Ties that bind

President Harris Pastides helped cut the ribbon on the University’s newest
residence hall, the 537-bed Honors Residence, which opened this fall on the site of the former Towers, the campus’ first high-rise dorms. Tens of thousands of students lived in the Towers, which were built in 1958 and demolished in late 2006 to make way for the new residence hall. At the front entrance to the new Honors Residence is a display that features a backdrop of the stylized cinder blocks that once formed the outer shell of the Towers.

From the Top
Innovista, the University’s research campus, has been in the news a lot in the past few months, and it sounds like the project isn’t getting off the ground. What’s gone wrong?

Pastides: From the top

The University president answers your questions on the future of Carolina.

 

The private research building aspect of Innovista has experienced delay, some due to the extremely tight financial market that’s stifled commercial
development and some of it, frankly, because we could have done better. I think we’ve learned from our mistakes, and we’re assembling an experienced advisory committee to help plot a course for the future.

Let me add that there is a lot that’s going right with Innovista. Ultimately, Innovista is about creating knowledge that translates into jobs, and that’s already happening.

How does it work? Our faculty have been very successful in competing for research grants in the sciences, medicine, engineering, public health, and so on, and those projects often lead to invention disclosures. Invention disclosures are basically nuggets of new knowledge—a process or discovery that advances the body of research in a given field.

Carolina’s Office of Intellectual Property works closely with our scientists and with legal and business counsel to manage that information. Some of it is patented for further protection; some of it is licensed to businesses that want to pay us for the right to use that information.

In the past three years, our scientists have filed 209 invention disclosures; we’ve obtained 19 patents and 44 licenses; and the revenue from licensed technology averages several hundred thousand dollars every year.

What’s really exciting, though, is when discoveries made in our laboratories turn into spin-off companies. Carolina ranks in the top 20 in start-up company creation among U.S. public research universities. Many of our start-ups begin in the USC/Columbia Technology Incubator where 23 companies have graduated so far, creating 668 jobs with average salaries of $63,450.

All of that research and start-up company activity is part of Innovista, and it’s steadily increasing. Innovista’s buildings are moving forward, too. The first one, the Arnold School of Public Health Research Center, is filled with productive research labs; lab and office space in Discovery I and Horizon I is being completed.

The next piece will be to build Horizon II and, later, Discovery II—the research buildings that will house private industry. Things are
moving in the right direction.

Have a question for President Pastides?
Send it to carolinian@sc.edu