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Volume 1, Issue 6
The goal of this newsletter is to keep the campus
community informed of news that help you develop
fruitful industry-university relationships and
public/private partnerships. We welcome your
suggestions for future articles and would love to get
your feedback about how it's meeting your needs (see
last article in this issue).
Our circulation continues to grow and, significantly,
now includes people outside the UMass Amherst
community! We are pleased to welcome all the new
readers to this newsletter and encourage its free
distribution.
CVIP Reorganization Announced
The President's office and the five campuses
announced changes in the organization of the patent
and licensing activities at UMass. A new 4-campus
CVIP Coordinating Office has been created to serve
Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses.
Tech transfer and CVIP veteran Bill Rosenberg will head
the new office, reporting to the system VP for
Economic Development, Tom Chmura. The Medical
School at Worcester has a different scale of activity
and requires a different set of resources. Joe McGuirl,
reporting to Deputy Chancellor Rick Stanton, will head
the CVIP office there. The change has been made to
increase the effectiveness of the technology
commercialization activities on campus and emphasize
each campus' responsibility for maximizing opportunities
to commercialize research, build industry partnerships
and serve faculty.
On the Amherst campus, the patent and licensing
function is overseen by the Vice Chancellor for
Research. The director of the Amherst campus CVIP
office is Assistant Vice Chancellor Brad Moynahan and
the associate director is Michael Jaremchuk. For
information and policies, see
http://www.umass.edu/research/cvip/homeuni.html
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Contact CVIP-Amherst Office
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Campus ERC Preproposal Makes First Cut |
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The campus learned last week that its preproposal for
an Engineering Research Center sponsored by the NSF
has been invited to submit a full proposal. The Center
for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere
(CASA) teams together our departments of Electrical
and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science
with researchers at U. Oklahoma, Colorado State Univ.,
and U. Puerto Ricoas well as researchers from several
industries. CASA's focus is on research to engineer a
new system for detecting and predicting extreme and
high impact weather events based on a new paradigm
of densely-spaced adaptive networks of remote sensors
for high resolution atmospheric sensing.
CASA was one of 16 preproposals invited for this next
round. Although 120 letters of intent had been
submitted initially, 77 preproposals were actually
reviewed. The team led by David McLaughlin,
Armstrong Professional Development Professor in the
ECE department, hopes to be one of the 6-8 centers
invited for a site visit. Three centers are expected to
be awarded.
If awarded, CASA will be funded at nearly $35M over
five years. The NSF will support half that amount with
an equal amount coming from other sources, primarily
industry. Industry membership is an NSF requirement
for this ERC program. CASA secured letters of support
from Raytheon, Vaisala, M/A-Com, Weather Svcs Int'l,
and IBM and have a number of others interested.
Contact Principal Investigator David McLaughlin »
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Microsoft Research Seeks Faculty Proposals |
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UMass Amherst has once again been chosen as a
participating university for the Microsoft Research 2002
Request for Proposals program announced at Microsoft's
annual Faculty Summit in late July. Proposal amounts
range from about $25K to possibly $450K. The deadline
for submission is September 27th, 2002. Faculty from
across campus are eligible to submit. Proposals are
sought in four areas: Mobile Computing
Applications, Services and Systems; New Applications
for Tablet Computing; Education, Learning and
Collaboration; Global Web Services (GXA).
Full RFP descriptions and program details are on the
Microsoft Faculty Summit portal at
https://faculty.university.microsoft.com
. Authentication
for this site is handled by Microsoft Passport and
instructions for obtaining a Passport ID are included on
the home page. UMass researchers and faculty who
did not attend this year's faculty summit are eligible for
access to the portal site above and may email
msr-rfp@microsoft.com to request access.
Microsoft Research is undertaking these RFPs to
challenge, focus, and more deeply support the creative
and technical abilities of the researchers and faculty
within the community of schools with whom they have
established relationships. Microsoft is also expanding
this year into undergraduate RFPs. Details of the new
undergraduate RFPs will go out on September 1st.
Last year, our campus submitted six proposals to this
program. One was awarded directly. Two others were
subsequently funded through alternative Microsoft
Research sources at the urging of ILED.
Please CC
Karen Hayes, campus manager of the
UMass/Microsoft relationship, when submitting
proposals.
Check out the RFP »
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MeadWestvaco Joins CUMIRP |
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With its interest directed to several areas of campus,
MeadWestvaco is the newest member of the Center for
UMass-Industry Research on Polymers (CUMIRP) and
one of its subsidiaries, Forest Technology Group, is
actively discussing how they might collaborate with
members of the Computer Science Vision Lab.
MeadWestvaco, an $8 billion company
headquartered in Stamford, CT, has taken a strong
interest in our campus primarily as a result of a group
they fund called, "Radical Innovations and Venture
Capital." The group consists of scientists and
successful entrepreneurs who are on the lookout for
the next great opportunity - aligned with
MeadWestvaco's goals, of course.
To date, ILED has facilitated visits for MeadWestvaco
with members of the following departments: Polymer
Science, Computer Science, Mechanical and Industrial
Engineering, and Natural Resources and Conservation.
With a regional presence in both Springfield, MA and
Pittsfield, MA, we have reason to believe this will
continue to grow into a healthy partnership.
Benefit from the Partnership »
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NIH Program Director to Speak at Regional Bio Symposium |
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"Cardiovascular Technologies: Medical Devices & Tissue
Engineering" is the theme of this year's Annual
Symposium of the BEACON Alliance on October 31, 2002.
Speakers include Dr. Chris Kelley, Program Director of
the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute on
Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering; Dr. Edward Berger,
Vice President of Strategic Planning and Policy at
ABIOMED on his company's ABICOR Artificial Heart
Program; and Dr. Ron Shatjian, Vice President of
Corporate Technology at Boston Scientific on Advances
in Interventional Cardiology. A poster session and a
technology fair are also scheduled in conjunction with
the day-long event, to be held at Heublein Hall on the
campus of Hartford Hospital in downtown Hartford.
As a member of the BEACON Alliance, UMass Amherst
qualifies for the member registration rate of $85
(students $25) before September 15, or $100 after that
date.
All faculty and students interested in biomedical
engineering are encouraged to attend. Poster
submissions are also being accepted until September 15.
For additional information contact Jane Mussehl at
(860) 297-5364.
Get more info on BEACON »
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Is ACCESS Hitting the Target? |
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This is the sixth issue of Industry ACCESS and we're
wondering what you think. We have heard from some
of you and we'd love to hear from
more of you.
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What kinds of articles do you want to read?
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What type of information are you interested in?
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Is the length of the articles ok or would you like them
to be longer? shorter?
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Would you like to see targeted issues, e.g., life
sciences, regional focus, public health and emergency
preparedness?
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Are you interested in industry-university success
stories?
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Would you like this newsletter to have more policy
content?
Please drop us a quick email note (via hyperlink below)
and tell us what you think. We'll publish the results of
this informal survey next issue and work to meet your
needs in future issues.
In the meantime, please forward this to your colleagues
and encourage them to subscribe.
Let us know what you think »
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