"Reflections on My Early Involvement with CCR" by Alvin L. Kwiram

Some of us in the academy felt that there had been an unnatural gulf between the universities and industry which limited our capacity to innovate and compete effectively. Although the graduates of the universities went to work for industry and industry did support some research at universities, there was a barely submerged tension between the two camps. Industry often referred to faculty as knee-jerk defenders of the ivory tower who had little appreciation of the challenges facing industry, and academics often viewed their industry colleagues with serious reservations (often for the short term emphasis on the quarterly results and the declining level of support for strategic research). This state of affairs led to some wringing of hands but not much action.

 

Fortunately, there was one exception. Mac Pruitt at Dow had a vision that universities and industry should and could cooperate in a more effective manner, and that what was needed was a context in which to get acquainted, share information and foster collaborations. With his colleagues at Dow he contacted other industry research leaders and proposed a meeting in Midland, Michigan to bring together academics, industry and government leaders with an interest in the health of the research enterprise and the chemical industry.

 

That first meeting was an interesting sociological event. Whereas on the surface the behavior in general was civil and pleasant, there were barely submerged tensions that bubbled up in “safe conversations”. Paul Gassman, who was not known for subtlety, took it upon himself to raise the issue head-on at one of the sessions. He basically expressed in fairly bald terms the concerns that many academics felt about the attitudes in industry toward the universities. This led to a somewhat tense exchange among the participants but it launched a serious conversation about the issues. During the remaining time of that first meeting, some rather frank conversations were held, concerns expressed, and positions explained. Although the outcome was not all sweetness and light, the participants did agree that the exchange had been useful, that further conversations could be productive and that a formal structure of some kind that would institutionalize such conversations would be desirable. That was the birth of CCR. Mac Pruitt was invested by acclamation with the responsibility of convening the first official meeting the following year. Thus began a fruitful collaboration and dialog between the academy, government and industry. CCR was, to the best of my knowledge, the first serious effort to create an organization of this type that brought together the university and industry communities. (I don’t know whether the semiconductor industry had something similar at that time but I was not aware of it.)

 

I attended that first meeting in Midland because I had been concerned that the gulf between universities and industry was counterproductive and contrary to the nation’s interest. My sense was that, despite their distinctly different missions, the gulf separating the parties was perpetuated by myth, rumor and ignorance rather than by any intrinsic conflict between these parties. I was confident that if universities and industries cooperated in meaningful ways, we could see dramatic innovations that would make US industry more competitive which in turn would be good for the economy and ultimately the universities. When I learned about Mac’s proposed meeting I immediately signed up. 

 

I took one further fateful step. I felt that the CCR meeting this was a unique opportunity to initiate a conversation between the chemistry chairs from the leading departments because many of them would participate. I communicated with Mac after that first meeting and proposed that an hour be set aside in the 1980 meeting for such a gathering to occur. He readily agreed and arranged for a time. It was further agreed that the chairs of chemical engineering departments should meet separately. At that first meeting of Chemistry chairs I invited the participants to express their views on the challenges facing their departments, to express their thoughts about how we could be more effective in developing collaborations with industry and to explore similar questions having to do with graduate education. (I even took a survey.) I had been doing a faculty salary survey for a year or two (starting in 1978) involving some 50 leading chemistry departments and so already had some contacts with a number of these colleagues. The chairs meeting was considered valuable and a large majority of the participants urged us to repeat the session at the next annual meeting. That was the beginning of the annual chair’s meetings. It continues to represent the only really occasion at which the chairs of the major chemistry and chemical engineering departments ever get together as a group to compare notes and commiserate.

 

However, probably because of my activism in arranging for that initial meeting, the next thing I knew is that Mac pulled me aside and asked whether I would be willing to serve on the Founding Board as one of the academic representatives. Obviously, I agreed to do so. The members of the Founding Board were Pruitt (Dow), Galloway (Stauffer), Heininger (Monsanto), Kice (Texas Tech), King (UC Berkeley), Kwiram (Washington), Lovett (Air Products), Mathis (Exxon), Risen (Brown), Smith (MIT) and Thomas (Eastman Kodak). I was immediately assigned a number of tasks including the chairmanship of the University-Industry Interaction Committee.  

 

Those initial years were a period of intense activity in which much of the focus was on the development of policies for CCR, conceptualizing the role CCR was to play, and developing the structure for the organization. One of my duties was to formulate a framework that would provide for the distribution of funds from industry dues to fund research at universities. The feeling at the time (and one of the contentious issues in the first meeting) was that universities would not participate in the venture if there was “nothing” (read “dollars”) in it for them! The U-I Interaction Committee worked out the principles for the Chemical Industry Research Fund (CIRF) which later became the Chemical Science and Engineering Fund (CSEF). What we established in those first years was the dues structure for industry which netted roughly a million dollars per year which paid for the operations of the organization. About half that amount was used to fund awards to universities. The awards made to universities were based on PhD production levels. Although eventually that award program declined in funding level and eventually disappeared, the consensus in the early days was that it was the essential “glue” that held the organization together until trust and friendships and genuine collaborations could be established.

