Research group reaps dividends

Alliance's investments in state's top science institutions result in returns, president says

Web posted October 12, 2000

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By Lee Shearer
Morris News Service

The state's multimillion-dollar investment in high-tech science is beginning to pay off, Georgia Research Alliance President Michael Cassidy told a University of Georgia audience Tuesday.

Mr. Cassidy spoke at the university's New Media Institute, a new unit that is a beneficiary of about $300,000 worth of GRA-funded equipment - a small fraction of about $350 million the 10-year-old state agency has spent in the state's top six research institutions in the past decade.

About 80 percent of the money is tax money, and about $60 million is corporate grants, according to Mr. Cassidy.

The idea is simply to bring top researchers together with the business community, in the hope that the collaboration will lead to economic development and jobs, he said.

The money has gone into three carefully targeted areas - environmental technology, advanced telecommunications and biotechnology, he said.

The six research universities are the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, Georgia Southern University, Emory University and Clark-Atlanta University.

``We are an economic development agency,'' Mr. Cassidy said. ``We just happen to do it in a different way.''

Much of the money has gone to recruit and hire 37 ``eminent scholars'' at the six schools. For each one of the scholars, GRA puts up half of a $1.5 million endowment, then invests millions more in equipping the researchers' laboratories.

Measuring the impact of the research alliance isn't a clear-cut process, Mr. Cassidy said.

One way is by measuring the patent and royalty income received by the major research institutions, which is on ``a steep growth curve,'' he said.

Royalty income at University of Georgia, negligible a year ago, was $3.7 million in the most recent fiscal year, according to university research foundation records.

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