” That is the simple question that most think they are answering, but they are missing the crux of the investment process.

What the sponsor is really thinking is, “Is this venture the best next investment for me and my fund?” That is a much more complex issue, but that is what you have to pitch. So, you have to figure out how your venture fits with other investments the individual sponsor has made and the investments the sponsor is chartered to make.

The sponsor is also thinking, "Will my investment increase your venture's capacity to be self-sufficient or it's attractiveness to other sponsors?" Most sponsors do not take on a permanent funding commitment. So, you have to present milestones and say how you will use the requested investment to accomplish the milestones, in order to move the venture from one stage to the next, and meet the sponsor's objectives.

Investors like it when you're making just enough to pay your program expenses. It shows you've thought about sustaining your venture, instead of just working on amusing technical problems; it shows you have the discipline to keep your expenses low; but above all, it means you don't need them.

You may still need investment to make it big, but you don't need it next month. The reason they like it when you don't need them is because that quality is what makes ventures succeed.

The investor wants to say "Oh, those folks can take care of themselves. They'll be fine." Not "those folks are really smart" or "those folks are working on a great idea."

Reason # 6 - You want to make a difference

2008-09-07T11:25:00.020-04:00

Another reason to check out the Venture Development Center:

We like to feel good about the business missions we support. That is why we seek out those who are pursuing double or triple bottom line ventures - those who set out with a vision to build a profit focused company that is socially and environmentally positively impacting the world.

UMass Boston is a magnet for those dedicated to improving people’s lives using the power of enterprise as a powerful force for change. It has outpaced the nation in the growth of sponsored social science research. Most of this research is driven by a desire for social change, and it is shared with society in a way to have an impact. And through its many ethnic institutes, it has a finger on the pulse of the world. We know that there are opportunities all over the world for social enterprises that commercial enterprises have missed. We can help you to see and seize a gap in the market.

Reason # 7 - You see things differently

2008-09-05T09:40:00.017-04:00

Another reason why the Venture Development Center is for you:

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."*

*"Think Different" is an advertising campaign created in 1997 for Apple. The commercials end with an image of a young girl opening her closed eyes, as if to see the possibilities before her.

Reason # 8 - You need to leverage talent

2008-09-04T08:12:00.012-04:00

Another reason why the Venture Development Center is for you:

All start ups have too much to do, in too little time, without enough resources. Your workforce is typically very expensive, however with limited resources, you often are required to use your high priced talent to accomplish everything.

Our student interns provide great value in database entry, database scrubbing, and data verification; event and lead generation; market research; scripted cold calling for webinar, seminar, and event attendance; collection and analysis of data to determine effectiveness or outcomes; lab tests on blood, tissue and body fluids; first level hardware and software support; scripting and code development; accounting assistance and business modeling. They are smart, hungry, loyal, and work hard for everything they achieve.

Our faculty comprise an outstanding translational research community in human development, biological systems, computational science and environmental monitoring, and can solve technical problems, engage in joint development and verify results.

The cultural diversity of UMass Boston's research community and its distinction as one of the most productive of small research universities adds to the robustness of your solutions.

Reason #9 - You need a place where you can do good work

2008-09-03T09:18:00.015-04:00

Another reason why the Venture Development Center is for you:

As a lean technical team looking for a place to get started on your venture, you often face the choice between looking impressive, and being impressive.

You could find a cheap deal to share bench or office space in a cube farm or some dreary building in the suburbs that's a wasteland when the sun goes down. Not great since you’ll be practically living in the space, coming back to work after dinner when the phone stops ringing.

Leasing corporate space closer to the action is beyond your reach at the moment. You don't know what your needs will be six months from now and don't want to be locked into paying for space you do not need.

But after investigating what’s available, you quickly find that you have to compromise. Until now.

The VDC brings you the latest in research and development space design with flexible terms that work for you. In our 18,000 sf facility, you can plug in and get to work, almost immediately, and your team can expand or contract as you go. Plus, you can take a walk or run, smelling the ocean instead of traffic.

Reason #10 - You want to build something of lasting value

2008-09-03T07:37:00.027-04:00

Another reason why the Venture Development Center is for you:

Inside your research program there is a venture screaming to be set free. A venture might include a subscription newsletter or journal, fee-for-service research, testing, or design operation, or even a product. Researchers rarely stop and think about what is possible.

Having a venture helps you meet the challenge of maintaining the capacity to continue to implement the ideas and approaches begun under a grant. It also helps your program officer show that what resulted from their investment and effort has value beyond the term of the grant.

Most sponsors these days aren’t simply dispersing money but casting a hard eye on results. They’re expecting impact long after their funding is withdrawn.

Most researchers are not prepared to deal with this. They tend to go from grant to grant assuming that just because their mission is worthy, or they achieve good results, their program will continue.

The VDC helps our partners meet this challenge. We begin by asking the right questions. Not at the end of a grant, when it is too late, but at the beginning, so progress can be tracked just like the other outcomes. We also help clients change the pitch they make to sponsors so they'll be more likely to invest.

We'll coach you through a pragmatic step-by-step, test-and-learn process that enables you to see and seize revenue opportunities. You'll learn how to build sustainability into your strategy. It will save you headaches and heartaches down the line.

California v. Massachusetts

2008-08-27T09:28:00.009-04:00

If you haven't noticed, California and Massachusetts are going head-to-head on biotech and clean energy leadership. Governors Schwarzenegger and Patrick both aim to attract the top scientists and companies to their state.

At the Biotechnology International Convention in San Diego, Schwarzenegger stated that, “California is the place to set-up shop.” He touted $73 billion in annual revenue for the California biomedical industry, which he added, “excludes the sales of Botox.”

As the competition heats up, I am keeping an eye on what is happening out west. It appears that they are pulling out all the stops.

The San Francisco Business Times reports that Segway users now will be able to bring the scooters on BART (as in MBTA) with some limited restrictions. The BART board approved a one-year pilot program covering guidelines for using Segways on BART. The newspaper estimates that only 15 to 20 Segway owners ride BART.

Getting down to the business of creativity

2008-08-26T08:52:00.003-04:00

The Venture Development Center team consumes vast quantities of research results that bear on how large unwieldy organizations manage to think and work in new ways to achieve superior performance.

Here are some interesting snippets from Getting Down to the Business of Creativity published on May 14, 2008 by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Three faculty members discuss where creativity comes from, how entrepreneurs use it, and why innovation is often a team sport.

"The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it's in the arts, sciences, or business.”

Research demonstrates the causal relationship between emotion and creativity, “with positive emotion tied to higher creativity and negative feelings linked to lower motivation and creativity.”

So what can managers do to promote a healthy, positive work life among employees? A pat on the back is always welcome. But research shows that “people have their best days and do their best work when they are allowed to make progress.”

(This reminds me of one comment universally endorsed that appears in the report of the Research and Graduate Studies Committee during UMass Boston's strategic planning process about reengineering internal business processes to be a tailwind versus a headwind.)

“Maximum diversity in cultures, disciplines, and backgrounds—the intersection where creativity is most likely to occur.”

"In business, people can go only so far by doing things the way they have always been done. In entrepreneurship especially, it is essential to perceive opportunities that others have not, and to pursue them in novel yet appropriate ways at every stage of the game. Such creative solutions will be necessary for managers to help solve the socioeconomic challenges of the future."

"As a manager, you need to create a culture that will convince people to kick off the filters they're used to applying and to think more broadly. It is the shift in the mindset of employees that can prove most difficult."

The new wave in research parks

2008-08-25T14:42:00.006-04:00

UMass Boston’s Venture Development Center represents the new model of research parks integrated into the fabric of the university, according to a report, "Characteristics and Trends in North American Research Parks: 21st Century Directions", prepared by Battelle's Technology Partnership Practice (TPP) in partnership with the Association of University Research Parks (AURP).

Today’s research parks differ substantially from the model that emerged in the 1970’s. Most early research parks were first and foremost real-estate development projects. The companies that located in the parks usually had few, if any, actual ties to the university. In the 1990s, research parks began to place greater emphasis on supporting incubation and entrepreneurship. Like the Venture Development Center, the newest versions create an innovative environment with free and frequent exchange of information between academic researchers and their industry counterparts, the report says.

"A new model is emerging," said Walter H. Plosila, Vice-President, Battelle TPP, when the report was released at the AURP Annual Conference. "What we're seeing are strategically planned, mixed-use campuses designed to create an environment that fosters collaboration and innovation and promotes the development, transfer and commercialization of technology."

Challenges facing the integrated research park include bridging cultural barriers between the academic and business communities and facilitating a true partnership. Parks must continue to serve as an intermediary that understands both cultures and creatively fosters integrated, collaborative efforts, the report says.

Most research parks have very few resources in their early stages and do not generate sufficient revenue to be self-supporting. “Parks need diversified funding sources, and investments in research parks need to be considered as investments in a region’s economic development infrastructure,” the report states.

The TTP survey of 174 university research parks in the United States and Canada revealed that:

* More than 300,000 workers in North America work in a located in a university research park.
* Every job in a research park generates an average of 2.57 jobs in the economy resulting in a total employment impact of more than 750,000 jobs.

Important success factors for technology-led economic development include the commitment of university leadership and the local economic development community. This report quantifies actual results of science parks as an important economic development tool.

A full copy of "Trends and Characteristics in North American Research Parks: 21st Century Directions" can be found at http://www.aurp.net/more/pr102607.cfm.

A sign of good things to come

2008-08-25T07:52:00.007-04:00

An article last week in the Boston Business Journal titled “Schools boost tech-transfer efforts, and VCs take note” included an apt remark by UMass President Jack Wilson. Emphasizing the importance of championing entrepreneurial activity, he said: "If you’re not doing these things you’re not going to be a great university. And by the way, you’re not going to attract the best faculty and you’re not going to attract the best students.”

Maybe that is why President Wilson beamed when he toured the future home of the UMass Boston Venture Development Center. I know it is how I felt last week when I showed the nearly completed 18,000 SF metal and glass high-tech facility to a candidate for a department chair at UMass Boston. This candidate not only has outstanding scientific credentials, but is a leader in furthering diversity by training underrepresented minority students in science, and has formed a company with a few graduate students that needs a home.

The Venture Development Center is not just a recruitment strategy though. It is a powerful new way for UMass Boston’s faculty, staff and students to express their passion to drive lasting change, either in society or the economy or both, in response to opportunities to create new products and services that dramatically improve people’s lives.

Watch out Boston, we are on the move!

Uncovering lore (and much more) in Skagafjörður

2008-08-24T12:50:00.008-04:00

A few dozen shaggy sheep graze at Stóra-Seyla, a farm in a fjord valley in the northern part of Iceland named Skagafjörður. Beneath them deep in the wind-blown deposits lie the remains that archaeologists believe document the wrenching transition of Iceland from chiefdoms to state. The Skagafjordur Archaeological Settlement Survey (SASS) led by UMass Boston’s John Steinberg has had to develop novel techniques to understand what happened during the transition.

Icelandic history is largely informed by sagas, which give fascinating details into the lives of people living during the Viking and Middle Ages. The level of historical accuracy is widely debated, with some seeing the sagas as fairly accurate while others the texts as mere myth making amongst a hero-obsessed culture. Still others see an unwritten saga that needs to be told.

Iceland was one of the last places on earth to be settled. The first settlers were chieftains, wealthy farmers, and their households fleeing state consolidation in Norway over a thousand years ago. The resulting settlements of chiefs and autonomous farmers meant that each held large territories by virtue of first possession and their ability to muster the might to defend them.

Steinberg’s previous research has demonstrated that about 150 years after the first settlement, smaller farmsteads were split off from the larger, earlier farmsteads. This split was a critical step in the development of a society of landed landlords and tenants, resulting in pronounced disparities in wealth and status. The sagas describe the fierce competition among the thirty chieftains over several hundred years that ended in civil war and the King of Norway taking control of Iceland.

The SASS team is comparing Stóra-Seyla to two other nearby farmstead clusters in Skagafjordur identified in previous survey work. This will provide data to answer questions concerning how chiefly strategies both adapt and fail. For example, were small farms split off as a result of population growth, economic opportunity, or environmental degradation? Answering these and other basic economic questions about the development of social inequality is an objective of the SASS program.

Archeology is difficult in Iceland. There are virtually no trees, so buildings were constructed from turf. Overgrazing caused all the soil from the highlands to eventually blow onto the coastal regions, covering a substantial percentage of the productive land. As a result, the archeology is deeply buried and therefore invisible, especially in the most important areas.

Steinberg, a senior scientist at UMass Boston’s Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, addressed this problem by using sophisticated equipment that measures the electrical conductivity and resistance of soil. The turf used in construction has a much lower conductivity, so electrical patterns reveal where walls are located. Once these buried structures are located, dating their construction material is routine because of the volcanic ash layers that are in the walls and cover them.

Steinberg’s techniques allow rapid excavation with a small crew. “We can see what we are going to find before we find it,” noted Steinberg in an interview this summer on Icelandic television, sparing the landscape from large-scale excavation.

The SASS team has been working in Skagafjörður since 2001. During the excavation this summer, a number of rare finds were uncovered, including a Viking Age ring pin and an unusual copper coin. The ring pin is a plain ring with a polyhedral head. It has a chevron pattern on the shank and a dot pattern on the head. The copper coin is intriguing as most Viking Age coinage was silver.

Steinberg’s ultimate goal is to understand the radical transition in property systems and what it means for sustainability. For centuries, the settlers managed to live in a free state and avoid destroying their land before the transition.

In 2007, Harcourt Trade published a book called The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman, by Nancy Brown which recounts Steinberg’s archaeological advances which Brown observed during her volunteer stint with SASS. They are woven in a story of a chieftain’s daughter-in-law compelled by the exigencies of a feudal economy to sail across the North Atlantic in search of new pasturelands.

The SASS program is funded by the National Science Foundation.

How the world understands your brand

2008-08-22T21:58:00.015-04:00

This is a visual representation of how Google sees the content on our web site. The size and color of each word reflects how frequently it appears in the overall page. Google doesn't care how our site looks. Only the words we use on our site form the online brand. I think we got it right.

These images were generated using a tool at http://wordle.net/.

Grant and sponsored program activity achieves another record

2008-08-17T12:24:00.007-04:00

During the 2006-2007 academic year, UMass Boston set a new record for grant and sponsored program awards— $45,435,687, an 8.77% increase over FY07 and a total increase of nearly 50% in the last six years. UMass Boston received 312 awards, a 28.93% increase over FY07. A total of 351 proposals were submitted. Also in FY08, a total of 592 active sponsored programs (a 12.76% increase over FY07) expended $38,895,922 (a 12.48% increase over FY07).

UMass Boston’s researchers work long and hard to be successful. With their fingers on the pulse of the region and its needs, they create the new knowledge that helps drive the growth of the region’s economy. Their grant and sponsored program activity also strengthens the social fabric of the region by supporting neighborhoods and providing arts and cultural activities for thousands of people. Whatever the topic their research addresses, the goal is impact. We celebrate their success!

