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The Search for Money
It is one of the hopeful answers to a question posed several years ago
by President Gerhard Casper: Can the university rely on an industrial
base to support research as government funding drops? James Gibbons,
former dean of the engineering school, accepted the formal challenge of
crafting a response
when he became Casper's special counsel for industry
relations. You can easily imagine Gibbons, an ebullient man, pumping his
vast network of friends and contacts for ideas and projects. He spins
off proposals for joint schemes as fast as they pop into his head: a
center for engineering risk management that would help the insurance
industry set rates for earthquake coverage; a center to study better
hip replacements for elderly patients; a center to study pure math with
still unknown commercial applications. All of these are in the works.
"My efforts are to create research partnerships and opportunities that
are going to lead to new industries, improved industries and improved
ways of doing things," he says. "I have to persuade industry that the
kinds of things faculty naturally do is of interest to them. Here's the
best test: If this works right, I should be out of a job in 18 months."
If so, it means that through his multiplying centers professors
scattered throughout the university will be working together, with
individual companies and with whole industries. And spinning off new
centers of their own at a fast clip.
But even as the ice thaws, the relationship between Stanford and the
corporate world is not always an easy sell. Part of the institutional
resistance comes from professors leery that industry-sponsored research
will compromise their academic freedom, or entice professors to abandon
basic research in pursuit of industry dollars. "The university must be
on its guard," warns Howard Schulman, chairman of the neurobiology
department at the medical school. "Skewing comes if too much of the
research becomes applied."
That danger, say staff in various departments, puts pressure on the
university hierarchy to make sure the deals with industry ensure freedom
for the faculty openly to discuss their findings and publish their
results. Stanford officials say they accept that duty as part of the
everyday challenge of keeping the school's long-range mission in sight.
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