The leaders of tech transfer offices at Milwaukee-area research universities are expressing concern about federal research cuts.
They spoke yesterday during a Wisconsin Technology Council luncheon in Milwaukee, focused on programs in the region that help bring scientific innovations from the academic world to commercial application.
“It’s not a one-to-one correlation between inventions and dollars in, but we have to have robust, investigator-initiated, pushing back the frontiers of science sort of research, which is incredibly expensive,” the Medical College of Wisconsin’s director of office of technology development, Kevin Boggs, said. “And so, it’s the federal government that has the money to do that.”
MCW has about $350 million in annual research expenditures, according to figures shared during yesterday’s event, leading to up to 60 invention disclosures and 30 new patent applications per year.
Kalpa Vithalani, executive director of technology transfer for Marquette University, said the institution has lost between $1.5 million and $2 million in federal research funding so far. She noted one project aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions was cut entirely.
“And so, no more continuation of thinking about research in that direction,” she said yesterday. “That said, right now we have some amazing funding from ARPA-E for a program in our engineering school again, where a couple of faculty members are at the cusp of building a model for an electric motor for aircraft. So there is still obviously so much excitement.”
Still, she added she’s “a little trepidatious of course with any further uncertainty and cuts that we haven’t heard about.”
Marquette University has between $37 million and $49 million in annual research expenditures, leading to about 16 invention disclosures and five to seven new patent applications per year, yesterday’s presentation showed.
Meanwhile, UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation President Jessica Silvaggi said the university is “definitely under the pinch” with multiple grants being delayed or cancelled. That extends to funding expected from the federally funded Small Business Innovation Research program, she said.
“Even our own SBIRs for some of our startups were about to come in, all things go, then they said, ‘Oh, you have foreign influence, you’re collaborating with someone from China, done. Like, you don’t get the money,’” she said. “And they were just about to sign the dotted line, so that’s really concerning for a startup waiting for 16 months for that money.”