Bringing new ideas to life

2008-08-16T15:26:00.013-04:00

In about eight weeks, an 18,000 sf high-tech metal-and-glass innovation center will be substantially completed in the former cafeteria in the heart of Wheatley Hall on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The construction has been managed so well that most don’t even know its underway. When we take people on tours of the work in progress, their jaws drop. Its so different, most say, so well, like UMass Boston we want to see.

What better symbol of the institution’s transformation than a place that celebrates its visionaries? They are the team-builders, risk-takers and change-makers in our midst. You know them well. They are the ones who see things differently. The ones driven by passion to make a big difference. The ones who don't worry about current resources or fuss about who gets what since there will be plenty for all. You can praise them or vilify them, but you can’t ignore them. Because they are creating the future of the university.

And now, finally, they have a place to call their own, a home away from home. Its called the Venture Development Center (VDC). What will they do in this place? Last year, we gathered thirty-five visionaries to ask this question. Our architect, world-renowned Sasaki Associates Inc., listened carefully:

The group wanted a place with raw edges to reflect our urban roots yet abundant with amenities, one that would delight their colleagues at the bench and in the boardroom.
They wanted a place with advanced yet easy to use technology that enables any-time, any-place collaboration.
They wanted a place insulated from daily business where they can experiment with what works and doesn’t without disturbing their current workspace.
They wanted a place where their partners from industry and other research organizations can work side-by-side with them for an extended time.
They wanted blazing fast electronic connections to manipulate and visualize large data sets.
They wanted a place to relax, in a coffee bar or bookstore like atmosphere where they can informally discuss.
They wanted a secure, private place to repair to think and reflect.
And they also wanted professional support, so good they wouldn’t mind paying for it.

The resulting program gives them what they want, and more. The design features:

Four small group collaboration spaces for teams to develop plans and proposals.
One large presentation space for video conferencing and presentations.
Six labs - two with with fume hoods and two without, and two dry labs, for experimenting with ideas, proving concepts.
Ten temporary offices for individual work.
A display area for receptions and showcasing work.
A lounge and terrace for relaxing while enjoying stunning views of the harbor.

Want a visiting scientist to be with you for a while? Want to present research results to a very important group? Want to have a reception impress donors or sponsors? No problem.

Visions need a great process to realize their potential. That is where our team of professionals come in. You excel on the technical side, we excel on the execution side, the stuff you feel kind of lost trying to deal with. As part of your team, we work with you to assemble everything you need to be successful. We help you rapidly experiment with what works and doesn't, build support, and mobilize resources. When you succeed so do we.

The VDC itself was a vision only a few years ago. It is the kind of bold innovation we help you bring about in your own areas.

So, send us the visionaries. The ones who see abundance. The future of the university depends upon it.

Supercharging life science

2008-08-14T23:01:00.011-04:00

Beacon Hill, with strong backing from the life science industry, has approved a $1 billion, 10-year life science initiative, a cornerstone of Governor Patrick's economic strategy. He hopes the bill will lure biotechnology companies to the state, creating high-paying, quality jobs while holding onto scientists and researchers at state institutions.

The bill includes $250 million in tax credits for life sciences companies that agree to create jobs in the Commonwealth. Another $250 million is set aside for research grants to encourage those conducting the cutting edge research to stay in Massachusetts.

The remaining $500 million would be dedicated for major construction and improvement projects designed to benefit the industry. One of those is a $10 million Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy at UMass Boston in partnership with the Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Center. UMass Boston was quick to win one of the initial $750,000 grants from the new life sciences center board, responsible for allocating the new state funds, for start-up funds to recruit a nationally prominent scientist to lead the Center. Overall, UMass won over one-quarter of the $1 billion life science bill for various projects.

In another bond bill approved this year by Beacon Hill lawmakers is $2.2 billion, 10-year higher education bill to help pay for new building and renovation projects at the state's public universities and colleges. As part of the bond bill, UMass Boston will receive $125 million in new funding the bulk of which will fund a new integrated sciences building.

The state investments in science and technology come at a time when federal research investments are shrinking as a share of the U.S. economy, just as other nations are increasing their investments, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Federal investment in research will fall in real terms for the fifth year in a row. Massachusetts’ young scientists are stuck behind their mentors in a federal funding queue that is stalling promising careers in academic research and development.

At a hearing in March of this year on a report called "A Broken Pipeline," Senator Edward Kennedy warned: "If we lose the talents of a generation of young researchers, we put in peril not only medical progress, but our leadership in life sciences too," he said. "A culture of innovation and discovery does not just happen. It must be nurtured or it will wither."

The new state investments come on the heals of an economic stimulus bill two years ago through which UMass Boston obtained $5 million for an 18,000 SF Venture Development Center, opening early next year. The Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy is expected to be a magnet for young scientists requiring small, reasonably priced office and lab space in the Venture Development Center for starting their own companies.

Massachusetts is “the gold standard” according to the Milken Institute’s 2008 State Technology and Science Index. The surge in authorized borrowing this year has signaled that Massachusetts will not be outdone when it comes to science and technology, and that UMass is a cornerstone of the state’s strategy.

Popping a quantum balloon

2008-07-12T07:52:00.017-04:00

When a tiny, quantum-scale, hypothetical balloon is popped in a vacuum, what happens to the particles inside?

This is a deceptively complicated question, the subject of debate among theoretical physicists studying nature at the subatomic level. Predicting if chaos or regularity prevails there is also important to scientists who are trying to harness quantum's bizarre wave and particle like behavior to advance nanotechnology.

Dr. Maxim Olchanyi, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Department of Physics, thinks the answer is chaos … sort of. Writing in the April 17, 2008 edition of Nature, he reported that when an observer attempts to measure the energies of particles coming out of a quantum balloon, the interference caused by the attempt throws the system into a final, “relaxed” state analogous to the chaotic scattering of air molecules. The result is the same for any starting arrangement of particles since the act of measuring wipes out the differences between varying initial states.

“It’s enough to know the properties of a single stationary state of definite energy of the system to predict the properties of the thermal equilibrium (the end state),” Olchanyi said in a press release issued by the University of Southern California, where he began his research.

The measurement – which must involve interaction between observer and observed, such as light traveling between the two – disrupts the “coherent” state of the system, Olchanyi said. In mathematical terms, the resulting interference reveals the final state, which had been hidden in the equations describing the initial state of the system.

“The thermal equilibrium is already encoded in an initial state,” Olchanyi said. “You can see some signatures for the future equilibrium. They were already there but more masked by quantum coherences.”

Olchanyi’s finding level extends into the world of applications, where scientists require reliable predictions in order to develop quantum-scale semiconductors. Quantum computing is gaining attention as manufacturers rapidly reach the limit on how much smaller chips can be. Because quantum particles can exist in multiple states at the same time, they could be used to carry out many calculations at once, factoring hugh numbers in just seconds. But to exploit this power, researchers must prevent coherent systems from falling into the chaos of thermal equilibrium.

Paolo Zanardi, an associate professor of physics studying quantum information at USC College, said in the USC interview: “Finding such ‘unthermalizable’ states of matter and manipulating them is exactly one of those things that quantum information/computation folks like me would love to do. Such states would be immune from ‘decoherence’ (loss of quantum coherence induced by the coupling with environment) that’s still the most serious, both conceptually and practically, obstacle between us and viable quantum information processing.”

Modern technology already operates at a scale where quantum effects are significant. Examples include the laser, the transistor, the electron microscope, and magnetic resonance imaging. But further exploitation at the nanoscale is only in its infancy.

The National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Resarch funded the research of Olchanyi and his co-authors, postdoctoral researchers Marcos Rigol and Vanja Dunjko.

Emerging as an economic engine

2008-07-08T07:44:00.023-04:00

DId you know that UMass Boston is one of the region’s major employers, a stable economic engine in the community? It educates more Massachusetts residents than any other higher education institution in the region. Each year its graduates provide to the region’s leading industries a steady stream of highly talented, well-educated workers. With their fingers on the pulse of the region and its needs, UMass Boston's researchers create the new knowledge that helps drive the growth of the region’s quality of life and economy.

UMass Boston and the seven other research universities in the Boston area give Boston a special advantage: an enduring economic engine of future growth. Three of the Boston's universities are ranked as the most productive research universities in the entire nation: Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among large universities, and UMass Boston among small.

Beyond the bottom line, UMass Boston strengthens the social fabric of the region by supporting neighborhoods and providing arts and cultural activities for thousands of people.

Stable foundation
While companies in the private sector come and go, UMass Boston remains a stable base in the community. UMass Boston employs just over 1,500 people (excluding students) — more than the number employed in Boston in engineering. It purchases goods and services from Boston area vendors. And the campus renovates its current facilities through the employment of local contractors and construction workers.

In 2007, UMass Boston spent $259 million on payroll, purchasing, and construction. The multiplier effect of UMass Boston’s spending within the region is $558 million in regional economic output – 8% of the $7 billion total of all eight research universities - and more than 4,159 full-time-equivalent jobs.

Talent generator
UMass Boston is developing Boston’s number one resource – talent. With just over 13,400 students, and over 80,000 alumni, more than 60 percent of its graduates choose to live and work in the state. As the pace of economic change increasingly demands that workers become lifelong learners, UMass Boston has emerged as a major provider of continuing education. UMass Boston generates talent in areas that have traditionally seen shortages in the region such as information technology, nursing, education, and business management.

UMass Boston is a gateway to the world. It serves the most diverse student population in New England with 36% of its students indicating that they are non-white and graduates regularly reporting that they speak over 90 different languages at home.

Research
UMass Boston offers doctoral programs in approximately 15 fields of study. It has a wide range of research partnerships that address the gaps in translating innovation between basic university research and the more applied needs of the economy. Student participation in research turns university graduates into the most efficient of all instruments for transferring new knowledge and new technologies from the region’s campuses to its employers. This participation also leads to new funding and partnership opportunities for our faculty and staff that in turn impact the regional economy.

Growing at a double-digit rate, in fiscal year 2007, research spending at UMass Boston reached nearly $35 million. Approximately $80 million was contributed to region’s economy as a result of the multiplier effect of research and development on underlying economic productivity.

Federal funding sources outside the Boston area account for 51% of all research spending at UMass Boston. 21% of extramural funding was awarded by state and local sources. As a result, UMass Boston generates a significant amount of revenue coming into the region.

New business development
Technologies first developed at a university have become an increasingly important source for the development of new products and new businesses. UMass Boston provides extensive support to faculty members, students and others that want to start new businesses based on innovations developed at the university. Through its Venture Development Center, opening in early 2009, reasonably priced lab and office space will help accommodate the growth of companies generated by (or attracted to) the university.

Formal programs aimed at educating student entrepreneurs have also been organized in an effort to enhance the student learning experience at UMass Boston. Budding entrepreneurs in the College of Management compete in the most prestigious regional case competition, the B-School Beanpot, held each spring at Boston University. This year, eighteen teams participated, with one of the two teams from UMass Boston placing fourth overall.

Community partner
UMass Boston is the only university in the region that is classified Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as both a Doctoral/Research and Community Engagement university. It is helping communities meet challenges resulting from the continued growth of a knowledge-based economy. In the area that most analysts believe is the best opportunity for the region’s urban core, life science research and development, UMass Boston is leading the way.

UMass Boston provides a pipeline of diverse talent for the life sciences industry that contributes to novel and innovative science and adds to the robustness of solutions. With Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, UMass Boston will launch a $10 million personalized cancer therapy center within the Venture Development Center’s state-of-the-art facility.

UMass Boston is also engaged in numerous efforts aimed at improving the quality of elementary and secondary education in communities throughout the Boston area. Its $12.5 million Boston Science Partnership award from the National Science Foundation supports science teachers in the public schools. And it provides important cultural resources for the Boston area, myriad concerts, exhibits and lectures open to the public.

Looking to the future 
UMass Boston has an ambitious 25-year master plan that calls for rebuilding its infrastructure to serve the needs of the 21st century. Included is an integrated science building that provides space for scientists from the university and industry to develop new products and new businesses. Imagine Dorchester as a high tech hub, a continuous engine of knowledge, culture and economic growth for the future of the region.

Thinking critically about the forces of social gravity

2008-07-06T12:56:00.014-04:00

Are hard work and persistence the essential ingredients for success in America? Pepi Leistyna, associate professor of applied linguistics UMass Boston, challenges his students to think critically about this question.

His documentary film Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class (Media Education Foundation) examines working class representations from American television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows. Leistyna believes these images reinforce the myth of meritocracy. The film also associates unflattering television portrayals to cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of the working class.

“I had been thinking for some time about how television has played a pivotal role in shaping our perceptions of the world and in particular our understanding of social class,” says Leistyna in Radical Teacher, Spring 2008. Through his film, he shows how mainstream media largely ignores a variety of social forces such as inheritance, social and cultural advantages, unequal educational opportunity, changing structure of job opportunities, and discrimination in all of its forms that tend to suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit in the race to get ahead. These forces of “social gravity” tend to keep people in the places they already occupy, regardless of the extent of their individual merit.

Class Dismissed was conceived as Leistyna was struggling to develop Language and the Media, a course that prepares graduate students to understand the media through a critical lens. He searched for materials that addressed social class and representation to no avail, so he decided to break new ground in exploring the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class.

Leistyna believes that corporate-managed media have constructed their own tales about the lives of everyday people. He emphasizes that the purpose of Class Dismissed is not to “beat students over the head” with a particular point of view but to encourage them to think through their understandings. “Whose interests are served by such representations?”

He encourages his students to access, make use of, and even create alternative sources of information that aid in civic mobilization to democratize global media systems. He believes it is in the public interest to have diverse voices in the news sphere in order to foster engaged and informed citizens.

Class Dismissed has taken on a life of its own beyond classrooms across the nation. Most recently it was screened at a film festival at the London Public Library, sponsored by Indymedia, a group of independent journalists offering an alternative to mainstream media. In his Radical Teacher article, Leistyna says he is “energized regarding how a little idea generated in the middle of the night can snowball into international dialogue…and play its little part in working towards global change.”

Speaking internationally on issues of democracy, public education, and social justice, Leistyna's books include Breaking Free: The Transformative Power of Critical Pedagogy; Presence of Mind: Education and the Politics of Deception; Defining and Designing Multiculturalism; and Cultural Studies: From Theory to Action. Leistyna was the 2007 recipient of the Studs Terkel Award for Media and Journalism for Class Dismissed. "That was a really great moment for me given the respect I have for Studs' life work," says Leistyna. Leistyna has a masters and doctorate degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

The (little) engine that could

2008-07-06T10:56:00.016-04:00

More than a few were surprised when in March 2003, UMass Boston appeared in the publication “Engines of Economic Growth: The Impact of Boston’s Eight Research Universities on the Metropolitan Boston Area.” But UMass Boston’s peers clearly knew what others might not – that UMass Boston was on the rise as a research institution, and plays an important role in the region.

