Development and Execution of a Sustainable X-FUNDING Scheme for Advanced Technology Development

Mehmet Arik, PhDAssociate Professor

Department of Mechanical EngineeringOzyegin University

September 4, 2013

Disclaimer:

I do like to write proposals for advanced

technologies, and go after large grants.

I am a good spender of grant money over 13 years

of spending experience lead to a spending over

$20M in USA and Turkey.

I am no expert of establishing grants (at least not

my current job), but will share few thoughts with

you at the next several slides.

Table of Contents

• Three major parts of the puzzle in the technology

development

• Major sources of grants

• Establishing grants

• Intellectual property protection

• Sustainability

Three major parts of the puzzle

Technologist Infrastructure Funding

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Funding resources in USA and

Turkey• Major funds by local governments

• USA – DARPA, DOE, NIST (>70%)

• USA – NYSERDA (>10%)

• TURKEY – Tubitak, SSM, Dept. of Science of

Technology (80%)

• Global funding resources

• Turkey - EU funds (<10%)

• Private funds

• US - Industry funds (>20%)

• Turkey – Industry funds (<5%)

• Non profit foundation funds – US (3-4%)

• Non profit foundation funds – US (0.5%)

Funding types in the USA

• Short term (<18 months) (<$300k/year)

• Advancing a small part of a system

• Solving a particular well defined problem

• Mid term (18 months – 5 years) (<$1M/year)

• Advancing a major part of a system

• Coming up with a new technology

• Long term (>5 years) (>$3M/year)

• Groundbreaking technology

• Game changers

SBIR grants (Phase-I)

DOE/DARPA grants

DARPA, ARPA-e grants

Developing proposal/technology

ideas• Work on only high impact areas (not many, just a few –

game changers)

• Major industry+academia+government involvement

(local and global)

• Define areas of interests

• Establish workshops

• Invite relevant people

• Attract selected group of highly qualified people

• Outcome – what is the focus of specific research

area and what will be delivered.

Awarding well-ideas and

proposals• Fair and timely evaluation process

• Quick turn around (8-10 weeks)

• Awards only well defined project goals, and hard-

timing/best-effort teams.

• Well planned finances, never cut resources in the

middle of the project

• This will distract the team if you cut funds in the

middle of the road

• Appoint people who will closely work with the

proposal

• A major problem in USA and Turkey

Execution of the proposals• Appointed X-fund person – not a Police

• Qualified for the job

• Well aware of X-fund goals, global funding schemes

and technology

• Well organized and reports pristinely

• Project goals, timeline, resources has to be checked

regularly (6 months-1 year)

• Frequent project reviews at the project site (3

months)

• Reviews at the X-fund headquarters (6 months)

• Just slides (+2 page executive summary, goals vs

project progress), no long reports.

Intellectual property protection• Patents are important to protect ideas/technologies

• Be aggressive on IP protection

• X-fund should help and protect novel ideas

• Legal help

• Commercialization help

• Do US, world patent, not local patent if you can.

• Do not forget not every idea is used or sold, but some

(~10%) is actually used.

X-Fund sustainability• Sustainability is key here.

• Nobody has infinite resources

• Has to leverage external resources

• Claim back part of IP revenue (a couple of percent)

• Encourage collaborative work among researchers

• Encourage cross-pollination (engineers work with

doctors, basic sciences with engineers etc)

• Establish a constantly growing funding structure

Closing thoughts

• Establishing a sustainable funding is challanging but

doable

• Highly qualified teams have to be attracted and

collaborative work structure should be encouraged.

• Key technology areas need to be supported – not many

, but just a few.

• Help in execution, be an integral part of the team, Not

a police.

• Help in protecting IP and agree on some returns.

Thanks for your attention …