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The University’s strategic plan, “Excellence in a Climate of Change,” underscores the institution’s commitment to synergistic and innovative couplings of research and undergraduate education.
The plan, which “arises from the vision of a truly
distinguished and unique institution of higher education, one that
combines an international reputation for research, scholarship and
creative endeavor with the best undergraduate programs available
at any public university,” calls for and commits resources
to achieve a doubling of sponsored research activity over the next
five years. Quantifiable evidence affords strong support for the
claim that the research environment at Binghamton is already vital
and growing. In the past decade, sponsored research activity more
than doubled. This past year alone, the University posted a 24 percent
increase in sponsored research awards.
Meanwhile, the University has also seen significant growth in technology
transfer activity. With its posting of a 53 percent increase in
licensing income this past fiscal year, the University staked its
claim as second in this category in the entire 64 campus State University
of New York (SUNY) system.
Notably, Binghamton was also the only SUNY institution to post an increase in licensing income on the year, with the other leading universities seeing declines of from five to 80 percent. University research has also spawned nine new start-up companies, and last year led to a 45 percent increase in invention disclosures and to the filing of 20 patent applications, up from just eight the year prior.
The main significance of these numbers, said Eugene Krentsel, director of technology transfer and innovation partnerships, is not necessarily in the absolute numbers, but in the trends they represent. In a period of generally flat federal research funding, and when other SUNY schools are seeing a dramatic waning in the creation of new knowledge and its transfer to the marketplace, Binghamton is clearly bucking the trend. During the past several years, New York State has recognized and lent significant support to the University’s successful blending of research and undergraduate excellence. The University received $15 million in state funds to renovate its Innovative Technologies Complex, $21 million to design and build a University Downtown Center and $66 million for the design and construction of a new science and engineering research building. The University has also received federal earmarks totaling about $11 million to support ongoing research projects and won a national competition leading to its selection by the United States Display Consortium as a Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing. That move was accompanied by the award of more than $13 million in first-generation roll-to-roll (R2R) electronics manufacturing equipment, establishing Binghamton as home to the world’s first prototype manufacturing and test bed line.
Electronics is a major strength at Binghamton, and one the University has leveraged across the disciplines, culminating most recently with the designation of its Small Scale Systems Integration and Packaging program as a New York state Center of Excellence.
But research at the 887-acre campus spans the disciplines and more
and more often draws upon the expertise of faculty from across the
disciplines to form unique research teams addressing urgent world
problems.
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of some of today’s
most pressing questions — questions involving human genomics,
materials science, cell biology, bioengineering and biomedicine —
these cross-disciplinary connections regularly develop into permanent
working relationships.
Binghamton faculty have formalized these relationships through the
Center of Excellence, a host of organized
research centers and three institutes for advanced studies.
These organizations, which offer equipment and expertise that may be accessed by faculty across the disciplines and by members of the community who need specialized services, are one of the University’s most important links to larger local, regional and global communities.
Ultimately, however, the University’s research success depends on the contributions and commitment of individual faculty. And there, the game is being raised as well.
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