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September 2003

Research dollars show steady growth

By AMY PARMELEE
Staff Writer

Jim Collom

Few would complain about their research budgets increasing 14 percent over the previous year, and Dr. Jim Collom is no exception. But the director of Sponsored Research and Training believes UNF can pull in even more dollars to fund University research.

Collom estimates last year's tally at $15.3 million, compared with $13.4 million in 2001-02. The office has seen research money grow an average of $2.6 million each year since 1998-99. The majority of the money comes from federal sources, generally followed by state funding and then private or corporate funding.

"We are growing into a university with a significant research endeavor," Collom said.

Collom said the University has been "remarkably successful" in receiving a high percentage of the funding it has requested. That success rate, however, tells Collom the University should be more aggressive in seeking funding. Although the rejection rate inevitably would rise as more funding requests were made, the amount of money coming into the University would likely increase as well.

"We're trying to help faculty to find funding to carry out their scholarship," Collom said.

Academic Affairs, which includes the Florida Institute of Education and The Florida Center for Public Policy and Leadership, drew the most funding - $4.7 million - in 2001-02. FIE received the largest share of that funding pie with $3.2 million.

While many faculty members participate in professional organizations and journals as an outlet for their research, some of the research at UNF has a broader application.

"The University has an obligation to deliver the benefits (of that scholarship)," Collom said. As a result, Sponsored Research also works on licensing and patents for the University.

"UNF's efforts in this area are quite new," Collom said, but the pace may soon pick up.

UNF received its first patents in September 2001 and March 2002 from work by chemistry professor Stuart Chalk. His invention provides a new way of handling and preparing samples, such as water, for flow injection analysis.

The most recent patent involves technology developed by Drs. John Alexander, David Lambert and Gerald Merckel. It allows the capture of data in the field, transmission of data with a global positioning satellite record of time and location, and integration of the data into a geographic database.

UNF has licensed the technology to a start-up company, GeoAge, that the professors created. UNF will have equity in the company.

At least two other patents are pending. Dr. Susan Vasana in electrical engineering has a patent pending regarding her data transmission work, and Dr. Jay Huebner, along with Rodolfo Arrieta, has one pending for his work on using light passing through liquids to identify the presence of certain materials.

Along with the opportunities to develop the patented technology, UNF also may license faculty's copyrighted work, such as educational processes.