Partnering with industry can transform the impact of research

I suspect that every scientist hopes their work will have a positive impact on the world. I’ve interviewed dozens of scientists for my books and career workshops, and most can talk at length about their desire to make the world a better place. Many can even describe strategic career pivots they’ve made to increase the impact of their work.

Cather Simpson, professor of physics and chemistry at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, is one such scientist. After several career pivots, she discovered that working with industry allows her to make a bigger impact than she ever imagined.

Simpson began her career studying to be a physician, but then started a PhD program in medical research before switching to another in physical chemistry, and then landing her first academic position as a chemistry professor. After achieving tenure at Case Western University with a research program based on femtosecond laser spectroscopy, she accepted her current position at the University of Auckland.

The different ways research is financed in New Zealand compared to the US prompted her to explore industry collaboration to fund equipment for her new lab.  She suspected that femtosecond laser pulses might be useful for solving many problems in industry. “I figured that we were really good at controlling light and making electronics and instrumentation talk to one another, so we ought to be able to find out what problems needed to be solved outside of the research lab,” Simpson told me. “That’s how I started working with industry.”

The first project she tackled was for a company called NextWindow to help them develop an optical touch screen. The general concept involved a sheet of glass with detectors around the edges and infrared emitters in the corners. The sensors would detect the shadow of a finger on the glass and triangulate its position. The company wanted to be able to allow multi-touch sensing, but the results they were getting were too inconsistent for a commercial product.

Simpson and her team quickly designed an optical widget that fit into NextWindow’s device, solved the problem, and ended up being used in the manufactured product. It was a great initial success for the Simpson group and resulted in multiple follow-on contracts.

Industry exposure turned out to be a great benefit for her students, as several had the opportunity to work closely with the lab’s corporate partners. A partnership like Simpson’s and NextWindow’s can be excellent career preparation, as the majority of STEM graduate students will build careers in industry. A master’s or PhD graduate who has a prior understanding of how industry functions is a much better candidate for corporate positions of influence than a graduate with only academic research experience.

In addition to extra funding and valuable career preparation for her students, working with industry helped Simpson and her group see a path to making a bigger impact than they’d imagined. She says that she initially thought of industry collaboration as nothing more than a way to fund her “basic-science habit.” But, after a few years, she realized that industry projects were having a powerful positive impact of their own.

Simpson told me the story about when her thinking on industry collaboration shifted. Her team had received a grant from Intuitive Surgical to study the application of femtosecond pulses in bone surgery. She was listening to presentations in a symposium where other Intuitive Surgical grant recipients were describing results of exciting science directed toward solving problems in clinical settings. “This is so cool,” she thought to herself. “We are doing something that might help people in only three years or so.”

It was the moment when she began to appreciate the full value of her work. “I realized that [research] impact isn’t just about papers or talks that underpin tomorrow’s innovations. Impact can be practical, directed research and development to solve a ‘today’ problem.”

What has made Simpson’s lab successful is that its members listen to the problems companies have and then suggest ways in which they can help. Sometimes the solutions proffered don’t require exotic laser pulses but nonetheless help to build relationships that might lead to further collaboration.

Simpson’s work with industry has helped her group develop into an impressive organization called the Photon Factory, a research facility that conducts fundamental research on light-matter interactions, solves a wide variety of problems for industry, and has spun out three startup companies. She stepped down as director in 2018.

To achieve that kind of growth, Simpson had to figure out how to publicize her group to the companies they might help. “I went out and talked to a lot of people, but I didn’t do it the way most people in academia think of talking to people.” Simpson says rather than just the science her group pursued, she talked about the problems they could solve.

The Intuitive Surgical project, for example, came about because of a panel discussion in which she made an offhand comment that femtosecond laser pulses can cut materials without generating heat. The company’s Vice President of Strategy, Catherine Mohr, was sitting in the audience and contacted Simpson to learn more. There have been many similar instances, Simpson says. “You throw out a mesh and you don’t know who will connect.”

Simpson and her team have built a great reputation as an organization that uses state-of-the-art laser photonics technology to answer questions for industry. Their approach to building the Photon Factory parallels what I teach in my workshops for academic researchers who want to pursue industry collaboration. I suggest thinking of the research group like a small company, with a clear vision about who they want to work with, what problems they want to solve, and how to publicize the value they provide. The Photon Factory even has a marketing tagline: “Using exotic laser pulses to solve problems for industry.”

Simpson has set a great example for other academics. “ [My first industry project] completely changed the way I thought about the impact I could have with my work. I’d started my career imagining that success might be defined as having my discoveries appear in a physical chemistry textbook in 15 years, and yet here we were solving problems that are making a big difference today.”

That’s an impact legacy that most scientists would be very happy with.

David Giltner teaches scientists about the private sector so they can become employees, entrepreneurs, or academic collaborators. Learn more at TurningScience.com

Simpson’s story appears in Giltner’s Shaping the World: The Vital Role of Scientists in Industry, from SPIE Press. Learn more at ShapingTheWorld.tech.