Like it or not, science costs money-and industry has it. As a result, researchers routinely feel pressured to make their intellectual property commercially relevant in return for funding.
“There are so many faculty trying to do things that stretch their research program towards industrial relevance that they’re basically abrogating their role to really push the frontier,” said Dr. Dwayne Miller, of the departments of chemistry and physics.
The institute for optical sciences (IOS), set up in May, and led by Miller, aims to change that. It is a joint initiative by people from the departments of physics and chemistry, as well as engineers from the materials science, and electrical and computer engineering departments.
Twenty years ago, a funding initiative made U of T a magnet for optical sciences, leading to world-class research and the creation of a large technical facility. The IOS is an attempt to consolidate this legacy, Miller said.
At the first of their distinguished lecturer series last month, before introducing Dr. Joseph Eberly, a heavyweight in the field, Miller opined that industrial ages were defined by mediums and that after iron and steam, “we are entering the age of light.”
He sees science in general as suffering from the tragedy of the commons. Though industry knows basic research is useful, it refrains from funding it unless it gives a tangible return. In an age where the conventional solution is a top-down approach, getting academics to think like businessmen has on the whole failed, so the IOS takes a bottom-up approach.
Ideally, it allows for funding to be distributed through a “good science” lens as opposed to an industry-focused one. Miller hopes it can act as a successful model for future institutes and faculty, “allowing them to steer themselves and not be steered.”
The IOS’s solution then is to prepare students through co-ops and entrepreneurial courses. The IOS even held a product competition, in which students cooked up such diverse ideas as ultrasonic dishwashers that use less soap, magnetic kitchen pots that don’t require stirring, and a completely green way of constructing a new semiconductor device known as a quantum dot, which before now was made of toxic heavy metals.
Along with this, the IOS has committed itself to providing technical advice to industry. In Miller’s words, “[The IOS] will act as a knowledge pool where industry can come to take a drink.” The IOS gets funding in return.
Consider the following example. A company on the verge of collapse recently came to the IOS, after grappling for six months with a technical problem with their only product, a medical scanning device. An IOS team was assembled, and, within an hour, the problem had been solved-almost certainly due to the varied expertise of the teams members, according to Miller. He stands by his claim that any tractable problem in applied optics can be solved here. So much for needing a relevancy card.