 

We also carried out a survey of all chemistry and chemical engineering departments to identify for the first time the level of industry funding to those departments. The following year I was chosen to serve as the first academic chair of CCR to succeed Mac Pruitt. 

 

Another major concern was how to engage with government agencies in an effective manner. Industry colleagues played a significant role in advocating for increased funding for university research. This was a very significant step because their voice had credibility at the agencies and in Congress because the advocacy was not the normal “self-serving” supplication by academics to increase their own funding streams.

 

The Pimentel Report had been under development during the early days of CCR. It finally was published in 1984. During my time as chair (1982-3), I proposed that a similar report should also be developed for chemical engineering. This idea was recommended to the National Academy principals, and in time the Amundson committee was appointed

 

This was also a time of active concern about intellectual property. One of the key players in that movement was Howard Bremer from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) associated with the University of Wisconsin. The Bayh-Dole Act had just been enacted by Congress in 1980 (after nearly twenty years of pushing for more university control of intellectual property – see http://www.warf.org/about/index.jsp?cid=26&scid=35) which for the first time gave universities the right (and obligation) to identify, protect, and develop intellectual property that was derived from federally funded research. CCR played an important role in the following years in providing a sounding board and a context in which to carry on such conversations between universities and industry and to refine the strategies for dealing with this new reality. The development of this sea change in university policies and practices would have been much more difficult without the conversations with industry colleagues who were now friendly co-conspirators rather than members of the opposition.

 

My own role in this process provides an excellent example of how CCR was a critical player in leading to a productive outcome. Already in the late 70s as chair of Chemistry, I had been trying to find a way to engage more effectively with industry, and had been exploring the idea of an industrial affiliates program or some research focus for a university-industry consortium. Professor Bruce Kowalski at the University of Washington responded to my questions about how to do this with an idea that struck me as seminal – what about a center for process analytical chemistry. The idea was that with the recent appearance of low-cost microprocessors and related developments in sensors and chemometrics, the time was ripe to develop tools so that industry could monitor processes on-line in real time rather than sending samples to an analytical lab and waiting for days for the results (during which time hundreds of thousands of dollars worth or product could be off spec and destined for second and third tier pricing).  This seemed like an excellent vehicle to foster such interactions in a more focused and structured manner, and this idea struck me as having just the right kind of focus. All we had to do is to communicate with prospective industry partners and they would no doubt flock to our doorstep to take advantage of this brilliant new strategy that could have such a major impact on their bottom line. 

 

Unfortunately, our initial inquiries to selected companies for an exploratory meeting were met with deafening silence. That struck me as completely orthogonal to the vision represented by CCR. In an act of desperation, I personally called some of my fellow CCR Board members and tried to lay a guilt trip on them. If CCR was worth anything other than just an annual get together, then it at least had to be a venue for exploring these kinds of ideas. “Do me a personal favor, and just come out to Seattle for one meeting to hear about this idea.” No doubt to most of the industry members Seattle seemed rather remote both in terms of physical distance as well as any concentration of chemical industry (after all it was way out there on the west coast), but they were kind and humored me with their commitment to come. As I recall those that attended that first meeting were representatives from DuPont, Dow, Exxon, Monsanto, Eastman Kodak and Proctor and Gamble. I am happy to report that once they heard the “process analytical chemistry” concept elaborated by Bruce (who by the way, won the Mac Pruitt Award in 1988), every one of them signed up to be a founding member of CPAC (at $25K per year). 

 

CPAC celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2007, and is still going strong. Several of the founding members are still active in the program despite mergers, buyouts, and the decline of strategic research in many of the companies. It is also generally conceded by the industry representatives (membership has numbered between 30-45 annually over the years) that CPAC has had a profound impact on the way process analysis and control is managed in industry.

 

CCR can take considerable credit for having created an atmosphere that made this kind of collaboration between universities and industry possible. It fostered the relationships that allowed it to come to reality. (CPAC was successful in winning one of the very early NSF IUCRCs awards and maintained some connection with that program for over a dozen years even though grants were not supposed to go beyond five years. But Alex Schwartzkopf always found a creative way to provide a bit more funding because of the enthusiastic support of CPAC by industry. It is unfortunate that NSF never saw fit to increase the funding for the IUCRC program which not only had such a positive impact on U-I relationships but also gave rise to significant technology innovations in many sectors of the chemical industry.

 

I remember with fondness a number of (other) industry leaders from that era (besides Mac) including Al Heininger, Bob Lovett, Jim Mathis, Chuck Galloway, Jim Porter, Klaus Mai, Ted Tabor, Jim McEvoy among others, as well as academic colleagues such as Jud King, Jack Kinsinger, Bill Risen, John Kice and government representatives. These formed a corps of leaders in the chemical sciences universe which provided excellent sounding boards, sage counsel, and helpful mentoring that has been of value over my entire career. I count CCR as one of the more creative and productive innovations in science management in my experience. Mac Pruitt deserves to be remembered and honored periodically for his vision.