Fittingly, last year, in the midst double-digit growth in its research, UMass Boston joined Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the top rankings of the most productive of the nation's research universities. UMass Boston was ranked fifth among small universities, according to a survey, based on the number of book and journal articles published by each institution's faculty, along with journal citations, awards, honors and grants.

Engines of Economic Growth, an unprecedented collaboration, was commissioned by Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts Boston to help them better understand their role in the regional economy. At the time the Boston metropolitan area began to feel the effects of the national recession. The universities noted that they provide the region what no other region could match, and committed to playing an essential role in the region’s economic future and its quality of life.

As the region once again feels the effects of the national economic downturn, it is time to remember that these universities are today providing a foundation for renewed economic growth. As a matter of fact, in the area that most analysts believe is the best opportunity for the region’s urban core, life science research and development, the universities – including UMass Boston - are leading the way.

The research universities are already playing a central role in the region’s economy, contributing more than $7 billion to the regional economy, according to Engines of Economic Growth. They are among the region’s leading employers, and one of its most reliable sources of job growth. Each year they turn out graduates, providing to the region’s leading industries a steady stream of highly talented, well-educated workers. Their research programs are creating the new knowledge that will help ensure the Boston area’s continued leadership in emerging areas. They are a seedbed for creation and growth of the dynamic young companies that over the next decade will drive the growth of the region’s economy. The concentration of major research centers in the Boston area is a magnet for investment by major U.S. and foreign corporations in new research facilities.

But Boston and its research universities are facing growing competition. Places like Bangalore in India, Biopolis in Singapore, and Otaniemi in Finland have been following its recipe for success in organizing talent, innovation and capital.

This is why these universities joined their peers in industry and government to shape the state’s $1 billion life science initiative to secure a leadership role in the twenty-first century.

UMass Boston’s role in the expected regional economic impact may be small – it was 8% of the $7 billion in 2003 - but it’s nevertheless important. First, to address the need for small, reasonably priced lab and office space connected to a university, it is opening in early 2009, an 18,000 SF state-of-the-art Venture Development Center on its campus. Tight space and high rents are driving some biotech firms to the suburbs. Many of the younger penny-counting scientists who start firms already live in the city and want to remain a short subway ride from investors, partners, suppliers as well as the airport.

Second, UMass Boston itself will be a magnet as a result of its collaboration with the Dana Farber Cancer Center to launch a $10 million personalized cancer therapy center, part of the state's life science investment. This program, now in the planning stages, will categorize tumors and generate matching therapies. Entrepreneurial development teams can locate in the Venture Development Center until expansion space opens up in the new integrated science center soon to get underway as part of UMass Boston’s master plan.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, UMass Boston provides a pipeline of diverse talent for the life sciences industry, mirroring the market. Many in industry understand that diverse talent can make for novel and innovative science and add to the robustness of solutions. UMass Boston is the only public university in New England recognized by the National Institutes of Health as a minority-serving institution.

UMass Boston is playing an important role in bringing the innovation economy to a corner of the urban area that has yet to experience much of those benefits. As in The Little Engine that Could, a long train must be pulled over a high mountain. Various larger engines are asked to pull the train; for various reasons they refuse. The request is sent to a small engine, which agrees to try. The engine succeeds in pulling the train over the mountain while repeating its motto: "I-think-I-can".

Twisting your stomach into knots, etc.

2008-07-05T11:45:00.023-04:00

A coach hollers at boys: “Go hit somebody.” A boy tries to rev up his teammates: “Act like they killed your mother.” Slogans like “We turn hatred into motivation” are splashed across T-shirts and embroidered on hats. Coaches shove and punch their players. Players smash into each other in practice. They chant and clap and dance, then call a truce after the game when opponents politely slap hands.

“Frightening, which is to say compelling” is what Bennett Simpson, Associate Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, says in a review of Erik Levine’s “More Man ,” a film which explores one of the chief rights of male initiation in American society today - football.

Levine is typical of the arts faculty at UMass Boston. They do not just teach the theory and history of art, they live it.

Levine won international recognition in the New York scene of the nineties for his sculpture, owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. He recently shifted into video.

Ann Torke drove across country with sheets of acetate attached to her car. The residue from the trip, including dirt, insects, windshield wiper swipes, a license plate, and dried water droplets, collected on sheets juxtaposed with maps captures the experience of travel. Torke’s “The Residue Series: Everyday Accumulation” at the Boston Sculptors Gallery continues her interest in framing the detritus from everyday life. Her work has been exhibited in venues like Art in General, New York, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, the Newport Art Museum, Newport, and de Balie Amsterdam.

Cat Mazza's Stitch for Senate, an initiative of knit hobbyists making helmet liners for every United States Senator, just reached number 41. Building on the tradition of wartime knitting, a practice as old as the American Revolution, Stitch for Senate revives this cultural trend by engaging with political officials about the war in Iraq. Using software developed by Mazza, hobbyists knit in solidarity to persuade elected officials to support the troops by bringing them home. All the senators will receive their own helmet liner before the 2008 Senate race, after being displayed in the seating chart of the US Senate at a Washington DC venue.

Elizabeth Marran’s colorful tiny abstractions won the Mary & Maxwell Desser Memorial Award for painting at the venerable National Academy Museum in New York City in the 183rd Annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, “an exceptional selection (currently on view) of contemporary works by over 125 of the finest artists from across the country.” She conceptualizes her abstract images within a psychological framework where she references the relationship between order and chaos, discipline and lack of restraint, intention and accident. Her work is owned by collections that include the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Albertina Museum in Vienna, Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum and Boston Public Library. “The abstractions of Elizabeth Marran continue to reshape definitions of painting,” according to a review of the exhibition in ArtCal.

Margaret Hart (UMass Boston art department chair) has had an extensive list of exhibitions and involvements across the United States. Identity formation and the nature of the individual have always been central to her work. From this perspective, she uses different technology and materials to explore the interior and the exterior, and what's caught in between. Her “Tying the Knot" series represents the rocky transitional period as a person's emotional identity evolves from a singular perspective to the incorporation of another’s point of view. "The struggles of communication and self-reflection I dealt with are embodied in three key phrases; 'Walking on eggshells', 'Knots in my stomach', and 'On pins and needles',"according to Hart.

Wilfredo Chiesa has shown at over twenty-five solo exhibitions in galleries in the U.S., Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, and Puerto Rico. His mural-sized fresco painting covering the front wall of the 15th-Century Church of San José in Old San Juan turned the front of the church into a spectacle of interplay between color, shadow, and texture, complementing the structure of the church. Chiesa’s paintings appear as a clear manifestation of the abstract artist’s unwillingness to directly reflect the known, but willingness to shed a light to the inner unknown.

The art faculty at UMass Boston often tell their students to treat their art as an author would treat writing - constantly revise their work up to a point where they feel satisfied with it - and then revise it some more. And, just as with writing, they assert that there are no boundaries whatsoever that should constrain what anyone's ideas of beauty and quality in art can be.

Are art professors stuffy academicians? At least not at UMass Boston. The art faculty are dedicated teachers of art and serious and dedicated artists as well. Their work also reveals that they, much like their own students, are passionate, growing artists engaged in the process of experiment and discovery.

UMass Boston is unsung hub of tech innovation

2008-07-04T12:46:00.002-04:00

Without going too far out on the limb, it's probably safe to conclude that by now every industrial country and major business has announced its plan to pursue an innovation-based strategy.

Innovation, whether in science, technology, manufacturing, or in business practices, is expected to expand economic fortunes, and generate hefty returns in revenue, power, growth and the quality of life. Implementing an innovation strategy requires smart and opportunistic packaging of capital, leading-edge research, talent and infrastructure. Everyone seems to understand this, most especially those in high tech environments.

When University of Massachusetts president Jack Wilson says the road to innovation and sustained economic development for the commonwealth runs through UMass, he's not making an idle boast. Our five campuses -- Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell and Worcester -- are key contributors in the state's innovation strategy and economy. Whether it's developing new technologies, finding and solving day-to-day problems in the workplace, or producing the kind of talent that is capable of developing new ideas and turning those ideas into reality, the UMass system delivers.

The impact of UMass Boston is particularly noteworthy, for example:

A recently released Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, produced by Academic Analytics, rates UMass Boston fifth in the nation among small research universities with respect to publications, grants and honors accorded to faculty members. This past fiscal year, the campus was awarded in excess of $41 million dollars in external grants and contracts and had more than 520 sponsored programs under way -- impressive numbers for Boston's public research university.
With support from the National Institutes of Health, UMass Boston, in collaboration with biomedical research institutions in the Boston region (Children's Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and Harvard School of Public Health) has worked on moving discoveries out of the lab and bringing them to the bedside.
Through our National Science Foundation-supported Boston Science Partnership, UMass Boston is applying new understanding of the learning process to fundamentally change the way math and science are taught.
In another NSF-funded opportunity, the college has developed BATEC, the Boston Area Advanced Technology Education Collaborative, which has brought together the region's secondary school teachers, community colleges, regional employers and our IT and computer science faculty in a collaborative project focused on the design and delivery of a new IT educational continuum.
We played a leading role in the Boston Harbor cleanup through our capabilities in measuring environmental hazards, advancing remediation strategies and establishing marine monitoring systems.
UMass Boston supplies a large share of the region's skilled work force in areas that have traditionally seen shortages such as IT, nursing, education and business management.

Next year, UMass Boston plans to open a Venture Development Center, a 15,000-square-foot state-of-the-art laboratory and office facility, designed to facilitate the transfer of promising technologies into new commercial enterprises. The VDC is no ordinary academic center, but a new front door to the university's expertise and facilities for innovative collaborations between our faculty and partners. By leveraging campus resources and expertise, the VDC would also provide an enormous learning advantage to our students who would be engaged in the center's work.

As both a research university and as a public university, UMass Boston is an extraordinary place, where innovation in teaching, research and service to the commonwealth happens each and every day. As UMass Boston chancellor Keith Motley has often said, research and development are the cornerstone of our urban mission and a means to grow our region's economic competitiveness and quality of life. We are delighted by Gov. Deval Patrick's call for renewed investments in our infrastructure, faculty and funding for basic research and student scholarships. It's an innovation strategy that's bound to pay continued dividends, as past returns have shown.

(Monday, January 7, 2008 Mass High Tech article by William Brah is executive director of the Venture Development Center and assistant vice provost for research at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Philip L. Quaglieri is dean of the UMass Boston College of Management.)

Boston's fleeting edge in innovation

2008-06-26T12:31:00.011-04:00

One country after another is racing to build the capacity for innovation which is increasingly viewed as a hallmark of national success. In March 2008 the UK released a white paper with a sweeping innovation agenda, joining China, Canada, Denmark, India, Israel, Korea, and many others which are putting put innovation squarely in the middle of their plans to drive economic and social development.

Why worry about all of the other countries whose government policies push innovation? After all, there is no place like Massachusetts, which provides a competitive advantage that is hard to duplicate. Just last week, Massachusetts ranked as the nation’s top state in technology and science, according to the Milken Institutes's 2008 State Technology and Science Index.

According to John Kao, we have plenty to worry about. In his book, Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back, all the key advantages we once enjoyed are nearly gone. Kao was the keynote at a recent forum organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

His strongest point is that the geography of innovation is changing. For much of the 20th century, the leading-edge was the U.S. and Europe. The rise of Asia is evening that out, redistributing the fruits of innovation: wealth and power.

— Talent is now everywhere. The return to greatness of Asia’s older universities and the building of new educational institutions mean that brainpower is more evenly distributed. In addition, a giant reverse diaspora is under way as tens of thousands of Chinese and Indian scientists and engineers, many of them tops in their fields, leave the U.S. to return to their homelands to teach and work.

— Capital is now everywhere. Venture capital pools are operating all over Asia and Europe, speeding the generation of new startups. European and American VC firms have offices in most major cities in Asia and Eastern Europe.

— Route 128 is now everywhere. The social and economic ecosystem that has been so productive is being reproduced all over the world. Bangalore in India, Biopolis in Singapore, and the Otaniemi tech cluster in Finland have found the magic once mainly centered in U.S. innovation hubs.

— Military spending is now everywhere. The high tech spin-off benefits that once accrued mostly to the U.S. are being spread around. A 2006 Defense Dept. survey of 42 leading-edge technologies for future weapons found that 20 came from outside the U.S.

This new global competition in research and innovation is felt most acutely in regions like Boston that compete on the smarts of its workers and the technology prowess of its firms. As explained by Jack Wilson, President of the University of Massachusetts:

"Massachusetts has employed a simple formula to create a vibrant economy: Rely on the innovations produced by outstanding higher education and healthcare institutions, corporations and individuals to build the enterprises that fuel our economic engine. While this recipe has worked well for a century, it may no longer be enough to secure our economic future. Increased competition is eroding historical advantages in higher education and research that have been at the heart of our success…."

Kao argues that the U.S. still has the capability not only to regain our competitive edge, but to take a bold step out ahead of the global community and secure a leadership role in the twenty-first century. The centerpiece of his idea is to spend $20 billion to create 20 innovation hubs around the country. The model would be San Diego, which transformed itself from a Navy town into a life-sciences and biotech center in 15 years.

Kao is far from alone in calling for a national innovation strategy. In May the National Academy of Sciences issued a collection of studies, “Innovation in Global Industries,” an analysis of innovation in several important industries. In April the Brookings Institution produced a report, “Boosting Productivity, Innovation and Growth Through an Innovation Foundation.”

“His theme resonates with what we are seeing in much of the rest of the scientific community,” Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in an interview in the New York Times. “There is a lot of competition around the world as more and more countries realize that investing in science fuels innovation over the long term and leads to economic growth.”

What role can UMass Boston play in innovation?

According to a report by the Battelle Memorial Institute for UMass Boston, Research Reenvisioned for the 20th Century:

"In the future, UMass Boston’s research capacities will be critical as the region needs to address the new global competition in research and innovation. UMass Boston, in fulfilling its urban mission, needs to respond to new challenges facing the Boston region. None may be as significant and far-reaching to the region’s economic vitality as the rise of global competition in research and innovation. For the first time, states and regions in the U.S. are facing competition from developing nations not only in lower cost production, but also in research activities and the high skilled talent and innovation it drives.

The continued development of UMass Boston’s research base can be an important element in how the region responds to this growing competitive challenge in research and innovation. As the only public university in the Boston region, UMass Boston can grow its research base in a manner that directly embraces its “urban mission” by focusing on “use-inspired basic research” for addressing the gaps in translating innovation between basic university research and the more applied and development-focused research of industry. In this way, UMass Boston can advance research efforts defined in concert with industry and community stakeholders, while seeking to be collaborators with existing private research universities in the Boston area filling in critical interdisciplinary research."

Another boost for the Venture Development Center

2008-06-26T09:11:00.007-04:00

Underway in the heart of Wheatley Hall on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) is an 18,000 sf high-tech metal-and-glass innovation center. Called the Venture Development Center (VDC), it will be completed in fall 2008, with operations beginning early 2009.

