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The Role of Major Scientific
Facilities in Public-Private Partnerships
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Charles V. Shank, Director
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
XIV IASP World Conference On Science And Technology Parks
June 16-19, 1997
Trieste, Italy
Abstract: This paper addresses the value of
partnerships between this industrial user community and national laboratories that host
major research facilities. Public-private partnerships built on powerful scientific
facilities are important to both the scientific and business communities. Today we are
seeing industrial corporations move away from having their own central laboratories and
instead are tightly focusing research on near-term business needs. Recognizing the need to
make national research facilities available to industry, university and government
agencies, policies have been developed to make these facilities broadly available and
encourage research partnerships. The Advanced Light Source, the latest generation
synchrotron radiation that is an ultrabright source of soft x-rays is the centerpiece of
many collaborative efforts between Berkeley Lab and industry, including the Intel
Corporation and the IBM Corporation. This particular partnership exploits the unique
features of the Advanced Light Source to develop unparalleled analytic capabilities to
study super clean silicon wafers that will be needed for the next generation of integrated
circuits. Synchrotron radiation has also become the optimum technique for studying many
biological macromolecules of interest to the pharmaceutical industry, and has value to
many other industries. These examples serve to illustrate several principles for the
development of public-private partnerships, including how unique facilities at a federally
funded laboratory can create opportunities for successful collaborations, and may be
valued elements of a successful research park.
Forefront research
facilities are central to the theme of this Conference, that major scientific
installations or "science parks" are important to competitiveness and to
building collaborations. It is fitting that I am presenting this topic in Trieste, which
is home to the ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Source at the University of Trieste. In many ways
Berkeley and Trieste have a lot in common--we both have distinguished universities and
synchrotron light sources. At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is adjacent
to the University of California, Berkeley Campus, our Advanced Light Source is similar in
energy range to the machine here, and in both places they are the focus of a large user
community from other universities, industry and government. Both machines are
third-generation synchrotron light sources designed for high brightness. Their brightness
and coherence are attractive to scientists in companies that want to be at the forefront
in a number of industrial research fields.
This paper addresses the value of partnerships between this industrial user community
and national laboratories that host major research facilities. Public-private partnerships
built on powerful scientific facilities are important to both the scientific and business
communities. I also hope my remarks can help find common ground in the current debate
about the roles of public research organizations and private industry. In the United
States, some critics have stated that government-sponsored research activities can amount
to "corporate welfare". I am among those who believe that major research
facilities and the partnerships they catalyze are outstanding investments in the future.
Changing Research Environment
As many of you have undoubtedly noticed, a profound change is well underway in
corporate America and in Europe, in the way that scientific research is done in an
industrial setting. It is sometimes hard for a new generation of researchers in the United
States to imagine what it was like for me to begin my career at Bell Telephone
Laboratories in the late 1960's. Industrial laboratories like Bell Labs, IBM Research
Labs, Dupont, General Electric and others were making major contributions to fundamental
as well as applied physics. In fact, numerous Nobel Prizes were awarded to researchers at
Bell Labs and IBM recognizing the accomplishments of these laboratories.
Today we are seeing something very different, as industrial corporations move away from
having their own central laboratories and instead are tightly focusing research on
near-term business needs. It is not hard to understand why corporations are reducing their
investments in their own central research laboratories--they just don't return a profit.
It has become the widely held-and largely accurate--view that it is hard for a single
company to capture the economic value of fundamental research with a long-time horizon. Of
course, "research parks" may offer one solution to these problem and they may
bring together a cluster of scientific resources of many organization in a common
geographical area. And clearly, the costly investments in research facilities such as at
the synchrotrons in Trieste and Berkeley can only be constructed in few locations, and
they must be operated through programs or policies that promote access to these scientific
facilities and promote partnerships that add significant value.
If individual corporations are not investing in fundamental research, is it possible
for a large geographic area or even a country to capture the value of these investments?
In fact, the developed countries have been in a good position to take advantage of almost
any innovation. Witness the explosion of the Internet in the United States, Europe and
Asia, following the development of the World Wide Web at the CERN high energy physics
laboratory. Who would have imagined such an outcome from a high energy physics laboratory?
Investment in research often has unexpected value in areas far afield from the initial
research direction.
Value from Federal Investments
Recognizing the need to make the fruits of innovation developed by federally funded
research institutions available, the federal government and the national laboratories have
established policies that allow, and encourage, the utilization of their research
facilities by industry, university and government agencies, in fact, the larger research
facilities are termed "national user facilities" and they are available to users
from throughout the world on the basis of scientific merit of the proposed research.
However, if research is proprietary and not published in the open literature, industry
must make the investment in equipment on the beamlines and support the operating costs. In
this way the industry comes to the table paying its share of the costs when the private
sector reaps clear benefits.
When American industry captures the value from the Federal investment in research, new
industries and new jobs are created. Some might see this work as a subsidy for big
business. The problem is that we have not come to a consensus on a set of organizing
principles that would form a basis for public-private partnerships. For starters, the term
"technology transfer," often applied to the intellectual benefits derived from
partnerships, is a complete misnomer that incorrectly describes the process of cooperative
research. Using the word "transfer" implies that something of value is being
taken from a government-funded technology storehouse and delivered to some private
company. In fact, it is a rare event that some piece of technology is developed in a
laboratory to the point that it has immediate commercial value. A better view is to think
of a "partnership" between a federally funded lab and an industry or consortium
of industries as a way to derive value from government funded research in an arrangement
that is mutually beneficial to both partners. Several contrasting examples of
public–private partnerships help draw some organizing principles.
