We're very fortunate to have Dr. Sandy Brown,
who is the vice president of research and I think economic development correct economic in your title somewhere.
No, no. Under your purview, OK? So she's the chief research officer.
I always get it's always best to say Chief Research Officer at UCSD. UCSD is one of the pillars of academic excellence in the United States.
Since I was a student in the late seventies. Till today, UCSD has transformed itself into truly one of the world's leading academic institutions.
Sandy is a leader within a group called You, and they've done some work, and I'm going to turn it over to her to tell you about that.
So sandy. Well, good morning, everyone, and for those of you who are West Coasters of the United States like me, happy midnight.
I was so impressed with the my first attendance at IUid that started yesterday for me, if the discussions,
the thoughtful insight that was shared yesterday is a reflection of what UDP does and is all about.
We're in good hands. The universities of the future are in good hands.
I want to thank Tony for the invitation and the kind introduction and the organisational staff actually for helping me be able to make it here today.
And what I'm going to talk about is just what Tony said, that we have terribly wicked challenging problems facing the world today,
and universities and industries along with government are a key part in creating solutions to those problems.
And I have the good fortune this year of chairing the Council on Research for a plea to the Association for Public and Land Grant Universities,
about 400 universities across the United States.
And what we've done this year, by way of an initiative I think strongly supports what you UI is all about the focus.
There we go. The focus for the initiative I'm going to share with you, which is called public impact focussed research,
is really a strategic effort that reflects the transformative movement that you all and others are creating.
It really is a reflection of bringing together many efforts the National Academy of Sciences,
Engineering and Medicine, for example, NSF, the Technology Transfer Evolution Report, amongst others.
And it is a bringing together of these efforts that really focus on the role of universities and
improving lives by solving or at least mitigating problems that we can no longer do in a single lab.
We can't do them in a single discipline. We can't do them in a single university.
And we can't do them with a single industry. Even a single government agency can't do them.
What it is all about is relationships working collectively, cooperatively,
enabling efforts across these organisations to improve society in the future by advancing human knowledge.
And I will say to you that even when we go back to the initiation of the modern university in 1888 in Europe,
the focus was on generating knowledge that would have long term value for society.
So in a way, we're not doing anything new, we're just doing our job well.
Copan yesterday said.
Truly transformative opportunities lie in the coordination, and he was talking about coordination with Congress, public private partnerships,
which were all about here and new incentive structures in what this initiative,
public impact focussed research is all about is just that those three things universities are doing this all over the world.
We see it in things like grand challenges. Think grand at UCLA, bridging barriers at UT Austin.
These are just a sample of the types of projects that universities are putting themselves in
the middle of big problems that they've identified that are important to their communities,
whether the community is local, national or international, and see themselves as having a role in solving these.
As Tony was saying, it is noteworthy that even though universities are engaged in more of this type of effort today than ever before.
If we look at the public surveys about the perception of universities, we are being steadily devalued.
That is, we're doing more with more powerful public impact.
And yet the perceived value of universities is decreasing.
So PR Public Impact Focussed Research Initiative is really an effort to clarify the efforts that universities are making to enhance those efforts
and to improve public awareness of that that is done in fact completely in conjunction with university partners and and and government partners.
The goals of PR are to develop a common language for us to be able to describe what these activities
are about and to better showcase them in a way that the person on the street can understand.
Our government officials can understand our industry partners can not just understand but speak.
We can speak collectively about this using the same language.
Additionally,
we want to be sure that we use this opportunity to encourage universities to expand the public impact folk focussed research that they do
pay attention to their portfolios and the potential impact of research that they're doing on their communities and with their communities.
It's important that we have a way of we all love metrics, right, of identifying these things.
Tracking these and communicating these and what are the best practises in doing this, as well as identifying and mitigating the barriers.
You know, yesterday I heard a mention again of disciplinary silos.
Well, I would say that our problems are not just with disciplinary silos or even disciplinary silos, but but the issues.
The challenges in engaging and publicly relevant and impactful research really is in the engagement process with partners, universities and industry.
It's also internal. It's the incentives that universities have for the people that they pay us faculty members,
and it's the alignment of the strategic vision of the university and the infrastructure with those goals.
And then finally, I think the last challenge is really the ability to consistently and collectively share that those findings.
We have over 50 universities deeply involved in this.
About 65 people participated in in many workshops, and almost 200 universities were involved in national surveys.
Because, of course, we like metrics and the basic findings.
Conclusions which will come out in the report in November are that this peer is in
fact an overarching concept that's growing in a number of forms across universities,
and that meant much of this engagement is underway. But under the radar to the public,
peer conveys how an increasing amount of university research is done in collaboration
with and in service to the public and the premier universities of the 21st century.
Century need to intentionally engage in this and in these associated partnerships,
as we're talking about in this conference and quickly address the barriers that are impeding such research.
The recommendations from that report are that national organisations like Apple, You and AEW,
which is now a co-sponsor, communicate about PR and the importance to the stakeholders,
encourage this type of activity and actually that we come together to use the same language in the same typology so that the
public can understand how universities are working with industry partners and government to solve problems that they have.
It's important for universities to foster sustained an external industry and community partnerships.
I'm very proud, for example, of the fact that in San Diego,
the mayor now refers to the University of California, San Diego as the R&D arm of the city.
I think there's no better spokesperson for a university than leaders in the
community that are articulating value that the university brings to the community.
We want universities to ensure that these kinds of initiatives reflect the institutional culture that is, they aren't top down and arbitrary.
Certainly, they can occur fortuitously by Connexions that are made between individuals, but they should be part of the strategic plan of a university.
And we need to invest in ways that we collectively communicate about this.