The project's purpose is to provide laboratory, office and collaboration space for research-oriented organizations to be close to UMass Boston’s researchers - to promote exchange of knowledge and commercialization of research.

"This is UMass Boston's first effort to create space on campus for joint research and development with industry and others," according to William Brah, assistant vice provost for research and executive director, Venture Development Center.

The project received a big boost last week with notification of a $1.5 million award from the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA), the only award made in the Boston metropolitan region. According to the announcement, "We believe this will be an exceptionally successful and economically lasting project." EDA’s investments have two goals: attracting private capital investment and creating higher-skill, higher-wage jobs. Last year, UMass Boston received $4 million in funding for construction of the VDC from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.

The investments by federal and state economic development agencies underscore the role of UMass Boston as a source of innovation for the economy. The project’s location in Dorchester is especially significant to the economic development agencies, since the area exemplifies a significant challenge facing the Greater Boston region, that of spreading the benefits of the growth of the innovation economy to its inner-ring.

Life science research and development is the most promising inner-ring opportunity, according to most analysts. The VDC project positions UMass Boston for innovators in their very early stage that need small, reasonably priced lab and office space and need to collaborate with the university.

After three workshops attended by faculty members from across the university, Sasaki Associates Inc. designed a very flexible and adaptable facility to support how researchers work today to produce the innovations of tomorrow. The design features four small group collaboration spaces, one large group collaboration/presentation space, temporary offices and labs (two dry, two with fume hoods, two without) and informal gathering areas. It enables innovators to move from insight to discussion, sketching, modeling, computing, experimenting then feedback and informal debriefing, all in the same place.

This month an important construction milestone was met. Metal stud installation and framing were completed, and drywall installation is underway.

Developing bioinformatics tools for conservation science and education

2008-06-20T18:33:00.014-04:00

Edward O. Wilson, a retired Harvard professor, in “The Future of Life," writes that "to conserve biological diversity is an investment in immortality," as it serves as a survival mechanism for our species and ourselves. But he predicts that at current rates, half of the Earth's plant and animal species will cease to exist by the end of the century, taking with them their genetic legacy and potential benefits to the world.

At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, nearly all countries of the world promised to “achieve by 2010 a significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity.” An army of scientists, conservationists and organizations are working to measure and communicate the state of biodiversity to help drive effective decision-making in support of conservation, similar to recent successes in moving data on climate change into global policymaking.

UMass Boston’s Robert Morris, Department of Computer Science and Robert Stevenson, Department of Biology, are among them. With multi-year National Science Foundation support, Morris and Stevenson have developed software tools that help scientists identify species and manage their data in a collaborative environment. Their electronic field guides greatly accelerate the production of new field guides for species identification. In contrast to traditional methods, which can take years, their software automatically produces many forms of online or publishable field guides. The resulting guides leverage the ease with which high quality digital photography helps support comparing a specimen to an image, thus easing the identification task and helping avoid confusion with species similar to the correct one.

Nonspecialists, especially teachers and students, can also use or develop their own guides. “Field guides are a way for people to connect with the environment,” Morris says. He and Stevenson want to mobilize "citizen science" to help make the case for biodiversity conservation. Their electronic field guides were in use at the Maria Mitchell Institute on Nantucket which last month sponsored Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative Week.

(Their key-building and guide-making software was designed to apply to any science or non-scientific disciplines and can be used for example to build a guide to the world's soccer teams or to your local restaurants.)

The biggest challenge to biodiversity monitoring, however, is open access to species descriptions. Species descriptions are hidden in thousands of journals and books, and access to new descriptions is increasingly restricted by an ever more proprietary copyright environment. The irony is that researchers in developing countries — where most biodiversity is found — cannot access information about their nations' species. Morris has been at the forefront in international organizations such as Biodiversity Information Standards/Taxonomic Databases Working Group and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility promoting common standards for and open access to biodiversity data, especially related to descriptive data and images.

Open access is a lively debate among scientists, librarians, publishers and other stakeholders. Even Wilson, a prominent biologist and an outspoken environmentalist, is questioned in Nature for writing a book which includes 624 descriptions of ants that cannot be readily integrated into the worldwide biodiversity knowledge base as the book is copyrighted. “It is a pity that Wilson, with his ingenuity and access to resources, did not grasp the opportunity to present these important data in a more novel and useful way.”

The winds of change, though, are sweeping through how scientists work and publish. New business models are being tested by publishers, including open access, in which the author pays and content is free to the user.

Technology is propelling this change. Scanning, markup, encoding, searching, retrieving and archiving tools have been developed which recognize, extract and store descriptions of species in scientific publications. Associations have sprung up that distribute these tools and archive the processed documents, resulting in a dynamic database linked to references, maps and the like.

Recently, the Biodiversity Heritage Library launched a large-scale operation to digitize this biodiversity literature. Currently, it includes major US and UK natural history libraries, with the ultimate goal of including the entire global literature. These publications will be openly accessible to the public, unless they are copyrighted -- thus most publications since 1925 are still out of reach.

"Digital library technologies can widen the access to scientific literature, especially to out-of-copyright publications that may be found only in large research libraries," says Morris.

There are well over 100 million pages of scientific publications to which every year more than 20,000 are added. Even with new technology, it would take hundreds of years to process all known species descriptions. That is why Morris and his colleagues advocate for journal production systems with underlying markup templates to facilitate machine reading and sharing of the structured species data.

The vision of openly accessible digital taxonomic literature is based on an interpretation that taxonomic descriptions cannot be copyrighted because they are factual descriptions, and should be open access.

“Such an open access infrastructure is what publically funded science is about: disseminating results as widely as possible,” Morris says. He adds that efforts to conserve the planet's biodiversity depend on free and open access to information about it.

Participatory sensing, right up our alley

2008-06-17T19:42:00.023-04:00

UMass Boston has a research cluster called Integrated Environmental Monitoring, the goal of which is to develop and use modeling and software technologies to advance the science and improve the decision making surrounding resource and environmental issues. Given our urban mission, the new wave of participatory urban sensing seems right up our alley.

Mobile phones already have some processing and sensing capabilities, so why not use them to gather and communicate information about the sounds and smells of a city for cultural or environmental or safety purposes? In this paradigm, referred to as “participatory urban sensing” by many prominent researchers including Deborah Estrin and Henri Tirri, citizens can contribute sensed data gathered via handheld devices and cell phones, and publish it directly on the web using geo-centric web interfaces such as Google Maps.

Computer scientists are busy at places like the University of Helsinki, Stanford University, Sun Labs and Microsoft Research developing these kinds of applications. Nokia has circulated a concept design for a phone that would enable just such usage. Sun has released the Sun SPOT, a sensing device the size of a smart phone. Microsoft has published SensorMap, an application that mashes up sensor data on a map interface, and provides interactive tools to selectively query sensors and visualize data, along with authenticated access to manage sensors. Portland State University even offers a practicum course on participatory and urban sensing.

Is there a market for these types of citizen sensors? Initially they could form the basis for a crowdsourced research project like the measurement of real-time air quality throughout an entire city over a year.

Eventually they could make it easier for people like Brooke Singer who created Superfund365, an online data visualization application with an accompanying email alert system. Each day for a year, starting on September 1, 2007, Superfund365 will visit one toxic site currently active in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The site invites the public to document the 365 sites featured in Superfund365. "Make a trip there with your camera. Bring friends, bring the whole family, even bring a picnic. Afterwards, upload your images with captions along with a longer text description of the site."

Clips of how new media artists like Brooke Singer envision citizen sensing are posted at Eyebeam, a New York City art and technology center:

Living Buildings

Superfund365

Here are some more clips of of participatory sensing from Project SUN Spot.

Do you have any doubt that participatory urban sensing has arrived? Or that artists ought to be collaborating with the computer scientists?

Poised for greater growth in clean energy

2008-06-14T19:32:00.009-04:00

Talk in Massachusetts of late is that clean energy has the potential to bring about an economic bonanza at the same time that it improves the planet's well being. "If we get this right, the whole world will be our customer," Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has said of his plans to make Massachusetts a hotbed of both innovation and implementation in clean energy.

Governor Patrick has identified clean energy as a key emerging industry for Massachusetts. But, as clean energy markets begin to develop rapidly around the world, few think about Massachusetts as a hub of such activity, except perhaps for the controversial proposal to develop a wind farm off Cape Cod. In fact, Massachusetts has strengths in at least four sectors related to clean energy production, according to an analysis by David Levy, a professor of management, and David Terkla, a professor of economics, at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The four major clean energy sectors in Massachusetts — renewable energy equipment and generation, power electronics, energy efficiency, and clean energy research — are in some way associated with the development, production, distribution or use of renewable and/or clean energy, or the reduction in use of “dirty” energy sources. Together, these sectors have a substantial impact on the Massachusetts economy, employing almost 11,000 people in approximately 400 firms (based on the most conservative estimates), while undergoing very rapid growth rates as the promotion of clean energy continues to expand nationally and worldwide. One hundred sixteen companies have been founded since 2001.

The Levy and Terkla analysis, published in MassBenchmarks, reviews Massachusetts’ clean energy sector in the context of the industry nationally and worldwide. They also suggest policy options to enhance the sector’s potential for the Massachusetts economy.

Massachusetts ranks eleventh nationally in terms of the number of businesses involved in the clean energy sector and seventh nationally in total employment in the clean energy industry. Total employment in the Massachusetts clean energy cluster has the potential to grow to more than 20,000 within six years — if Massachusetts remains at the forefront in terms of both policy and technology in clean energy development, according to Levy and Terkla.

Many research-intensive companies, as well as some smaller manufacturing companies, are located in the state, but Massachusetts is not currently home for any of the top four or five largest manufacturers in any clean energy sector.

Late last month, the three most powerful leaders on Beacon Hill, the governor and the leaders of the house and senate, presented a united front on a bill to make targeted investments in clean energy companies and research institutions.

Adding impetus was a report that Levy and his colleagues authored, Clean Energy for the Commonwealth Powered by The University of Massachusetts, documenting investments by other states in clean energy. The report also identifies at least 120 faculty engaged in clean energy-related research and development, ranging from wireless self-powered sensor networks for large wind energy farms, ultra high-capacity solid-state batteries and inexpensive and efficient light-harvesting materials.

The full article by Levy and Terkla is available for download at MassBenchmarks. Their report was sponsored by the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, which turned to them in its formative years in order to define the clean energy industry.

Levy has co-edited two books, titled “The Business of Global Environmental Governance”, published by MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2005, and The Business of Climate Change, Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing, 2005.

Social venturing, right up our alley

2008-06-14T08:37:00.007-04:00

UMass Boston’s fulfillment of its urban mission is often touted through the prism of its engagement with the community to improve the human condition. So it seems like the new wave of "social venturing" washing over our community ought to be something we pay attention to.

An announcement last month of the winner of the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition represents a coming of age of sorts for social ventures. A social venture won the grand prize of what is arguably the leading business plan competition in the world. Diagnostic for All is a not-for-profit venture from Harvard University aimed at delivering cheap, dispensable diagnostic tests to impoverished countries. Social entrepreneurs are similar to regular entrepreneurs with one main difference--their gains aren't measured in just financial success, but by the impact they have on society.

Perhaps the best known local social venture is One Laptop Per Child which is mass producing the extremely low cost, low power XO computer for children in the developing world. The mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. The XO initiative is not without controversy, but has inspired other businesses to market low-cost laptops of their own.

Some entrepreneurs arrive at the blending of mission and business as a practical matter of having to achieve self-sufficiency in an increasingly competitive environment. Today there are three times as many nonprofits as three decades ago all at the same watering hole. Other entrepreneurs have started social ventures because they see a business opportunity that can best be realized through a social venture.

No matter how they get there, either seeking to do well by doing good, or by seeking to do good by doing well, social venturing is really taking off around the world. This according to David Bornstein, author of the 2004 book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. A PBS series The New Heros ran a year after this book was published. "Take a journey into a world where people take action to make a big difference."

Harvard Business School gave legitimacy and gravitas to social ventures by creating the Social Enterprise Initiative in 1993, which has published more than 400 cases and teaching notes on topics related to social enterprise. It was the first formal academic program in the field.

In 1999, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, Columbia Business School, and Yale School of Management launched the Global Social Venture Competition, the largest and oldest student-led business plan competition providing mentoring, exposure, and prizes for social ventures from around the world. Nearly 25% of entrants are now operating companies.

A group of faculty, alumni, and other leaders committed to social change at Stanford Graduate School of Business created in 2000 the Center for Social Innovation that publishes Social Innovation Review. In 2002, Columbia Business School launched the Research Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship. Also in 2002, Duke University established the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship in the Fuqua School of Business. It is a research and education center that promotes the entrepreneurial pursuit of social impact through the thoughtful adaptation of business expertise.

The efforts undertaken by the business schools have not gone unnoticed by the Aspen Institute, a leadership think tank, which ranks MBA programs that are integrating social and environmental topics into their core classes, electives, and academic research. Stanford was the 2007 top school in its "Beyond Grey Pinstripes" biannual rankings of business schools.

How have social ventures fared? In 2002, the Investor's Circle collaborated with Harvard Business School and McKinsey & Company to conduct a study of the financial returns on $72 million of member investments over 10 years. The study found that companies generated respectable returns comparable to the stock market. The study was published in the McKinsey Quarterly, A Halo for Angel Investors.

Many of those who manage non-profits will tell you that it seems that they spend more time raising money than actually working toward their cause of choice. The competition for donations and gifts seems to get tighter every year. And so-called donor fatigue seems to be becoming almost epidemic. That is why more social ventures are moving toward business models that are self-sustainable without reliance on the generosity of benefactors.

The relentless won't-take-no-for-an-answer quality of entrepreneurs is what give social ventures an edge. They absorb failure, they learn, they surround themselves with a good team and then they redirect. These same attributes can result in community-changing solutions.

Basic research, inspired by use

2008-06-14T08:18:00.007-04:00

This is an interesting article in The Scientist about Drexel University's new strategic plan. Drexel is among the universities embracing use inspired basic research, which UMass Boston is urged to do in Research Reenvisioned for the 21st Century.

"Drexel University is a comprehensive national research institution in Philadelphia that has grown substantially in the past 10 years...Drexel's new strategic plan expands upon this mission with a commitment to use-inspired, interdisciplinary research that addresses practical solutions to complex societal issues. Drexel's approach to building its research enterprise continues to lead to an increase in the commercialization of technologies that has resulted in their transfer into the public sector to the benefit of society and economic development in Greater Philadelphia.

Fundamental to Drexel's use-inspired research enterprise is the development of expert interdisciplinary teams. Drexel has initiated a process to identify Major Research Initiatives: multidisciplinary programs that research critical issues. As a result, Drexel has initiated Major Research Initiatives in electron plasma medicine, neuroengineering of brain-machine interfaces and the growth of urban centers.

