Hopkins maintained its three-decade-long dominance of research and development spending this year, keeping its number one rank in scientific, medical and engineering research expenditures.
Over $1.4 billion were spent on research and development in the year 2005, over $1.27 billion of which was federally funded.
Hopkins tops the National Science Foundation rankings as the only university to cross the $1 billion brink in total research expenditures, followed by the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which spent $809 million and $798 million respectively.
Although these numbers are of tremendous importance to the success of the University, President William Brody would like the public to remember the huge impact that these monies will have on Maryland's state economy.
"Discoveries that expand knowledge, improve our world and help people are the primary focus of the medical, scientific and engineering research we do at Johns Hopkins. But there's a side effect of this research spending that should never be forgotten: Maryland and spend much of it here, and that's a key to the strength of the state's economy," Brody said.
Hopkins received significantly more federal research dollars than any other university in 2005, bypassing the second-ranked school, the University of Washington, which received just over $606 million.
According to Wes Blakeslee, the director of the Office of Technology Transfer, the primitive research development executed by leading Hopkins faculty typically requires $50-100 million over a span of five to seven years.
Even so, Hopkins ranked just fourth in the U.S. for patents awarded to public and private universities in the nation in the year 2004, beating Stanford University (ranked fifth), Washington University in St. Louis (sixth), and the University of Pennsylvania (15th).
However, Hopkins is distinguished in its research due to the institution's emphasis on early biomedical research. This molecular emphasis stifles Hopkins in the arena of technology transfer and commercialization. Although Hopkins receives over $1 billion for research from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the Department of Defense, the institution garners a mere $5 million in profit for its inventions. Stanford University, on the other hand, receives over $10 million in royalties due to its particular emphasis on the physical sciences. This advanced area of study is more closely linked to the world of inventions coveted by commercial entrepreneurs.
Blakeslee boldly underlines the fact that one of Hopkins' slogans is "Knowledge for the World." Altruism is no small part of research initiatives undertaken at Hopkins. As a non-profit organization, Hopkins chooses to use large portion of its astronomical federal funding to to administer free malaria medicine. The university chooses to invest in underdeveloped countries, fully aware of the lack of monetary revenue. Blakeslee emphasizes that the heavy investment in molecular biology is intended to benefit the future of the world, not to bring money back to the University.
Even so, the Office of Technology Transfer does work to acquire revenue for the institution. Blakeslee believes that Hopkins is in need of a "blockbuster hit" in terms of inventions. According to Katherine Ku, the director of Stanford University's Office of Technology Licensing, a large portion of Stanford's income in 2006 came from the single licensing of Functional Antibiotics. The University of Florida's discovery of Taxol also launched them ahead in revenues.
According to the Bayh-Dole Act, Hopkins is able "to take title to inventions conceived or reduced to practice in the performance of a federal grant, contract, or cooperative agreement. In exchange for this right to take title, the institution is required to develop comprehensive intellectual property policies, disclose new inventions, attempt to license those inventions, and share license income with inventors."
Thus, the University has the responsibility to seek commercial enterprises such as Pfizer. This proves difficult because commercial entities are wary of investing large amounts of resources into early biomolecular developments such as drug therapies because further technological developments are required. Although patents of the University protect the company's enterprise from other competitors, this field of research proves to be less attractive.
Blakeslee reveals that many faculty members have opted out of his or her 30 percent of monetary gain from the revenues of individual inventions in order to invest in further research and the community. Generally, the faculty is very supportive of the Knowledge for the World campaign, which focuses on "the key elements, the critical pieces of infrastructure, that will enable our faculty, our researchers, our clinicians, our students and our graduates to attack the challenges and embrace the opportunities of a new world."
-- Additional reporting by
Mitra Heshmati
