Aligning Interests in Support of Chemistry Research Report and Materials
With support from NSF, UIDP convened a strategic set of academic, corporate, and nonprofit representatives for the workshop, “Aligning Interests in Support of Chemistry Research,” held Nov. 9-10, 2022, in Washington, DC. The participants included representatives from academia with experience conducting industry-funded research as well as industry representatives with programmatic responsibilities for sponsored research and the ability to take part in a co-investment program with a government agency.
The event co-chairs were Peter Dorhout, vice president of research at Iowa State University, and Lee Ellen Drechsler, senior vice president at Procter & Gamble, who, along with Pete Ellingson, open innovation manager at Procter & Gamble, were integral in providing programmatic guidance and identifying and securing a strategic set of academic and corporate participants
Chemical companies have a significant track record of engaging higher education institutions through internships, facility access and use, co-location of research personnel, and industry-sponsored research projects. Concurrently, federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), have invested significant resources to explore ways to increase industry co-investments in areas of mutual interest. In recent years, NSF and other government agencies have partnered with companies to co-develop and co-fund calls for research proposals from academic researchers through joint solicitations (e.g., the Resilient & Intelligent NextG Systems [RINGS] program).
Both corporate and government participants expressed a willingness to work together for mutually beneficial outcomes. The importance of focusing on use-inspired, precompetitive research was emphasized in particular. Co-investment by companies and government agencies in government-issued solicitations was of high interest to workshop participants
The workshop’s goal was to identify precompetitive areas of mutual interest in which companies can co-invest with government agencies for use-inspired research conducted in academic and nonprofit settings. Four potential focus areas emerged from large group and breakout discussions for mutual investments:
- Enabling Platforms for Polymer Characterization,
- Decarbonization through Recycling and Upcycling,
- Recycling Education, and
- Cross-functional Skills between Chemists and Data Scientists.