...An urban university, Drexel has also developed an Engineering Cities Initiative that addresses issues related to the massive growth in urban populations and the emergence of megacities with populations of more than 10 million people. This highly interdisciplinary program brings together expertise in civil and environmental engineering, architecture, energy, communications, information systems, public health and healthcare delivery, sustainability, education and policy to address issues related to the quality of life for urban residents...

The Drexel research enterprise is an important component of the educational mission of the University that contributes to the training of the next generation of scientists and engineers. In addition to research training in our master's and Ph.D. graduate programs, undergraduates have ample opportunity to participate in exciting research projects, which encourages them to pursue goals that are important for our national competitiveness in the global economy."

The concept of "use-inspired research" means conducting basic research that maximizes the utility of the work for user-communities. Over the last decade there have been several indicators of interest in a new approach to research along these lines and several fields have coined a variety of terms that refer to this kind of work. What holds them together is a paradigm shift away from a rigid distinction between basic and applied work. The sciences and psychology have primarily drawn on the term translational research, political scientists and economics have used policy relevant research, and education researchers and others have referred to useable knowledge. The term "use-inspired research" is used by the widest number of disciplines and also has been adopted by various national societies and foundations such as AAC&U, Spencer Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Council on Undergraduate Research, and the National Research Council in material about a vision of research.

An excellent source for a deeper understanding of use-inspired research can be found in Stokes' important book Pasteur's quadrant: Basic science and technological innovation, published in 1997 by the Brookings Institution. Stokes places the issue of use-inspired research in historical and political context while examining the evolving relationship of universities, governments, and other institutions to scientific research.

Diversifying the science talent pipeline

2008-06-10T20:36:00.007-04:00

Rachel Skvirsky and Adán Colón-Carmona believe that a career in the life sciences should be a real and exciting possibility for everybody, and that the demographics of scientists should reflect those of the wider population.

Associate Professors of the Biology Department at UMass Boston, they wrote a successful proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that recently awarded UMass Boston a $1.4 million, four-year Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity, or IMSD, grant. The program will increase the number underrepresented minority students eventually pursing doctoral degrees in biomedical fields.

As the life sciences industry sees the population it serves becoming more diverse, many in the industry realize that it only makes sense to try to understand the values of that population. The key to the industry’s success is a pipeline of diverse talent. University students in biomedical fields also value diversity in their educational experience, ultimately improving their ability to practice in an increasing multicultural society and patient population.

But turning a student's early spark of interest in science into a sustained career takes years of study, planning, and dedication. All too often, interested underrepresented students choose not to pursue a demanding university program. Large introductory classes can be daunting, particularly when students don't see other underrepresented minorities in the class as students or more importantly as teachers and scientists.

Those who have succeeded make it clear that mentoring was key to their success, along with their own love of science and drive to succeed. This requires a faculty role model, general faculty commitment to strong mentoring, a solid peer group, and a generally heterogeneous and diverse graduate student population. That is where the IMSD comes in.

“We believe students are going to fully embrace the mentoring component of this program,” said Skvirsky. “Our faculty and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center faculty will mentor our IMSD fellows.” But, according to Skvirsky, it won’t stop there. “Our fellows will serve as mentors to other students, or affiliates. And affiliates can aspire to become fellows.” Skvirsky and Colón-Carmona are the project’s lead investigators, though many other science faculty will play key roles in the program.

Using a proactive recruitment process, underrepresented minority students at the sophomore level who are currently taking science courses will be recruited to apply to become IMSD affiliates. Affiliates who successfully complete at least the first level of IMSD gateway courses will be encouraged to apply to become IMSD fellows. The program will develop a community of science learners with a drive to excel academically. Each IMSD affiliate will be coached by an upper-class IMSD fellow and will also be mentored by individual faculty member who is a researcher in the fellow’s area of concentration, as well as by the program’s co-directors.

The IMSD program is just one facet of a larger, unified plan for student development in the sciences at UMass Boston. The programs that IMSD will complement include two—Bridges to the Baccalaureate and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participants —that focus on involving community college students and UMass Boston undergraduates in scientific study. IMSD will provide the next level of training, specifically to prepare and channel highly qualified students into PhD programs.

The University Of Massachusetts-Boston has a student population of 38.7% underrepresented minorities. It is the only public university in New England recognized by NIH as a minority-serving institution. In 2005, NIH awarded a $4.3 million 5-year grant for a Comprehensive Minority Institution/Cancer Center Partnership between UMass Boston and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. This grant supports opportunities for minority students to pursue cancer-focused graduate training in diverse fields, collaborative cancer research focused on health disparities in minority populations, and outreach to special populations to redress cancer health disparity services.

If Massachusetts is to maintain its supercluster status in life science, it will need to develop a cadre of workers to staff these growing companies. Many companies say that a diverse workplace can make for novel and innovative science brought about via the richness of different approaches and experiences, and add to the robustness of proposals and solutions.

There are plenty of data that make it clear that we have a long way to go before the life sciences really look like the wider population. But programs like IMSD, and universities like UMass Boston, represent the pathway.

Moving infant depression out of the shadows

2008-06-09T18:32:00.024-04:00

Ed Tronick is an internationally renowned child development specialist, currently studying, with National Science Foundation support, how babies learn to cope with stress and how long they can remember the stress.

Tronick is Chief of the Child Development Unit at Children's Hospital Boston. But he isn't a pure researcher. Everything he does bespeaks his passion to achieve broad impact.

To fulfill that passion he accepted a joint position in the Psychology Department of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, so that he can work with urban families who often lack mental health resources.

"These are people who are really struggling," says Tronick. "I want to take my work and use it in a practical setting."

You could see it coming. As a postgraduate in the Psychology Department at Harvard, Tronick took a job at a daycare center in the Bromley - Heath housing project in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. That experience was an eye-opener for him.

"I thought I knew all about infant development from my classes, but I saw babies do things that I knew they couldn't be doing," he says.

Tronick was one of the first researchers to explore the emotional capacities of infants and to show that babies are profoundly affected by their parents' emotional states and behavior. After years of filming the moment-by-moment interactions between depressed mothers and their babies, Tronick came to see depression as a communicable disease, transferred by a mother's communication to her baby and then back from the baby to the mother. A truly vicious cycle.

Out of his studies came his still-face paradigm, which is the standard for studying social emotional development. In this experiment, the mother freezes in front of her child, eliciting increasingly strong reactions as the baby attempts to win back her attention. But after a while, confronted with only that blank face, each child stops trying.

Tronick has revolutionized understanding of the emotional capacities and coping of infants and the effects of factors such as maternal anxiety and depression on infant social emotional development.

In a powerful passage in Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, by Deborah Blum, Tronick says:

"When I first did the still-face paradigm, I said to people, look at this emotional reaction." Yet the psychologists he showed the pictures to thought that what they saw couldn’t represent emotion. It seemed to Tronick that his colleagues were almost personally uncomfortable with the idea that the connection between mother and child could be so strong, and that relationships could matter that much. "People don’t want to believe that a child could be so hurt—or that we could be so hurtful."

Tronick is always trying to show that depression is a treatable disease. A documentary Tronick helped develop, "Depression: Out of the Shadows." aired on PBS on May 21, 2008.

It features a mother, Ellie, who suffers from depression after the birth of her first son, Graham. It would take Ellie nearly four months to start to feel better. During her ordeal, Ellie noticed that her maternal bond with Graham was suffering.

She says: “I was physically unable to have an expressive face with him and to be able to really smile at him. And when he did start to smile, he never smiled at me. And that was absolutely devastating.”

The documentary features Ellie looking at a video on Ed Tronick’s web site [edward.tronick.org]: "Mom puts on the still-face, and Michael tries everything he can to reestablish connection." The web site helped Ellie to realize that treating her depression would not only help her, but also minimize Graham's risk of becoming depressed. “It just breaks my heart to see those video clips, though, because, you can just feel the pain that those children are experiencing.”

Tronick is off to a fast start at UMass Boston, rolling out an ambitious Infant-Parent Mental Health Certificate Training Program. It offers professionals the opportunity to engage over ten months in leading edge learning with international luminaries. The sessions are opened to the public as a vehicle for expanding inter-disciplinary educational opportunities and enhancing clinical practice in this vitally important field.

Dr. Tronick received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and completed postgraduate training at Harvard University. Over the course of his career, he has co-authored and authored more than 150 scientific papers and chapters. His book, The Neurobehavioral and Social Emotional Development of Infants and Children, is a tour de force according to a review in New England Psychologist.

Tronick's research is part of UMass Boston's Developmental Sciences research cluster. Developmental sciences entail the investigation of progressive changes that occur over the life span of individuals.

Stretching electronic skin across Massachusetts Bay

2008-06-07T17:37:00.012-04:00

The skin is a smart piece of engineering. As the interface with the environment, it processes immense amounts of data, and triggers the body’s responses to changes in pressure, temperature, and light.

The earth is beginning to don electronic skin. Every day, it is being stitched together across the planet. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices or sensors. It uses the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its information, about the atmosphere, health and the environment. And when the earth's electronic skin signals a change, the network alerts people, and even takes action.

In just a few years, there will be 10,000 sensors for every human being on the planet, according to a Business Week forecast.

Electronic skin for Massachusetts Bay is being stitched together by scientists at UMass Boston under the leadership of Dr. Robert Chen, Environmental, Earth and Ocean Sciences associate professor, so that surfers, swimmers, and fishermen are alerted to dangerous bacterial levels in the water. These scientists envision forecasts of beach conditions delivered on demand to mobile handsets.

Chen’s Center for Environmental Sensor Networks is unique in its development of underwater sensor networks, thus crossing the land-water interface, in focusing on “smart” networks, networks that are not simply automated, but can also shift attention to objects and events of interest, and in applying networks to urban environments.

Dr. Deborah Estrin, a professor of computer science at UCLA, speculates that mobile phones, carried by billions, will sense the sounds and smells of the city for cultural or environmental purposes, or even to determine your personal environmental impact. She calls this participatory urban sensing, everyday mobile phones becoming a platform for widespread public participation in data collection and dissemination. Her UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing‘s urban sensing group is initiating projects to introduce these technologies into the public realm. She believes these systems promise to become a very effective ‘make a case’ technology to address a range of civic concerns, from public health to safety and sustainability.

Estrin delivered keynote remarks at a conference organized in April 2007 by the Center for Coastal Environmental Sensing Networks about how improved data gathering by wireless observatories will make it possible to see conditions that were once essentially invisible.

“Remote sensing is pretty new, and no one’s really done it in the coastal oceans,” said Chen. The case for the university being the only feasible site to plant the seeds for a digital hook-up of the physical world is strong. "By having science drive the technology, we're able to make leaps that aren't yet commercially viable to invest in," according to Chen. With a grant by the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center, his team is developing an inexpensive and more accurate sensor to detect total bacteria. The inventors of the sensor are Drs. Bob Chen, Mike Shiaris, Steve Rudnick and Francesco Peri.

Developing and embedding sensors is one challenge, but integrating ever greater numbers of observations, analyzing the results, and developing models to forecast is another. Chen’s colleagues Drs. Mingshun Jiang and Meng Zhou have already developed a forecasting system for Massachusetts Bay, including temperature, salinity, sea level and circulation.

The Center for Coastal Environmental Sensing Networks was created in July 2006 with an UMass President’s Office science and technology grant. Recently it received a grant from the US Department of Energy. The center aims to bring together university researchers, business leaders, and state and federal decision-makers to develop environmental sensor networks.

The center’s team is part of UMass Boston’s Integrated Environmental Monitoring research cluster. The goal of integrated environmental monitoring is to develop and use modeling and software technologies to advance the science and improve the decision-making surrounding resource and environmental issues.

Inspiration in a rain forest

2008-06-07T16:35:00.006-04:00

"I have great respect for theoreticians, but I need to know that what I'm doing will eventually be usable."
Deborah Estrin

After graduating from University High School in West Los Angeles, Deborah Estrin earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1980. She went on to earn a master's degree in technology policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982. Three years later, Estrin completed the PhD program in computer science at MIT.

After graduating from MIT, Estrin headed back to the West Coast to begin her teaching career. During 1986 she accepted a position as professor of computer science at the University of Southern California (USC), where she taught and conducted research until 2000.

During 1999 Estrin vacationed in Costa Rica, home to lush tropical rain forests. She was awed by the abundant animal and plant life in the rain forests and by the admirable focus of the Costa Rican government and people on preserving their country's biodiversity. Estrin realized that biologists could radically improve their ability to observe complex biological phenomena by using embedded networked sensors. Upon returning from Costa Rica, Estrin began to focus on the impact ENS could have on the study of biology, the environment, and other natural sciences. Among many other uses, ENS could help scientists track and monitor the impact of climate change on endangered ecosystems—a community of organisms and the surrounding environment—and could provide detailed information about the type and level of contamination in the soil or air. In 2000 Estrin left USC to become a professor of computer science at UCLA. As with all scientific endeavors, Estrin's research in the field of ENS depended on funding to carry it from the planning stages to actual testing of the sensing devices in the real world. Soon after joining the faculty at UCLA, she and several colleagues from UCLA, USC, and other universities began working on a massive grant proposal that would give them the funding they needed.

During August of 2002, Estrin and her colleagues heard the news they had anxiously awaited for many months, news of a grant the likes of which most scientists can only dream of: the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Science and Technology Center awarded them a ten-year, $40 million grant to develop ENS technologies for the study of physical and biological systems. The grant allowed for the establishment of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), and Estrin was named the center's first director. Based at UCLA, CENS was one of six academic research centers to receive the 2002 NSF grant, which specifies that the work must be collaborative, involving people from various fields of study. Estrin's center includes professors from a number of different departments at UCLA and other universities, including computer science, electrical engineering, biology, and education. In exchange for the grant money, the research centers must commit to conducting their primary research, and to advancing educational opportunities in local schools and universities and increasing the number of minorities participating in the research. They must also connect with other research institutions as well as the business world and the surrounding community. CENS was ready and able to fulfill the many requirements, and work soon began on developing the initial programs for testing ENS technology.

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Deborah Estrin delivered the keynote at the UMass Boston Center for Coastal Environmental Sensing Networks inaugural conference in April 2007.

Expanding choice for children with learning disabilities

2008-06-06T14:46:00.008-04:00

In a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Eli's Choice” written by Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Marcus, a young man with Down syndrome named Eli chooses to drop out of his carefully crafted inclusion placement and opt for a self-contained classroom.

"The kids liked him, they knew him, they spoke to him," said his mother. "They just didn't think of him as a peer." Eli, she says, was tired of "being the only kid who was different."

According to Dr. Gary Siperstein, the central problem for students like Eli is that "in inclusive classrooms they are there physically but not socially." The lack of social integration in high school suggests not only that Eli’s decision is correct but, indeed, inevitable. Siperstein is a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and cited as the authority in the Wall Street Journal article.

