Funding forward vision

By Bob Roseth
News & Information

An ambitious project on the UW and WSU campuses aims to create new programs that will lead to entire new industries, and the transformation of existing industries, in the state.

 

The Advanced Technology Initiative, funded by the Legislature for the first time in 1999, creates an entirely new structure through a partnership of Washington universities, state government, and private industry. It is intended as a bridge between cutting-edge research and education, and new economic activity.

While developers of the ATI model are loath to promise what benefits may come from this kind of investment, they point to visionary projects, such as the state’s investment in expanding the UW School of Medicine, which has borne fruit in so many ways. They also point to other states, such as Florida, New Mexico and Utah, that have embarked on successful efforts to match higher education expertise with state resources to expand technology-based industry in those states.

The ATI is building “expertise clusters” of three to five faculty members and support staff, recognized as national leaders in their fields and organized around a particular theme. Their research is in areas where the state’s major research universities are perceived as having a competitive advantage.

The University’s primary mission, education, plays an important role in the development and work of the ATI. Students, both undergraduate and graduate, are involved in creating new technologies through their work with faculty members.

 
Ram Samudrala and Roger Bumgarner, who are both on the faculty in Microbiology, work with a DNA array processor that helps them study the cell’s response to pathogens.

In a recent public forum on the ATI, Provost Lee Huntsman termed the initiative “a worthy experiment, to see if we can find innovative ways of moving knowledge from the university to the private sector.” He noted that in other states that have supported similar initiatives, each state dollar has drawn roughly 10 dollars in out-of-state investment.

The Legislature funded a total of four clusters - 2.5 at the UW and 1.5 at WSU.

The UW clusters include:

  • Computer Animation, Graphics and Digital Media. One goal of this initiative is for Seattle to join New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco as a vibrant center of computer animation, graphics and digital media, according to Ed Lazowska, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Through this initiative, undergraduate and graduate students work in a new interdisciplinary center for research and education, called the Animation Research Labs, where they advance the state of the art in animation through research, teaching and computer-animated production.

    Student productions from this lab have already been selected for screening at the elite animation festivals around the world. Students are becoming involved in this field at the time that a whole new industry is being born, Internet-based video. The techniques being developed by faculty and students have applications in education as well as entertainment and art.

    Moreover, students graduating from a program with this specialty training will help to alleviate a severe workforce shortage in the software industry.

  • Infectious Disease. This initiative will allow the UW to be at the forefront as an entirely new paradigm for fighting infectious disease is developed. New methods for analyzing biological systems and disease-causing microorganisms permits researchers to study how the entire genetic code of these organisms interacts with the human cells it infects.

    These advances are occurring in parallel with techniques that allow researchers to screen millions of potentially useful compounds automatically - a dramatic change that already has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to screen more compounds in the past five years than it screened in the previous century.

    At the intersection of these two methods is the field bioinformatics, which brings together biologists and mathematicians to develop rigorous quantitative descriptions of biological systems. The result will be powerful new ways of combating infectious diseases in a Center for Vaccine Development and Testing.

  • Precision Forestry and Forest Products Manufacturing. The goal of this project is to use technology for improving forest production, management, engineering and wood processing. A 10 percent improvement in output would contribute $1 billion to the state economy and create many jobs, half of them in rural areas of the state.

    This initiative will involve integrating the entire forest product system, from tree planting through wood products manufacturing, making forestry a science that is exact and repeatable. Currently, forests are managed as if they were homogeneous, with little account taken of small variations within a region. The value of forest products, combined with the effects of new environmental agreements, is demanding a more precise approach to forestry.

    It is too early to judge the success of these first initiatives. They are intended as long-term projects. But the UW and WSU are planning to advocate for a new round of ATI projects in the coming legislative session. Among the UW proposals are: Structural and Computational Neuroscience, Construction Research and Education, Diagnosis and Home Health Care, and Photonics.

    Modest state investments can have far-reaching impact on the future well being of our state’s citizens, says Alvin Kwiram, vice provost for research. “Washington has been fortunate to capture a major share of the new economy. Some of our past success was a result of public and legislative support for higher education in general, and for research universities in particular. But we cannot afford to become complacent.”

    Editor’s note: This is the third of four stories about technological initiatives at the UW.



    University Week
    The faculty and staff publication of the University of Washington
    uweek@u.washington.edu
    March 1, 2001