A Multinational Partnership to Incite Innovation via New
Generation Tailored Polymers for Interfaces
The University of Southern Mississippi
The School of Polymers & High Performance Materials
PI: Robert Y. Lochhead Co PIs: Cecil D. Burge, Joseph Graben, Sarah Morgan, Derek Patton
NSF Award 0917730
Brief Project Overview:
A partnership has been established between the
University of Southern Mississippi, Jones Junior
College, 6 multinational corporations, and a cluster of
small start-up companies. The objectives of the
partnership are to:
• Accelerate innovation by developing combinatorial
techniques for polymer formulation
3 Year Award
Start Date: 8/01/09
Key Attributes of our
Innovation Ecosystem:
High Throughput formulation
Robotic Handling
and measurement
Questioning & Curiosity:
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
COMPUTATION
‘Informatics’
Picture or
Logo from
your project
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
here
VISUALIZATION
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surfactant,
polymer,
water/salt
• Educate a globally competent scientific workforce
that is skilled in combinatorial techniques
•Can modern materials be developed more rapidly and
efficiently by combinatorial robotic techniques and datamining?
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•What are the rules for enhancing innovation via a
partnership confining multinationals, entrepreneurs,
university researchers and a small national lab?
water/salt,
polymer,
surfactant
•How to prepare the scientific workforce of the future for.
World of robotic experiments, informatics and knowledge
networking?
• Rapidly introduce new technologies by partnering
with multinational companies
• How to translate all of this into economic benefit?
• Gain access to commercial scale equipment for
commercialization of new techologies
Risk Taking:
Initiative risks:
Program Activities:
Students were engaged in real projects with each of
our partners. During the academic year, the students
conducted research under the ‘tele-mentorship’ of
industrial scientists. Each summer the students will
continue their project as interns in the respective
companies. The void left by the students leaving
during summers will be filled by Local teachers, high
school students and junior college students who will
be exposed to basic education in materials
formulation:
•Develop new delivery systems for topicals based on
stimuli-responsive polymer/surfactant interaction
•With Procter & Gamble and Dow Chemical
Scigenesis
Proof of
Principle
established and
Phase II SBIR
awarded.
• In this rapidly emerging field which robotic platforms to
embrace?
•Ensure that proper space was available for the robotics
laboratory.
Interdependence Risks
• To convince academic stakeholders of the need to
include industrialists in the education of’ the scientific
workforce
• To convince industrialists that their intellectual property
will not be compromised by this partnership.
Our PFI students won 1st, 2nd and 3rd place
student poster awards at Waterborne
Conference
New Orleans-Feb 2010 and co-authored a
patent review
• Develop new stimuli-responsive polymer stabilizers
Top
Contributions/Outcomes
for hydrophobic dispersions
•With Glaxo Smith Kline
1.Interactive Projects involving students with top-level
Integrative Risks
•Ensure that every partner contributes effort and receives
benefits.
•Openness:
•It is essential to be candid.
:
industrial scientists were established
•Develop New stimuli responsive systems from selfassembling block copolymers
•With BASF
•Develop Camouflage Face Paint with an
appropriate spectral reflection in Near-IR to prevent
ballistic heat burns
•With Scigenesis (A start up company)
•DoD SBIR Project
Active Partners:
Project teleconferences approximately every 2 weeks with
all students and industrial partners
2. A new high-throughput lab has been established in the
new National Formulation Science Laboratory
•Sophisticated robotics donated by our partner P&G
•Microchannel Emulsification device donated by our new
partner Velocys (Dublin, Ohio)
3. All of our students have been placed as summer interns
with our partner companies
•We are preparing to “teach the teachers in our lab this
summer
4. One of our projects with a start-up– Scigenesis- proved
the principle of heat reflecting camouflage facepaint and
moved to Phase II SBIR with DoD
•We admitted that we were “dead in the water“ when our
robotic liquid handler crashed
•P&G responded by donating a complete robotic liquid
handling platform to the effort - with no strings
attached!
•GSK was delayed by the economy; BASF was delayed
by a large acquisition.
•We waited for them and they are both on board and
taking student interns this summer.
Collaboration Across Fields:
This partnership is all about merging robotics, information,
chemistry and materials science with innovation
hypotheses.
Placing Partners in “New
Environments” & “Playgrounds”:
All of our students will intern in industry each summer.
Community College instructors will intern’ in the high
throughout laboratory.
Top Challenges:
1. The National Formulation Lab, scheduled to open in Sept
Next year industrialists will time-share in the high-throughput
2009, did not open until March 2010. Projects were conducted in
laboratory
shared space at the University
SciGenesis
Leading/Inspiring of Surprising or
Unexpected Results
2. Due to the economic downturn, our partnership with
Chemspeed (for access to their sophisticated robots) was
delayed and has not yet materialized other partners stepped up
P&G and Velocys ‘saved’ us by equipment donation
to donate essential robotic equipment
3.Due to acquisitions Dow and BASF were late starters
PFI
.
A new class of genetically engineered polysaccharides showed
no benefit. Years of futile laboratory exploration were averted.
National Science Foundation Partnerships For Innovation
Grantee’s Meeting April 25-27, 2010
Arlington, VA
.
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