Studies have shown that people with Down syndrome who learn in regular classrooms do much better academically. They also have significantly higher rates of employment after they graduate and earn more money than peers who studied mainly in self-contained classes.

But student attitudes continue to remain the most formidable barrier to inclusion, according to studies by Siperstein’s Center for Social Development and Education. One polled 5,600 seventh- and eighth-grade students from 70 schools across the country on their willingness to interact with students with intellectual disabilities at school and outside the school environment. The study found that "67 percent of young people surveyed would not spend time with a student with an intellectual disability if given a choice, and almost 50 percent would not sit next to one on a school bus."

Siperstein’s groundbreaking research has caused many to step back and ask the question about why social integration of students with disabilities in high school has remained "stagnant." Siperstein believes that most schools don't place enough emphasis on teaching social skills, and don't currently have the necessary structures even if they wanted to.

In the end, though conventional wisdom supports fostering an inclusive environment, not all children will be socially accepted in all classrooms. Parents need to weight the benefits of the classroom setting versus their own definition of happiness and success for their child, according to Siperstein.

The incidence of Down syndrome is estimated at 1 per 733 live births in the United States, 5429 new cases per year. The inaugural World Down Syndrome Day was launched on 2006 in Singapore. There was worldwide shock on February 1, 2008 when Iraqi terrorists maliciously strapped bombs to 2 women with Down syndrome and sent them into 2 different pet markets to explode bombs that killed more than 90 people.

For thirty years, Siperstein has been a leader in the study of attitudes toward persons with learning and behavioral problems, and has helped change the way people think. Members of the center have conducted studies on the attitudes of youth and adults across the U.S. and internationally. Siperstein has been actively involved in the development of disability policy at both the state and national levels. The national Down syndrome congress convention will be help on July 11-13 in Boston.

Earlier this year, in February 2008, Siperstein was named the recipient of the 2007 President’s Public Service Award. UMass Board of Trustees chairman Robert Manning said of the winners, “These individuals and their campus colleagues are the key to what makes the University of Massachusetts such an exciting and rewarding place to study or work. Prospective students know that they will have opportunities to participate in cutting-edge research early on in their academic careers with professors who are among the best in their chosen fields.”

Dr. Siperstein received the prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institute of Health for his research on the social aspects of mental retardation. The highly selective award recognizes researchers who have demonstrated superior competence and outstanding productivity in research endeavors. Less than 5 percent of institute-funded investigators are selected to receive MERIT Awards.

Why motivates Siperstein to focus on social inclusion? He finished a distinguished guest lecture at Columbia University with the answer, showing a picture that one of his students had drawn of several children holding hands with the caption "It is fun to have friends.”

Siperstein's research is part of UMass Boston's Developmental Sciences research cluster. Developmental sciences entail the investigation of progressive changes that occur over the life span of individuals.

A computational tour de force

2008-06-05T09:30:00.010-04:00

Last year, a mathematical calculation of the structure of E8 was unveiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, amid great fanfare. E8 is a symmetrical structure discovered in 1887 by Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie. No one thought the structure could ever be understood. E8 was mapped by an international group of 18 mathematicians, including UMass Boston Professor Alfred Noel.

Information about the accomplishment sent to journalists was embargoed until the night before the press conference. The story appeared in the usual places (Scientific American), but also in much less usual places such as the New York Times, the BBC, le Monde, and many, many others, plus generated a lively discussion in the blogsphere.

The coverage tended to focus on how the solution to a century-old mathematical problem may help solve the mysteries of the universe. Among those is the theory of everything that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena – which physicists have sought for nearly two centuries.

“It could well be E8 that determines the deep inner structure of the universe,” said Jeffrey D. Adams, a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland who led the project.

The publicity obscured the real breakthrough. While it was known how to do the E8 calculations in principle, they had so far been computationally intractable. The innovative large-scale computing that was key to the work likely spells the future for how longstanding math problems will be solved in the 21st century. Perhaps even more significant, the team was a rare collaboration for mathematicians who usually work alone or in small groups and rarely turn to supercomputers.

Symmetry is a fundamental principle of nature, and behind anything symmetric is a mathematical object such as a matrix. A matrix has entries of numbers in the cells formed by the rows and columns. The E8 matrix has 205 billion entries. If each entry was written in a one-inch square, the matrix would measure more than seven miles on each side.

The team that produced the E8 calculation began work four years ago. They meet together at the American Institute of Mathematics every summer, and in smaller groups throughout the year. Their work requires a mix of theoretical mathematics and intricate computer programming.

According to team member David Vogan from MIT, "Even after we understood the underlying mathematics it still took more than two years to implement it on a computer." And then there came the problem of finding a computer large enough to do the calculation.

A mathematician-programmer, Noel’s role within the group was to develop mathematical techniques that could be programmed on a computer. Vogan is one of Noel’s mentors.

For another year, the team worked to make the calculation more efficient, so that it might fit on existing supercomputers, but it remained just beyond the capacity of the hardware available to them. The team was contemplating the prospect of waiting for a larger computer when a team member pointed out an ingenious way to perform several small versions of the calculation, each producing an incomplete version of the answer. These incomplete answers could be assembled to give the final solution. The cost was having to run the calculation four times, plus the time to combine the answers. The computation took 77 hours of computer time on the supercomputer Sage at the University of Washington.

“The E8 computation, although exceptional, is only the first step in a vast and complex program which will last for several years,” Noel said.

The effort to map E8 is part of a larger National Science Foundation sponsored project to map out all of the mathematical descriptions of symmetry for continuous objects like cones and spheres. The project is called the Atlas of Lie Groups and Representations. It has made software available both for educational and research use. The software is copyrighted by Noel and three others, and available under an open public license.

Noel's collaborator at UMass Boston, Professor Steven Jackson has become a member of the Atlas project. So far the team has developed further theories that are to be implemented in the software. Professor Jackson presented these new results at the last Atlas meeting held in March 2008 at the University of Maryland at College Park.

Before joining the Department of Mathematics at UMass in 1998, Noel was a research engineer at Peritus Software Services in Billerica and a lecturer at local colleges and universities. Noel’s research on representation theory and math education has been published in dozens of mathematics journals. Noel currently splits his time between teaching Calculus and Probability and Statistics courses at UMass and conducting research at MIT, where he is a visiting scholar.

This leaves the question of why the story of E8 took off in the press. According to Jeffrey Adams, "That is harder to understand than the polynomials for E8."

However, if this structure turns out to be fundamental to how the universe works, then it seems to indicate our universe is exceptional, and perhaps singular. But, whether this theory works perfectly or not, it is undoubtedly true that the fundamental nature of our universe can be described by mathematics.

Noel is part of UMass Boston's Computational Sciences, Analysis and Modeling research cluster. Representing an intersection of computer science, engineering, applied math, and the sciences (biology, physics, chemistry), the primary focus of the field is the construction of models and numerical analysis techniques to simulate, evaluate, and solve problems using computers.

Inventive physicist achieves optics breakthrough

2008-06-02T16:03:00.007-04:00

Physics professor D.V.G.L.N. Rao and his protégé post-doc Chandra S. Yelleswarapu finish each other’s sentences as they explain the workings of their invention, the Fourier Phase Contrast Microscope, which images minute organisms more realistically and in greater detail than the microscopes widely used by biologists around the world.

This year, in a rare honor for a UMass Boston faculty member, Rao is being recognized, along with seven others throughout the UMass system, with a $30,000 award from the University of Massachusetts Office of Commercial Ventures and Intellectual Property (CVIP) that will help them develop the microscope commercially. Dr. Rao’s microscope is the only UMass Boston technology to receive the award.

“We regard Dr. Rao is an innovator way ahead of his time," says Susan Daudelin, the director of industry relations in the UMass Boston Venture Development Center, which manages the CVIP program on campus and acts as the incubator and promoter of university research.

Rao has been a Professor of Physics at UMass Boston for forty years, and has been producing original research for the same amount of time. In 1973, the year of the first graduating UMass Boston class, he published a research paper that was recognized by the American Physical Society. Since then, he has published over 100 papers and procured five patents.

Rao and Yelleswarapu’s microscope is based on a dramatic improvement upon standard phase contrast microscopes, which work by exploiting a property of light, its “phase,” which shifts when light travels through transparent or semi-transparent materials. Human eyes can’t detect phase shifts, but through the use of a device called a “phase plate,” the phase shifts are converted into variations in the light’s brightness, allowing scientists to get a more detailed view of the inner workings of biological specimens.

When phase contrast microscopes were first introduced in the 1930’s, they eventually won their inventor a Nobel Prize, but they had their drawbacks: Cells appear to be two-dimensional, and are surrounded by a white “halo.”

Rao and Yelleswarapu’s update uses lasers, liquid crystals, and a lens that performs a “Fourier transform” on the light waves, which create brighter, clearer, three-dimensional images. Additionally, the team’s design is also more rugged, mechanically simpler, and simpler to operate than the models used in laboratories today.

“It uses no moving parts, and is a lot more user-friendly,” Rao says.

Rao and Yelleswarapu plan to use the $30,000 from the grant to create a working prototype that will help them convince a manufacturer to sell their microscope. Rao is delighted to have the extra resources because they will not only help him introduce his invention to the world, but it will allow him to focus on what he does best.

“I’m a teacher and a basic researcher,” Rao says. “Luckily, what I do for my basic research has real-world applications.”

Rao teaches two classes and has served as the Graduate Program Director for the past ten years. He has shepherded scores of students into their own careers, and has given all of them, even undergraduates, opportunities to conduct original research in his laboratory, producing new insights into optics and lasers.

The microscope is just one of those real-world applications. There’s also mammogram technology that can detect “micro-calcifications,” a laser eye-protection project, optical holographic storage, and photonic applications for nano materials.

Bringing order to the wild west off the Bay State's coast

2008-06-02T13:09:00.015-04:00

Massachusetts has been talking about the need for a state ocean management plan for more than fifteen years. This year, everything fell into place.

Earlier in the year, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation awarded a three-year $8.2 million grant to the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at UMass Boston, to focus on developing information and tools that improve the integration of natural and social science with ocean management.

In May 2008, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed the nation's first comprehensive ocean planning law to reduce tensions among maritime users and guide energy development. A handful of companies have announced plans to build wind farms, liquefied natural gas terminals, and projects designed to capture energy from the tides.

Many user groups think the current state of affairs off the coast is akin to the wild west. The bill as an opportunity to manage ocean sprawl based on sound science, smart economics, and sensible management principles.

The state's Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian A. Bowles must develop the plan by the end of 2009 with input from the public and 17-member advisory commission.

Stephen P. Crosby, dean of UMass Boston's McCormack Graduate School, hopes the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant will help. The grant focuses on science integration efforts that will directly support the state’s formal ocean management planning and decision making processes. Senior research fellow, Robbin Peach, assists Crosby on the project.

Peach and her colleagues on the Massachusetts Ocean Management Task Force initiated the concept of securing a grant. The Task Force, comprised of state and local officials and private individuals representing diverse ocean user groups, met between June 2003 and March 2004 to develop recommendations for state action. To maintain momentum, Peach organized a group called Massachusetts Ocean Partnership (MOP), now housed at UMass Boston. MOP is a collaborative partner with planning efforts underway.

With the Moore Foundation grant, MOP will tackle questions such as what tools exist and what tools need to be developed to evaluate economic tradeoffs when considering resource management options. MOP also will convene working groups in a non-regulatory setting to seek collaborative solutions to difficult ocean management issues and options for consideration in formal decision-making processes.

Achieving the management coordination, integration of scientific information, and stakeholder involvement will require new levels of collaboration among public and private entities involved in ocean activities.

“The University of Massachusetts Boston was a logical home for this (grant) initiative,” says Crosby, “with coastal and ocean scientists and policy specialists already conducting research on the environmental health and economic importance of coastal waters.”

UMass Boston played a leading role on the scientific committees decades earlier. The Boston Harbor cleanup project was hampered by the scarcity and poor quality of available information in such key areas as water quality and pollution sources.

The health of ocean waters and fisheries suffers from the gaps created by differing laws and mixed jurisdictions, and failure to manage the coastal-ocean ecosystem as a whole. Upon final adoption, the ocean plan will be incorporated into the existing coastal zone management plan and enforced through the state’s regulatory and permitting processes.

Concern over competing ocean uses is growing nationwide, and some states, including California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Florida, and North Carolina, have created ocean authorities or announced plans to better manage state waters. But Massachusetts has now become a leader in ocean policy in this country.

Ringing alarms about elders' high living costs

2008-05-30T15:53:00.002-04:00

The elderly face high costs -- from health care to housing -- and many won't have enough money to pay the bills. Rather than leaving people in the financial shadows, a novel tool developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston is sparking a revolution to keep aging lively and affordable.

To measure the living costs of people aged 65 and older, the Gerontology Institute developed the Elder Economic Security Standard, a geographically (county-by-county) based tool that helps elders calculate the appropriate income necessary to cover basic costs such as housing, medical expenses, food, transportation and some leisure activities. It is a new and more accurate measure of an independent elder’s income needs.

The standard reveals that many elders can't cover their expenses, and its causing concern around the nation.

In Boston, the median household income of people aged 65 and older is $17,470. The institute calculates that to meet basic living costs, including fair-market rent, transportation, and health care, an elderly couple needs $30,557. By contrast, the average annual Social Security benefit for couples is $19,776, creating a gap for elders without additional savings.

To close the gap, Wider Opportunities for Women has launched an ambitious campaign that includes organizing, advocacy, and research on a national level. With the support of The Atlantic Philanthropies, an organization dedicated to bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people, a total of 20 states will participate. The Gerontology Institute is Wider Opportunities for Women's national research partner to develop and apply the Elder Economic Security Standard.

The impact of the Elder Economic Security Standard has already been felt. In California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin where Wider Opportunities for Women and the Institute have been working, editorials by major newspapers and features on television are ringing the alarm. Wider Opportunities for Women has compiled the results on a special web site.

In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick has agreed to convene a statewide commission on long-term care and innovative outreach efforts to help seniors overcome their resistance to enrolling in public support programs.

The initiative is particularly critical as we face today’s economy. This year, seniors relying upon Social Security for the majority of their income were forced to choose among such necessities as heating oil, prescription drugs, and food as they received the lowest cost of living adjustment from Social Security yet.

Laura Henze Russell and Ellen Bruce of the Gerontology Institute developed the methodology and format of the Elder Economic Security Standard. They were inspired to ask the difficult question: how much does it really cost for older adults to live independently, taking into account differing factors such as health, life circumstances, family status, and geography; and what happens to their costs as life circumstances change over time?

"We really need a fresh look at the network of support programs for elders, because so many of the guidelines were set so many years ago," said Russell, director of the Elder Economic Security Program at the Gerontology Institute. "One of our hopes is that we're educating seniors that it's not necessarily their fault that they can't makes ends meet," said Bruce.

The Gerontology Institute developed the Elder Economic Security Standard with support from The Boston Foundation.

