Universities spend billions of {dollars} on analysis, and the method of remodeling that work into items and providers for the general public is extra essential than ever.
ASU Professor Donald Siegel is a world professional in the sphere of technology transfer — the advanced, multifaceted motion of discoveries and mental property from universities or federal labs to the private and non-private sectors. The aim is to take fundamental analysis and create new merchandise to profit the economic system and society.
Siegel, an economist and Foundation Professor of public coverage and administration in the School of Public Affairs, mentioned that Arizona State University has been instrumental in his success, thanks to interdisciplinary collaboration and an embrace of entrepreneurship — two hallmarks at ASU.
Siegel is so glorious in his area that he has been named certainly one of four ASU Regents Professors for 2026 — the best faculty honor, which is achieved by solely 3% of faculty members.
“I’m really excited about the Regents Professor because it confirms the importance of the topics I’ve done research on — technology transfer and corporate social responsibility,” mentioned Siegel, who served as director of the School of Public Affairs from 2017 to 2022.
“Those were not considered mainstream when I was in grad school. Colleagues came to me and said, ‘What kind of weird topics are you working on?’”
Siegel was in innovation — a topic that was being pioneered in economics in the Nineteen Eighties.
“Anyone who studies innovation ultimately studies two things: universities, because they are a major source of innovation, and entrepreneurship, which is a natural extension of innovation.”
Siegel was at ASU from 1994 to 2000 and returned in 2017. In the Nineties, he was analyzing information, publishing papers “and doing all the kinds of esoteric studies that economists do,” largely based mostly on information provided by the federal government.
He had been getting help from the Sloan Foundation, which at the moment urged economists to go into the sphere, do qualitative analysis and acquire their very own information.
“That’s not what economists did — they were not trained in qualitative research,” Siegel mentioned.
Unfamiliar with area interviewing, he determined to accomplice with David Waldman, a administration professional who’s now the Dean’s Council Distinguished Professor of Management in the W. P. Carey School of Business, on a analysis venture to clarify why some universities had higher success in transferring their improvements to {the marketplace}.
They interviewed scientists, college directors, firm executives and entrepreneurs. And it was eye-opening.
“We found out a lot of things that we couldn’t model statistically,” he mentioned.
“I’m an economist, so I think that people respond to incentives. If you pay people more, it will make them more likely to engage in technology transfer. It’s about money and rewards, is what I thought.
“But when I went out into the field, I realized it was much more complicated. It wasn’t just money, it was the culture of the organization, how the faculty member is treated by the university. Do they perceive that they’re being treated fairly?
“It was about a whole series of workplace issues that really matter.”
University tech is in every single place
All of the applied sciences which have remodeled our lives — computer systems, the web, prescribed drugs, power, AI — began at universities or federal labs, Siegel mentioned.
The web was a Department of Defense thought to see if computer systems might community in the occasion of a nuclear catastrophe.
Another important instance comes from the pandemic, when the vaccines had been quickly developed thanks to partnerships between universities and pharmaceutical firms, he mentioned.
“It’s a timely and important issue,” he mentioned.
“A lot of people are questioning the value of university research right now. Why should the federal government be funding this research? What does the taxpayer get out of it?”
Siegel is working with Maribel Guerrero, affiliate professor of public coverage and administration in the School of Public Affairs, on making an attempt to quantify the social worth of analysis at universities.
In 2019, Siegel was requested by the primary Trump administration to co-chair a committee for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to learn how to maximize improvements created in the federally funded nationwide labs. That work produced a number of suggestions to assist velocity the method of changing analysis outcomes into items and providers for Americans.
Siegel has continued collaborating with Waldman, and the 2 are co-executive administrators of the Global Center for Technology Transfer, a premier analysis establishment created in 2022. The heart, based mostly at Thunderbird School of Global Management, takes a multidisciplinary method. The 5 senior teachers research the personal sector, universities and federal labs at a number of ranges — together with particular person, group, regional and nationwide.
With their delicate analysis, it’s troublesome to get entry to federal labs, Siegel mentioned, however the Global Center for Technology Transfer has accomplished it, beginning ongoing research into extra environment friendly technology transfer.
Ahead of the curve
Siegel mentioned that ASU’s emphasis on participating faculty in technology transfer is rare amongst universities.
“One of the biggest challenges to efficient technology transfer is the nature of academia,” he mentioned.
“It’s a very conservative profession, and promotion and tenure guidelines haven’t changed much. You should be rewarded for patenting, starting a company or working toward commercialization of your innovations.
“ASU has one of the most sophisticated and well-developed innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems in any university in the world. ASU originally focused on patenting and licensing, and now it’s become much more about entrepreneurship and trying to help startups emerge and grow.”