Dr K B Chandrasekhar Indian Science Congress-2008 Vishakhapattanam 7 th Jan 2008

1. Anna University - K B Chandrasekhar Innovation Ecosystem—Creating Economic Value from Scientific Research --A Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) initiative Dr K B Chandrasekhar Indian Science Congress-2008 Vishakhapattanam 7th Jan 2008

2. “….We will use public-private- partnerships for frontier areas of scientific and technological research…. ”Prime Minister Manmohan SinghKolkata, 11th July 2006.

3. Some well known problems of Research in India • Research institutions in India unable to attract and retain talents of the required quality and quantity. • Research out put from Indian labs rarely lead to commercialisation and revenue generation. • As research does not lead to revenue, it becomes the government’s responsibility to perennially keep funding it. • Given the market needs for trained man power, teaching takes total priority over research in our universities. • Institutional base of research in India is extremely narrow – serious research is limited to a few ‘elite’ places. Creating economic value from scientific research can help address some of these issues.

4. The Innovation Ecosystem Creating economic value from scientific research needs an InnovationEcosystem having three nodes -- • Node-1: Inspire/Invest – an entity (company) with a vision and mandate to inspire and invest in individuals and institutions. • Node-2: Invent/Innovate – an entity (institute) to carry out quality scientific and technological research. • Node-3: Incubate/Market – an entity (company) to convert research out put to products and services of economic and social value. The economic gains are fed back into the ecosystem to make it stable, sustainable and growing. We have created such an ecosystem in Chennai in the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) mode

5. Node-1: KBCRF Pvt. Ltd Node-2: AU-KBC Research Centre Node-3: Svapas Innovations Pvt. Ltd. The Innovation Ecosystem of KBC • Equipped to fund R&D and incubation Centres • Private, Non profit • Joint owner of IP, Right of 1st refusal 1.Inspire/Invest – KBCRF 3.Incubate- SVAPAS INC. - 2. Invent/Innovate – AU-KBC • Private, for profit • Go-to-market expertise • Multi-disciplinary capabilities • Non-profit, located in a public institution. • Long-term Research Focus • PPP mode, shared IP ownership

6. The Ecosystem and its linkages KBC Other Co Returns Investments IP IP Svapas (For profit) KBCRF Co. (Not for profit) A U Market IP IP AUKBC Centre Other sources Funding Agencies Not for profit region • Broken Arrows: Investments • Solid Twin arrows:IP flows • Blue arrows: Revenue flows

7. Research Areas in AU-KBC Centre • Information Sciences • Computational Linguistics & Knowledge Discovery. • Wireless Comm.-- WiFi/WiMax • Cryptography & Network Security • Open Source Software Technologies. Life Sciences • Nanobiology • Biosensors/ Diagnostics • Cancer biology • Vascular biology • Bioinformatics

8. Out put from the Research Centre (2002-07) • International Journal papers -- 40 • International Conf. Papers – 60 • National Conf. Papers – 40 • Ph. D. Theses submitted – 3 • M.S.(By Research) Theses submitted – 15 • B.E./ M.E. Projects carried out – 25 • Books published – 2 • Contributed to Encyclopaedia -- 1 (FOSS) • Externally Funded Projects taken up -- 37 • National Centres set up – 1 (NRCFOSS) • Products commercialised – 2 • Products nearing commercialisation – 3 • Finances earned for University – Rs. 75 lakhs

9. Some Products, Technologies and Services from AU-KBC Centre. • A hardware-based Security Trainer Platform, i-SecurIT --- in the market. • A knowledge discovery engine for biomedical research, Bioask/Serendio -- in the market. • A hardware-based solution for web site defacement, WebGuard -- being commercialised. • An anti-angiogenesis drug lead has been identified with international (UWA) collaboration-- patent filed. • An information extraction engine for analysis of patent records and CV s -- field trials completed. • Mono/Cross-lingual search in Indian Languages. • Biosensors for rapid and low cost detection of pathogens --– prototype of “Flurobact” ready. • Training and product support for a range of Open Source Software Products and Technologies. • Consultancy and Corporate Training in Wireless Comm. and Security. • Certificate Programs in Bioinformatics and Clinical Research.

10. Our Vision for the Future Nationwide Real-Time Health Informatics Network To Market To Market Disease Detection/ Diagnostics Technologies/ Databases Knowledge Discovery/ Delivery Technologies Research in Information Sciences Research in Life Sciences Scientific Output-- Papers, Theses, Students.

11. Some Problems of Indian Research that ourPPP model addresses • Gets talented manpower into the campus, as the private player is able to offer better terms and conditions. • The Innovation Ecosystem provides ample opportunity for commercialisation of research out put as this is at the core of its viability. • As the revenues are ploughed back into the ecosystem, it becomes possible to make research fund itself in a sustainable manner. • As the Research Centre does not have its own teaching programs, the sharp focus on research is maintained. • As the model does not depend critically on the quality of scientists belonging to the host institution to start with, such centres can be set up even in ‘non-elite’ institutions.

12. Some Recommendations for making PPP Centres sustainable • Public institutions must be encouraged to make provisions in their rules and statutes for setting up and running of PPP entities in an easy manner. • As the PI s in such PPP Centres are not permanent faculty of the host institution, funding agencies should allow their salaries to be recovered from the grant amounts. • Overhead charges from R&D Grants should be enhanced to 40-50% so that institutions have an incentive in taking up sponsored research work. • As the PPP centres are attempting to address some basic problems of Indian R&D, funding agencies should make special provisions for supporting them. • As the long term viability of PPP centres depends on creating a corpus for them, adequate incentives and provisions should be made for corpus creation etc.