The Gerontology Institute carries out basic and applied social and economic research on aging and engages in public education on aging policy issues, with an emphasis in four areas: income security, health (including long-term care), productive aging, and basic social and demographic research on aging.

New center tackles health disparities in Boston

2008-05-30T15:06:00.015-04:00

The University of Massachusetts at Boston and the Harvard School of Public Health will create a research center devoted to health and healthcare disparities.

A five-year, $7.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities will fund the HORIZON Center, named for its goal of providing healthy options, research, interventions, and community organizing. The center will work with the Cherishing our Hearts and Souls Coalition, a group in Roxbury, which has the youngest, poorest, least educated, and least employed people among Boston's neighborhoods.

Boston’s racial and ethnic groups have different risks of illnesses and death. Black residents, for example, have higher rates of preterm births, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, hospitalization, cancer mortality, and premature death, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.

HORIZON pioneers a new way to discover and implement promising solutions to address this unequal burden of poor health, called community-based participatory research. This is a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. If research is to result in findings that are practical and culturally appropriate, the researcher and the researched community must work together. Community-based participatory research also goes beyond linking health to medical care, lifestyles and genes to consider other powerful determinants of health, specifically the social conditions in which we are born, live and work.

Of the billions of dollars spent on health care research in the U.S., only an estimated $45 million is allocated to community-based participatory research, but that amount is growing. The call to the call to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities is one of the key drivers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has organized a national partnership to end health disparities. Unnatural Causes, a groundbreaking documentary series on public television, exploring America's racial and socioeconomic inequities in health, further dramatized the challenge.

Many leaders of community-based public health groups have stories of disappointment and missed opportunities, experiences that foster an unhealthy skepticism about whether academia can be a trustworthy partner. The world of biomedical science can seem far away when you are dealing with immediate problems such as poverty, racism, and environmental conditions.

"But it's a total myth that underserved communities have no interest in research," Baquet said. "It's just that it has not been presented in a way that they can consider the benefits. Trust is the issue," according to Dr. Claudia Baquet, director of the University of Maryland Comprehensive Center for Health Disparities, who spoke at a conference earlier this year at UMass Boston also sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health and community outreach organizations.

Celia Moore, chairperson of the Psychology Department at UMass Boston, and leader of the HORIZON initiative, "We propose to increase the number of local agencies, community organizations and residents who contribute to and participate in research, training, health promotion, and community organizing activities, and focus them on the common goal of reducing the health disparities."

“We hope that what we learn and put into practice in our own community can eventually benefit urban residents across the nation,” said James H. Ware, dean for academic affairs at Harvard School of Public Health.”

The HORIZON Center's four core missions, as well as its research and pilot projects, are all designed to strengthen the evidence-based practices and strategies for understanding and training practitioners in reducing health disparities.

Award winning public radio program answers a universal question

2008-05-29T21:15:00.006-04:00

“Can you ever seem at home in a place where you don’t seem to fit?”

This question, asked by journalist Helen Zia, opens the pilot episode of As I Am, the new Asian American public radio program being co-produced by the Institute for Asian American Studies (IAAS) and WUMB, UMass Boston’s public radio station. The hour-long program features journalism, commentary, and art, all from an Asian American perspective.

In a segment of the program, “Leaving Los Angeles,” American Public Media’s Angela Kim shares her story about finding the one thing that helped her cope with her homesickness and reminds us that no matter where we may move we are often searching for something, anything, to remind us of where we came from.

As I Am won the 2008 Outstanding Special Program award from the American Women in Radio and Television for the segment “Leaving Los Angeles.” The prestigious Gracie Award recognizes the realistic and faceted portrayal of women in entertainment, commercials, news, features and other programs. Each year, these awards attract the best and brightest in radio, television, cable, and new media. The winners were honored at the Gracies Gala on May 28, 2008 in New York City.

As I Am was born in a conversation between Watanabe, the director of IAAS and Pat Monteith, the general manager of WUMB, when Monteith discovered that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was hoping to increase the diversity of programming on the nation’s public airways. “The opportunity showed itself right in front of me,” Monteith says. “Knowing that there was no other show aimed at this [Asian American] population besides Pacific Time, I asked Paul if he was interested.” He was, as was the UMass administration, which has funded the production of the pilot with a UMass Boston Proposal Development Grant. The completed pilot will be offered to public radio stations around the country this spring.

As I Am models itself partially on NPR’s All Things Considered, and Chicago Public Radio’s popular This American Life, as well as on the now defunct syndicated Asian radio show Pacific Time, which broadcast out of San Francisco from 2000 to 2007. While the staff and contributors of As I Am are Asian American and will address issues that affect Asian Americans, they plan to touch on themes, like the concept of “home,” which transcend race, ethnicity, and nationality. “We’ll be pulling in all these different voices,” says Nathan Bae Kupel, one of the producers of the show.

Paul Niwa, a professor at Emerson College who contributed a documentary report on rising rents that are forcing working-class residents out of Boston’sChinatown to the pilot, describes As I Am as “a collage of experience, poetry, commentary, music lyrics, and more.”

As for future shows, say Bae Kupel and Watanabe, the possibilities are endless. “There are thousands of stories that need to be covered, which will be exciting for many different kinds of audiences,” Watanabe says, smiling. “I have a million ideas.”

The entire hour-long program is on the Public Radio Exchange. Stations in North Carolina, Illinois, and California will air As I Am this month in recognition and in celebration of-Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

A high-tech look into the past

2008-05-29T08:24:00.011-04:00

On a typical day, you find Allen Gontz, an assistant professor of environmental, earth, and ocean sciences, of coastal geology at UMass Boston, in historic neighborhoods of Boston pulling an electronically equipped skid plate along the surface of the ground, directing waves of radar deep down.

"What we are looking for is historical and cultural objects or remnants," he said. "It could help develop a better understanding of what Boston would have looked like during the Revolutionary War."

First and foremost a scientist, Gontz is spearheading the use of surveying systems and software that non-invasively, non-destructively map the subsurface and the features within it.

His latest examination is of the grounds of the Paul Revere House, Boston's oldest building and a historic Colonial landmark. There, surveyors from the Boston firm Harry R. Feldman Inc. are teaming up with Gontz to create a digital picture of what's above and below ground so history can be protected as the space is enlarged.

The organization that runs the Paul Revere House the Paul Revere Memorial Association aims to expand its historic North End site to include a neighboring residence Revere once owned, creating more space for the thousands of visitors each year who make the pilgrimage each year to a starting point of the American Revolution. Although the Revere house was built in 1680, no thorough land survey has ever been done. If the team is able to locate the foundations, preservation groups can restore the property to the way it looked in the 1700s, when Revere began delivering messages for the American revolutionaries.

"This gives us a way to do things without digging," Nina Zannieri, executive director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association said according to the Boston Globe. "It’s a heavily visited site. We had 255,000 visitors last year. It’s a major historical site."

Gontz jumped at the chance to bring his students to study the Revere site when the association approached him. His focus is on the city's original coastline, and the Paul Revere House was originally only two streets from Boston Harbor.

Although the data from the recent surveys are still being analyzed, based on preliminary readings the UMass team suspects that a privy - a gold mine for historical researchers for what it reveals about the lives and habits of those who used it - and other foundations or walls, revealing structures now long forgotten, will be discovered.

Feldman employees and the UMass group are now working with their images, cleaning them up and creating a virtually perfect computerized three dimensional image of the property. Using medical imaging software, they will produce an image that can be rotated and viewed on a computer screen. Precise dimensions of the building will be available, and an exact record of the historic property is established for posterity.

Gontz’s methods work by sending a tiny pulse of energy into a material and recording the strength and the time required for the return of any reflected signal. A series of pulses over a single area make up what is called a scan. Reflections are produced whenever the energy pulse enters into a material with different electrical conduction properties the material it left. The strength of the reflection is determined by the contrast of the two materials. This means that a pulse which moves from dry sand to wet sand will produce a very strong, brilliantly visible reflection, while one moving from dry sand to limestone will produce a very weak reflections.

Data are collected in parallel transects and then placed together in their appropriate locations for computer processing in a specialized software program. The computer then produces a horizontal surface at a particular depth in the record. This is referred to as a depth slice, which allows operators to interpret a plan view of the survey area.

In recent years, the use of these non-invasive techniques has transformed earth science. The emerging field draws on scholars in computer science, mathematics and statistics, classical studies, architecture, geography, graphic arts and design, and physical anthropology. The resulting methods reduce the cost, time and risk associated with archaeological investigations.

The innovation in the Paul Revere House examination is figuring out how to stitch together the images. "It's really cutting-edge work anywhere in the world,” according to Gontz.

How practicing physicists learn physics

2008-05-27T19:46:00.010-04:00

University of Massachusetts Boston Professor Arthur Eisenkraft believes that students learn math and science the way that practicing scientists and mathematicians do. They learn when something grabs their attention...when the content is relevant to their lives. They learn when we permit them to get their hands on the subject matter. In short, when we allow students to use all of their senses, they make sense of math and science.

Grabbing students' attention is vital. As the nation's economic base shifts increasingly toward technology, participation and achievement in science and mathematics particularly among minority students becomes increasingly important. Yet, we face the potential of a serious shortfall in the number of individuals entering these fields. All too often, usually around the middle school grades, many students, especially minority students, learn to dislike or fear science and mathematics.

Eisenkraft’s book, Quantoons, which won a 2006 Distinguished Achievement Award for Book Illustrations/Graphics from the Association of Educational Publishers, is a perfect illustration of his philosophy how to engage students. The book, published by the National Science Teachers Association, presents text by Eisenkraft and colleague Larry D. Kirkpatrick with images from internationally known illustrator Tomas Bunk.

The book was featured for six months in an exhibit at New York’s Hall of Science. The book celebrates collaboration between Eisenkraft and Kirkpatrick that began with Quantum magazine, which was published between 1989 and 2001. Their writings on physics were interpreted by Bunk, whose drawings have entertained millions of MAD magazine readers and fans of his “Garbage Pail Kids.”

“We wanted to bring challenging physics questions and their answers to a broad audience of children and adults. Tomas’s illustrations made our job that much easier,” said Eisenkraft, who created Quantum with the help of the science teachers association. “We wanted to break apart the myth that physics can’t be fun; that it is a remote subject.”

For example, a Quantoon that explores the classic physics problem of crossing a raging river and determining where you’ll land on the opposite shore is accompanied by a funny/sad metaphorical cartoon about traversing the river of life from birth to death.

Eisenkraft, UMass Boston’s Distinguished Professor of Science Education, directs the Center of Science and Math in Context. He is also a member of a team of professors and educators awarded a $12.5 million National Science Foundation Boston Science Partnership grant to re-shape science education in the Boston Public Schools.

Eisenkraft's book Active Physics (2005, It’s About Time Publishing) a text used by more than 100,000 students across the country as the backbone of a movement to revise the traditional order of science education – biology, then chemistry, then physics – to place physics at the forefront for students be they in rural, suburban or inner-city districts. The program is built on research results from studies in cognitive sciences, student assessment, student engagement, and problem-based learning. He has also authored Active Chemistry, his latest book.

A new learning model underlies Eisenkraft's work. He developed the 7E learning model to emphasize the increasing importance of eliciting prior understandings and the extending, or transfer, of concepts. The 5E learning cycle model requires instruction to include the following discrete elements: engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. The proposed 7E model expands the engage element into two components—elicit and engage. Similarly, the 7E model expands the two stages of elaborate and evaluate into three components—elaborate, evaluate, and extend.

While text books offer a classical tool for educators, Eisenkraft said projects like the magazine and the illustrated book give him a chance to test new approaches aimed at getting students and teachers focused on physics.

“Projects like Quantum offer the opportunity to try to do things differently,” said Eisenkraft, who taught high school physics for 28 years and was honored as a Science Teacher of the Year. “Working with the Boston Public Schools, we are teaching the teachers of physics and science to do things differently too. We think students are going to benefit from the results.”

Eisenkraft is a member of the UMass Boston Science and Math Learning Research cluster. The goals are to investigate teaching and learning materials and methods and to apply findings to the improvement of curriculum, instruction, and learning in schools and universities.

New approach to treating anxiety disorder

2008-05-27T17:54:00.005-04:00

People who experience anxiety disorder – about 6.8 million adult Americans, twice as many women as men - have reason to keep tabs on the work being done at leading research institutions to improve treatments. A $2.4 million National Institute of Mental Health backed project under way at UMass Boston may well lead to widespread use of a new therapy for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) that has shown much promise in clinical trials.

A team of investigators led by UMass Boston associate professor of psychology Lizabeth Roemer is comparing a mindfulness- and acceptance-based behavior therapy for GAD to an older, established treatment, which should lead to better matching of treatments to clients. In 2001 Roemer and her collaborator, Dr. Susan Orsillo of Suffolk University developed a therapy for generalized anxiety disorder that integrates mindfulness-based, as well as other acceptance-based, strategies into a behavioral approach to treating this chronic anxiety disorder.

GAD is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable, irrational worry about everyday things. Commonly occurring with other psychological disorders, GAD has been the least successfully treated of the anxiety disorders.

Roemer and her colleagues believe that better targeting of the function of worry and the nature of GAD is necessary. “Recent developments in understanding worry and GAD suggest the potential utility of mindfulness and acceptance-based elements in treating GAD,” she says. In the context of this work, this new approach means “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment in a nonjudgmental way to both internal and external sensations.” The researchers propose that mindfulness may help individuals to respond to their naturally occurring internal experiences more adaptively and to lead richer, more satisfying lives.

The National Institutes of Health is financing more than 50 studies testing mindfulness and acceptance techniques, up from 3 in 2000, on a variety of applications, such as to help relieve stress, soothe addictive cravings, improve attention, and reduce hot flashes. For all these hopeful signs, the science behind mindfulness and acceptance techniques is in its infancy.

Roemer's hypothesis however appears to be well supported by the body of work on the subject. Studies have shown that worry plays an “avoidant” role in GAD that may be highly responsive to the practice of mindfulness. “Worry appears to reduce distressing internal experiences in the short-term, although it likely prolongs them over time by interfering with emotional processing… and limiting the ability to respond adaptively,” says the study’s co-principal investigator, Dr. Susan Orsillo of Suffolk University. “Experiential acceptance, which mindfulness practice promotes, may be the solution.”

Preliminary findings from an open trial have been encouraging, as has a controlled trial that compared the treatment to the effects of normal maturation and other influences. “This novel treatment seems to be targeting the phenomena at which it is directed, with corresponding improvements in symptoms and quality of life,” says Roemer.

Orsillo’s and Roemer’s book Acceptance- and Mindfulness-Based Approaches to Anxiety: Conceptualization and Treatment (Springer, New York, 2005) placed mindfulness and acceptance into the clinical lexicon, establishing links with established traditions, including emotion theory and experiential therapy.