The first example concerns a large company developing a novel software tool. I spoke to
an executive of this company which received a direct "funds-in" grant from a
government agency. The executive confided to me that the company would have done 70
percent of the work even if there had been no government money. It seems relatively
straightforward to see that a direct "funds-in" activity largely benefits the
share holders of an individual corporation at the expense of taxpayers, although in some
specific cases, where a technology is of such importance to a government mission, a case
can be made justifying the expenditure. The summary point here is that direct funding of
research performed by industry is inappropriate when the primary benefit is to a
stockholder. This is the research area where the term "corporate welfare" is
most likely to stick.
Partnerships at the Advanced Light Source
However in a true "partnership" both sides bring resources to the table. The
Advanced Light Source is the centerpiece of multiyear collaborative efforts between
Berkeley Lab and the Intel Corporation and the IBM Corporation. This partnership exploits
the unique features of the Advanced Light Source to develop unparalleled analytic
capabilities to study super clean silicon wafers that will be needed for the next
generation of integrated circuits. Its unequaled brightness and coherence make it possible
to focus to submicron dimensions to perform microchemical analysis.
The Semiconductor Industry Association Roadmap explicitly spells out the industry's
needs for high quality, defect-free, extremely clean wafers. The industry sees that it
will require wafers to be defect and contaminant free on a scale of 107
atoms/cm2. This will be a major challenge to achieve, let alone to have the
means for detecting such a tiny amount of contamination.
By performing chemical analysis of defects and contaminants it is possible to establish
their origin in the fabrication process. For such analyses, traditional laboratory
instrumentation is severely limited; progress depends on new approaches, including
spectromicroscopy. For particle analysis, the research effort will acquire chemical
information by x-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) analysis and by
energy-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ESCA), using zone-plate focused beams as
narrow as 50 nanometers to scan the samples. In addition to zone plate focusing, the
effort will use x-ray photoemission microscopy (X-PEEM) to give full-field absorption
information at submicrometer resolution.
Intel is bringing several million dollars to the partnership for investment at Berkeley
Lab for the fabrication of beam line components and the development of x-ray optics for
scanning large semiconductor wafers. Intel also brings an expertise in wafer handling that
wafers that complements our expertise in x-ray optics design.
This project stands to benefit the Intel Corporation, the semiconductor industry and
the Department of Energy. The Berkeley Lab will gain new knowledge of industrial surface
characterization techniques which will be of benefit as they are applied to other complex
materials of interest to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Synchrotron radiation has also become the optimum technique for studying many
biological macromolecules of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. The technique of
x-ray crystallography allows for the three dimensional study of protein molecules,
enabling the development of designer drugs that target the active sites of disease agents
or biologically active molecules. Two biotechnology companies are now in partnership with
Berkeley to create the Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (MCF) at the ALS and
construction has begun of a multipole wiggler, beamline and experimental station to
provide hard x-rays for diffraction studies of biological molecules and molecular
complexes. A permanent magnet, 38-pole wiggler will be used to generate highly brilliant
hard x-rays, and a novel beamline optical arrangement has been designed which will
ultimately serve three user experimental stations. One and a half million dollars is being
advance by Roche Bioscience, Amgen, and the University of California at Berkeley to
construct this facility.
Conclusions
The summary point here is that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had a unique
instrument (ALS) which formed the basis of the collaboration that benefited both our
industrial partners and our public sponsors. The discussion was intended to form the basis
for laying out principles which might be used to anchor public-private partnerships. The
principles that emerge are:
1. Direct federal funding of research and development in industry that primarily
benefits the stockholder is likely to be inappropriate.
2. Federal investments in public-private partnerships should have clear benefit for
both the government and industry.
3. Unique knowledge in a federally funded research facility can form the basis for a
successful collaboration.
4. Unique facilities at a federally funded laboratory can create opportunities for
successful collaborations.
5. Public-private partnerships should be encouraged that create a public good as the
outcome.
Government supported research, like the light sources at Berkeley and Trieste, can
provide the "anchor" that is the center of a research park. No single
corporation has the resources or expertise to build and operate one of these light
sources, yet many could benefit. The other component of a model park would be the
proximity to a major research university--UC Berkeley and the University of Trieste come
to mind. Government, industry and academia would then be combining their unique strengths
for the benefit of the community at large.
Throughout the world, many nations have successfully developed stable mechanisms for
public-private partnerships, including those based upon a major research facility. These
nations stand to benefit by developing a consensus on how we derive value from the
enormous government investment in research and development. In my view, we have
established a record in the last five years which is sufficiently rich with diversity of
approaches to evaluate what works and what doesn't. I challenge us to advance the policies
to ensure that these and other collaborations can continue to flourish in the coming
decades.
Additional Information
Advanced Light Source
ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Source
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
U.S. Department of Energy