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It was a prestigious position, but Kelly was miserable. His job was not to develop ambitious projects, but rather to see to it that superstar researchers relocating to the new campus were kept happy, while also making sure the university adhered to regulations, processed animal testing paperwork, and complied with institutional review board requirements. Rather than fade into retirement, he wanted to do something dramatic. By 2004, he decided to resign and sail the world.
His plan was to begin with a trial run to La Paz, Mexico, while he wrapped up his career at UCSF. Unexpectedly, however, UCSF Chancellor Mike Bishop asked him to take the top spot at QB3. He set sail and he made it not quite as far as Acapulco before he grew bored with the fellow sailors he met in harbors. “You can only talk about sump pumps for a certain amount of time before your eyes glaze over,” he says.
Kelly came back to accept the challenge of QB3, where the appeal was both the excitement of the science behind the project and the unstructured nature of the opportunity. The institute existed only virtually at that point, and there was no cohesive bond that tied its parts together. “I wasn’t coming in to make the trains run, or do something where I’d just be carrying on a tradition,” he says.
Christopher Thomas Scott, who served as an assistant vice chancellor at UCSF, says the happiest he’s seen Kelly is when he’s at the helm of his boat with the sails full of wind. “QB3 is kind of his boat and he’s having a great time with it because he can take it where he wants,” says Scott, now director of Stanford University’s Program on Stem Cells in Society. “That’s different than being the No. 2 person where you are in charge of thousands of other people’s boats. It’s the difference between being the harbor master and the captain.”
At QB3, Kelly and his team have been building an entire ecosystem designed to link disparate researchers on QB3’s three campuses, provide sources of funding for translational research, fuel entrepreneurship, and carry discoveries from the lab to the marketplace. The first piece of that came with the establishment of “knowledge brokers,” who now exist at each of QB3’s facilities. Their role is to interview faculty to learn about their research interests, as well as their interest in working with industry, and to serve as a point of contact for potential industrial partners in search of specific expertise within the university.
“This kind of atmosphere didn’t exist at UCSF,” says Marc Schuman, clinical director for QB3. “It’s been extremely frustrating before now. There hasn’t been an administrative unit or any kind of unit that has had this philosophy. If a company was interested in doing this kind of thing, where would they go? They could go to the chairman of a clinical department, or a basic department, and often that doesn’t work out.”
These knowledge brokers also have served to match researchers on the three campuses with projects that might not otherwise materialize. This has included putting a bioengineer at UC Berkeley in touch with a UCSF clinician to help identify possible applications for a handheld device that can quickly and inexpensively isolate circulating tumor cells. It has also meant connecting a UC Santa Cruz computer scientist, who develops algorithms to analyze genomic data, with breast cancer researchers at UCSF hoping to develop new diagnostic tools to determine for each specific patient the best course of therapy based on genetics and tumor types.
As the institute came to understand the difficulties industry had in working with the university, it sought to lower existing barriers. When a company wants to work with academic researchers, the process of hammering out agreements can take eight months to a year, during which time industry partners can lose interest or turn elsewhere. QB3’s solution has been to craft master agreements with industry partners that are interested in ongoing collaborations with university researchers. These agreements allow for new projects to be conducted under the terms of the master agreements without involving a battery of attorneys. This can typically cut to about six weeks the time it takes to put a project in motion.
May 16, 2008
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-the_smiling_heretic.html
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