The latest National Institute of Mental Health funding is for a large-scale follow-up study that will further validate if and how the unique features of mindfulness and acceptance-based behavior therapy make it more effective. The results of that study will be telling, but regardless, individuals with generalized anxiety disorder can now look to the future with more hope.

The clatter of subversive knitting

2008-05-27T13:08:00.027-04:00

UMass Boston’s Cat Mazza perfectly represents the newest directions in art, now served by computer networking, modeling, and simulation. An Assistant Professor of New Media, she developed a software program that encourages the 54 million knitters in the United States to make "logoknits"--knitted garments with the logos of sweatshop offenders.

Mazza is featured in a provocative exhibition of international artists using fiber in unexpected and unorthodox ways, Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting, which originated at The Museum of Arts & Design, New York, and is now on display at the Indiana State Museum.

In the exhibit, Dave Cole knits with backhoes and telephone poles, while Althea Crome makes her "nano-knit" garments using fine medical wire as "needles." Niels van Eijk uses lace techniques to create a lamp out of optical fibers. And Mazza translates video images into knitted images to educate about sweatshop labor.

"These are not your grandmother's crocheted doilies and knitted legwarmers," says Museum of Arts & Design Chief Curator David McFadden, in an introduction to the show on the web site, IN.gov. "The traditions that have defined both knitting and lace-making for centuries are suspended in this exhibition. Each piece bears a political or personal message, invites public participation, and encourages the viewer to reconsider how fiber functions on a tangible, spiritual and aesthetic level."

Mazza’s Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting entry is the collectively crocheted “Nike Blanket Petition,” decorated with a Nike “swoosh”, and made by knitters from more than 20 countries. To make the “swoosh,” Mazza used Knitpro, a special software program she designed that lets anyone create a knitting pattern out of a graphic image. She has since developed Knitoscope, a software program that translates digital video into knitted animation.

Mazza is a recipient of a 2007 Media Arts Fellowship funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, awarded to innovative and pioneering filmmakers and media artists. She founded microRevolt to “investigate the dawn of sweatshops in early industrial capitalism to inform the current crisis of global expansion and the feminization of labor.”

Inspiring micro revolution, Mazza says, in an interview on the blog We Make Money Not Art, “in many ways began as an experiment more than a conviction. What is the political potential of craft and can it be an avenue for pleasure as well as organizing for social good?”

In knitting circles, participants not only knit but also chat about social issues. When pieced together from numerous individual contributions, as many knitted protest projects are, the works become a sort of handcrafted petition. Mazza's creative works are part of the re-emergence of knitting as a hip hobby that makes statements.

Last year, Mazza launched Stitch for Senate, a new twist on wartime knitting. During World War II, as part of the Knit for Defense movement, women knit a variety of gear for men on the front. Mazza’s Knit for Defense makes helmet liners for U.S. troops. She is encouraging senators to send the liners on to soldiers abroad. Research for this project will accumulate into Knit for Defense - her experimental animation about the history of wartime knitting, funded by Creative Capital.

Cat Mazza holds an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and her work has been exhibited internationally in England, Italy, Russia, Brazil as well as throughout the United States. She was also a founding member of Eyebeam, a new media art and technology center in New York City.

Solve your problem by giving it away

2008-05-09T08:31:00.015-04:00

MathWorks, a provider of software for technical computing and modeling, based in Natick, is running a "wiki-like" programming contest where anyone can look at anyone else's submission and then resubmit it as their own. Through this competitive collaboration MathWorks has found improvements in programming performance.

It's a very counterintuitive way of working. Open up your problem to other people in a systematic way. A problem may reside in one domain of expertise and the solution may reside in another.

People have talked a lot about innovations happening at the intersection of disciplines. So, could this practice in the open source software community work among scientists trying to solve scientific problems?

According to Karim R. Lakhani, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, systematic evidence is now coming in that shows that broadcasting or introducing problems to outsiders yields effective solutions and quickly. Lakhani’s study shows that enjoyment and the challenge of learning were the strongest motivators for scientists to participate in the process.

Waltham based InnoCentive has put this idea into practice with the help of $6.5 million in financing from Spencer Trask Ventures, a New York-based venture firm.

InnoCentive has built an online community of problem seekers and solvers who collaborate to solve technical issues. The 140,000 registered solvers represent more than 60 different scientific disciplines. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies such Procter & Gamble and Eli Lily pay a fee per challenge posted. When the best solution is rewarded to the solver, InnoCentive receives a commission of 20% or more. The reward for solvers is from $5,000 up to $1,000,000. Seekers find that they can get more work done than their internal research and development departments can handle. Both seekers’ and solvers’ identity are kept confidential and InnoCentive guarantees the protection of intellectual property.

Since 2006, InnoCentive has been in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation's Accelerating Innovation for Development initiative to find solutions to problems faced in developing countries, for the non-profit sector. For example, Rockefeller is offering $20,000 for a design for a solar-powered wireless router composed of low-cost, readily available hardware and software components.

Any ideas?

A new university strategy: The research cluster

2008-05-02T08:37:00.017-04:00

Like UMass Boston (Research Reenvisioned for the 21st Century: Expanding the Reach of Scholarship at the University of Massachusetts Boston), other universities have begun to use the “cluster” approach to organize leading edge research involving multi-disciplinary efforts.

The term “cluster” was popularized by Michael Porter in The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990). Clusters are geographic areas where there are enough resources and competences to reach a critical threshold, giving it a key position in a given economic activity, with a decisive sustainable competitive advantage over other places, or even world supremacy in that field. 

Taking a page from business strategy, research universities seek to build a compelling and differentiated strategy for growth, and therefore reputation, driving it off of core competencies matched with powerful market and competitive insights.

The increasing use of a business model based on market factors to guide university strategic decision making is driven by increased competition for students and research dollars resulting in pressure on universities to market themselves; rising costs of research in the sciences; growing media use of competitive rankings, as indicators of presumed educational quality; and increased costs of operating the university.

But while the use of a business model makes sense for university administrators whose success is directly tied to their performance in the advancing the institution as a whole, success of faculty is tied to disciplinary recognition, not institutional success, as measured in part by the scientific community outside the institution, often resulting in competing priorities.

Nevertheless, there are many faculty members who realize, when they push the limits of their field that they have much more in common with colleagues across the university than with members of their own departments. They also hear from their students that employers want graduates who are prepared to meet the multidisciplinary needs of the world, integrating what they have learned in disparate fields.

To encourage researchers from a wide range of disciplines to collaborate to bring research knowledge to bear on issues of importance, universities have begun to organize research clusters. Oregon State University claims to have coined the term "research cluster." “We're breaking down traditional disciplinary boundaries because we've learned that collaboration creates synergy, excitement, and creativity."  

New Mexico State University also claims to be one of the first to use the term. It has established five research clusters to take advantage of strategic opportunities that build on institutional strengths and respond to local, regional, and national needs.

 Colorado State University has even trademarked the term "supercluster" to describe a "new model to move research to market."  Clusters are emerging as a way to express distinctiveness, as well as to invest in research growth.

The University of Houston has established six interdisciplinary research clusters designed to enable scholars to better exchange ideas and explore emerging research areas and to work more effectively with industry, other research organizations and the community.  These research clusters are powerful centers of creativity, in which teams of researchers from a wide range of disciplines collaborate across traditional boundaries to bring research knowledge to bear on issues of intellectual, scientific, social, economic, environmental and cultural importance.  

The University of Washington has a seed fund to organize research clusters. Their Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters are intended to bring together faculty and graduate students from different departments and disciplines with shared research interests. The university intends to seed new and vital research activity but not provide ongoing support of existing programs. Funds can be used to support meeting costs, photocopying, visiting speakers, etc.

In practice, the key initial challenge in organizing research clusters is to overcome the “either/or” mentality. The question, the university can either invest in clusters or colleges, but not both, is replaced with a “what if/and” question, what if you thought of college and cluster investment as synergistic? By making this shift, the promise of the cluster approach began to become possible.

Pitching sponsors used to seeing results

2008-04-30T08:25:00.009-04:00

Are you prepared for the emerging wave of philanthropists who invest in organizations with a sustainable business model and a measurable social impact? Here is a likely dialog reported by the Boston Globe in “Bottom-line philanthropy.”

"You're going to hate me for this, but you've got to listen to yourself on tape. In your initial presentation you said 'um' 33 times."

So said an investment management firm to a nonprofit doing a test run for a funding pitch to a group of potential donors, including investors, government officials, and foundation executives who pick their charities the way they pick stocks: using facts and data.

Modeled after the financing pitches that start-up companies make to venture capital firms, the event by the Social Innovation Forum illustrates a push in the philanthropic community to help nonprofits become more businesslike, understand the language of the private sector, and win the backing of influential, deep-pocketed donors.

"I know it's a little cold, but when I make a decision to support a nonprofit, it's just like an investment for me," said the investment management firm. "I know they're all going to help people, so I want to give my money to someone who will help people three times as efficiently.

Afterward, the not-for-profit presenter confided that he "felt nervous the whole time." But he was grateful for the straight talk, he said. "It was really refreshing to have somebody be fully honest with me, especially a person who's coming from a very professional and effective background."

The VDC plays this role at UMass Boston, helping researchers figure out how to better present their work so that people understand the need they're trying to address and how the work they're doing is effective.

Understanding each other

2008-04-26T09:44:00.009-04:00

Knowledge sharing among researchers within interdisciplinary communities may be critical for new discoveries. In spite of this, biologists tend to talk to biologists, economists tend to talk to economists, and psychologists tend to talk to psychologists. Co-locating them may be a helpful but insufficient step to generating multidisciplinary knowledge. Disciplinary subgroups hold contrary assumptions about the appropriate questions to be asked.

How can this be overcome? Kathleen L. McGinn, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, argues that interdisciplinary communities must first attend to the compatibility of assumptions held by sub-groups within the field. Understanding may stem from the potential for members to recognize the relevance of others' findings to their own scholarship.

A definition of innovation that fits

2008-04-22T17:47:00.011-04:00

Innovation is a buzzword in business. It shows up in the pages of scholarly journals, popular magazines, and international reports; and in advertisements and marketing slogans. But the "innovate or die" message is beginning to spread beyond business. A new breed of social entrepreneur embrace and encourage innovation as a strategy for building a better world.

A noteworthy example is the Boston Foundation's fourth biennial report of the Boston Indicators Project covering the years 2004-2006. It includes a section called The Hub of Innovation. It lists breakthrough products, programs, and practices in ten different sectors: Civic Vitality, Cultural Life and the Arts, the Economy, Education, the Environment, Health, Housing, Public Safety, Technology, and Transportation.

This definition of innovation deliberately integrates diverse perspectives. It draws ideas from the worlds of business, community development, environmental action, education, and social entrepreneurship. It assumes that innovation needs to be seen as a core component of a region's growth strategy.

True innovation can be identified by both the process and the results, so we define it this way: Innovation means the process of thinking and acting creatively to solve an identified problem with the outcome being a new process or product that acts as a catalyst for new cycles of development. Thus, innovation inspires more action—not simply more ideas, but more innovative approaches to putting ideas to use. Innovation thus increases potential and opportunity, and sparks new cycles of thinking—revolutionizing how we learn, how we live, and how we work.

The modern entrepreneurial university and its community

2008-04-20T14:31:00.015-04:00

How do public research universities express their connection to the community they serve? My favorite is Arizona State University’s New American University statement. Everyone who is doing research is invited to pursue ideas that create new value.

“ASU has a vision to be a New American University, promoting excellence in its research and among its students, faculty and staff, increasing access to its educational resources and working with communities to positively impact social and economic development.

“ASU believes that you should measure the value of research by the impact it has on society. ASU encourages its scholars to pursue research that will impact society, conduct that research in a way that recognizes its potential impact, and share it with people in a way for it to make that impact. This idea shapes one of ASU’s goals: whatever the research encompasses, the university will measure success by looking at the ways in which that research has changed patterns in society. This could be a social scientist figuring out how to help politicians make better decisions. Or it could be a bioengineer working to make a cancer vaccine. Whatever the topic, the goal is: impact.”

That's inspiring to academic community members with exciting new concepts that have never considered that their concepts could result in a commercialized product. If we nurture new venture creation based on our teaching and research successes, we tap a vast resource that could be used for the betterment of our supporting communities.

The journal article “Creation of an Entrepreneurial University Culture” chronicles how one university focused on four elements that significantly contributed to a change in their entrepreneurial culture:

1. Establishment of a technology business incubator

2. Establishment of centers of coordinated research activities

3. Establishment of entrepreneurial elements in degree curricula

4. Establishment of research linkages to businesses

Creation of an entrepreneurial culture in a university environment is a complex task that requires the efforts of many dedicated individuals. These individuals are located in industry, academe, and government, and often are only loosely coordinated in their activities with one another. But they all share a common passion to provide new and expanded opportunities for the community.

Creative economy innovation leads the way

2008-04-19T14:27:00.017-04:00

The John Adams Innovation Institute tracks Massachusetts “innovation economy” against other leading technology states. The recently published 2007 Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy shows Massachusetts remains one of the global hotbeds of innovative activity, attracting research investments from industry and government.

The occupational category of innovation worker that is outpacing all others? Arts & Media, with an average five year growth rate of 5.2%. Next is Life, Physical and Social Sciences at 2.7%. This signifies the importance of the creative economy, public relations and online and offline content industries to the innovation economy.

Our stereotype of creative activity is the starving artist, painting in the basement; or the depressed poet, writing somewhere out in the woods. But the forms of creativity that make a big economic impact are complex, organized, and collaborative. Creative works such as textbooks, software programs, education modules, course ware, web tools, databases, videos, and a host of other non-traditional forms of intellectual property too often go unnoticed and untapped in tech transfer offices that are chasing the next high-tech “big winner.”

What’s the buzz?

2008-04-17T11:02:00.017-04:00

We're building an 18,000 state-of-the-art Venture Development Center, designed for collaborative innovation. The new space, opening in fall 2008, is designed to be a beehive, where creative researchers from every corner of the university explore, develop and test ideas.

We were inspired by Peter Gloor's book "Swarm Creativity." (Peter Gloor is a research scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he leads a project exploring collaborative innovation networks.) We see our role as instigators of swarms. After all, swarms are productive because each team member knows intuitively what she or he needs to do. The guiding principle of the swarm is not to become rich, but to create real value for the swarm.

In every large organization, groups of creative individuals self-organize to explore and develop ideas that they care deeply about. These swarms are crucial for organizations to succeed in this emerging era of increased collaboration among innovators both inside and outside the organization. This is the very essence of doing business in Venture Development Center.

Make the leap from good to great

2008-04-14T16:38:00.020-04:00

According to the Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." If you want your research program to have impact, then you must think like a hedgehog, according to Jim Collins (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t). Collins makes the case that what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart is that they’re hedgehogs. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.

Collins of course thinks it is possible for any program or organization to make the leap from fox to hedgehog. The strategy is based on deep understanding of three intersecting circles: 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic engine.