On university-industry collaboration

Tomorrow I will participate in a UIUC faculty development seminar on "Working with Companies".  I think it will be a good introduction to a lot of issues, including:

• gifts versus grants versus contracts
• Conflicts of Interest and Commitment
• Publication
• Intellectual properties, patents, licenses
• Types of agreements, including Material Transfer, Sponsored Research, Technical Testing, and more
• Institutional Review Board (IRB) for human subjects research
• Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)

I will mention several cool examples of industry collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, including

• the Energy Biosciences Institute
• the Center for Nutrition, Learning, and Memory
• the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center
• the Mayo Illinois Alliance for Technology Based Healthcare

On human-in-the-loop simulation

In addition to BIC and ITG (see previous post),  the Illinois Simulator Laboratory (ISL) is a shared research facility at Beckman.  ISL supports an array of laboratories:  virtual reality systems (Cave and Cube), driving simulator, flight simulation, and motion capture suite.   When you are doing human-systems integration research (like my previous gig at NASA Ames Research Center's Human Systems Integration Division), this kind of capability is crucial.  But of course, technology keeps changing.  Mobile computing is another genre of technology that has other harmonics related to human factors and human-systems integration.  The whole area of human-computer intelligent interaction is a very active research field.

On biomedical imaging

Part of my job at Beckman is to provide oversight over our shared research facilities, which includes the Biomedical imaging Center and the Imaging Technology Group.  BIC has MRI, ultrasound, microPET/SPECT/CT, and diffuse optical imaging (fNIRS and EROS).  ITG's Microscopy Suite includes micro and nano CT.  I just read an IEEE Spectrum article on "omni-tomography" -- interesting!  see it here:   "Combined MRI and CT Scanner".  We are always thinking about how to advance the state of the art, and also how we can support the faculty.  Of course the faculty themselves are doing groundbreaking work in imaging -- such as Steve Boppart's work in biophotonics, Gabi Popescu's work on quantitative light imaging, Rohit Bhargava's work on chemical imaging, Zhi-Pei Liang's work in MRI, and Brad Sutton's work on MR functional imaging.

Episode 4: A new gig

I have finally reconnected with my old blog here. I had been going for a "Bridget Jones's Diary" vibe a few years ago.  Now I am at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is good to be back home in Illinois! And it is super-cool to be the Associate Director for Research at Beckman.  see more at: Beckman Institute