Reg Kelly, the director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences or QB3, thinks even though the Obama Administration’s stimulus package promises to direct billions of dollars into research, it is critical to change the way universities engage with the private sector to achieve the full benefit of such public investment in basic research. At a recent conference held by BayBio, the Northern California biotechnology industry association, Kelly spoke about some of the efforts underway at QB3 to interact differently with industry in the hopes of speeding the translation of discoveries to products that can benefit both the patients and the economy. Following his keynote address, we spoke to Kelly about the changing role of the university, why technology transfer alone is inadequate for delivering university discoveries to the public, and the need to create incentives to drive academics to focus on work that benefits the public good.