So what's next? I said about 50 institutions have been involved.
These leaders research leaders from across the nation, including several who are here today,
Pramod, I see you sitting up there, participated on those workshops or in work groups.
We had workshops and did a very broad survey across universities in the United States,
and we plan for the report to be something that Tony said the words you don't like to use somewhat of a toolkit.
It could be a menu, but really it is a reflection of the best practises, exemplars and best practises in these collective efforts in the triple helix,
if you will, in its participation while it was launched through the Council on Research.
We have active involvement with the Council on Governmental Affairs, the Commission on Economic and Community Engagement and as I mentioned to you.
We really need to have people speak with a singular voice, presidents and chancellors should be using the same language the provost,
our industry partners and our state and federal legislators, as well as other funding agencies.
To the extent that we can do that, then it may not be that we change what we do,
but we change the discussion by how we describe what we're doing and the impact and collective power of that.
So I'm particularly interested in how Apple you can partner with UI DP in ensuring that this report and the impact of their report is maximised.
So I'd love to hear from you. We will have a draught of the of the report done in just a matter of weeks.
And so I'd love to hear from you about any suggestions that you have,
because the more that we can bring together our efforts collectively, the more powerful this will be.
I thought since I had the podium, I take a moment to give you an example of how at UC San Diego,
we actually walk the walk that is not only do we believe that this is important, but we try to incorporate this into our culture.
As many of you may know, we've been designated as an innovation and economic prosperity university.
We we take that seriously. We know that we are committed to to economic and community development and growth and prosperity in our community.
The Washington Monthly routinely ranks us at the top when you consider research,
the social mobility of our students collectively and our public service.
We have a robust research budget annually. One point two I'd like to.
That number is ah, it should be changed to one point three. So this is a few weeks old and I want to update my my slides here.
But here you're an example of some of the types of things that have been developed at UC
San Diego that are important initiatives that have been done with our community partners.
We have a centre for ethics in science and technology critical for the future, particularly in the omics areas.
The Centre for Climate Change that developed or it was initiated at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography Artificial Intelligence for Healthy Living Centre.
While this focuses across the lifespan, it has a particular focus on the ageing population,
older populations and the way ways we can use A.I. and technologies to him and enhance
the quality of life and help people live in their homes for longer periods of time.
Our Tata Institute on Genetics and Society is targeting a cure for malaria.
Our community stations for global justice is a set of a number of stations were
that were developed with communities in the most impoverished areas in San Diego,
and they are designed to help the communities with the things that they have decided our most of most value to them.
And we're conducting research, social research in the context of that, as well as some technology development.
Finally, I mentioned the Border Solutions Institute,
which is a compilation of City University partnerships all across the border between the United States and Mexico.
All four of the states with universities and cities part partnering on the
northern side of the border and similarly on the southern side of the border.
Think of the power of that to do digital twin studies of problems,
to look at issues that relate to water and energy and etc. So we are engaged in this kind of work.
We're committed to it. We think it's of value and it's simply an example of what I'm talking about with public impact focussed research.
So with that, I know my time's up.
I want to thank you all for the opportunity to share with you what PR is and the effort of Apple you and you in in this endeavour.
I think we have a lot of common common interest and and goals, and I would look forward to input on that report.
Thank you. Although any questions before we left.
Yes, I was watching my time, so I thought it was already over.
Good. Yes, certain sacrifices were very good.
I really like the emphasis on success in communicating to the public.
But I was reminded of the quote I heard for the first time yesterday about time.
All research is applied. It's just a question of timing. And I wonder how how you sort of define what's inside and works outside the air.
Oh, I think that's a wonderful question. That is really is there is this applied research.
Is it only applied research?
And I will be honest with you, I think that this distinction between basic and applied research is a distinction of the past.
We all understand that it is a continuum. It's just when our fundamental research will have an impact on society.
And I would argue and there are some groups of universities and industry partnerships coming together that that really
focus on conducting fundamental research in the context of these social and community problems that you're targeting.
I think we can do that. We do that every day in several of the institutes that I mentioned to you.
And I do think it's a misnomer to think about basic and applied.
You know, I'll even take your question one step further.
The reason I think it is so important for us to move away from that distinction is that basic or fundamental research in universities,
it's our foundation and it's deeply appreciated in the academic review process.
Applied research is less appreciated yet.
There are new products that emerge from applied research, huge international databases for, for example,
that bring new intellectual opportunities and power and take particular intellectual skill to design and develop them in a way that are usable.
I run a consortium of 21 universities and we have such a database on on youth development.
And we need to we need to change the academic review process.
I think not eliminating the criteria that we had before, but really expanding it to include the products that scientists produce today,
not just methods of measurement that were developed centuries ago.
Thanks for your question. More research is needed.
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's all research at UCSD. What I'm really talking about is when there is research that engages in a community problem,
now that community problem could be, you know, the local sanitation issues.
It could be, do we get EV chargers in disadvantaged communities?
It could be climate change solutions. So it could be local.
But but it it is not done exclusively in the university.
This is the engaged research that we do. That's the distinction.
Thank you so much for your question. We have a quick question if we can stick to the temptation to the fastest.
I'm sure you. I'm Tim Softly, University of Birmingham, UK.
I'm sure you're aware that we have this research excellence framework in this country,
which impacts as being a major element for the last, the last two cycles.
And I wonder if in your report, you kind of look to the framework that we have for describing impacts and so on.
Thank you so much for your question. And in fact,
I think there is such synergy between what we're trying to articulate as it's done in the U.S. and certainly that
has been considered as as a premier exemplar because I do I do agree with you it is really research for impact,
as was described by Mark yesterday. Thank you.