Appendix C: Self-Study Questionnaire Responses

Sensors and Surface Technology Partnership

1. List the active faculty participating in the Partnership. How has this changed over time?

There are approximately 18 members of the SST Partnership, as listed below.

Professor Chris Brown, Department of Chemistry; Professor Everett Crisman, Department of Chemical Engineering; Professor William Euler, Department of Chemistry; Professor Mohammad Faghri, Department of Mechanical Engineering; Professor Godi Fischer, Department of Electrical Engineering; Professor Otto Gregory, Department of Chemical Engineering; Professor David Heskett, Department of Physics; Professor Stephen Letcher, Department of Physics; Professor Brett L. Lucht, Department of Chemistry; Professor Jan Northby, Department of Physics; Professor Anthony Nunes, Department of Physics; Mr. Mike Platek, Department of Electrical Engineering; Professor A. Garth Rand, Department of Food Science and Nutrition; Professor William Rosen, Department of Chemistry; Professor Brent Stucker, Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering; Professor Michael Tammaro, Department of Physics; Professor Sze Yang, Department of Chemistry; Professor Mirang Yoon, Department of Physics.

The total number of participating faculty has stayed relatively constant, but not all the same people have been active.

2. List the annual number of research papers and presentations made associated with Partnership activities. Do Not list each citation, but just the number of papers or presentations.

Approximately 40 papers per year are generated by the Partnership. Another 35 presentations are made by the Partnership each year and the Partnership has generated about 10 patents over the last 5 years.

3. What external funding has resulted from Partnership activities? Give examples of any funding that was directly linked to the Partnership.

Considerable external funding has been generated by the SST Partnership from a variety of sources. For example, considerable funding has come from the government including support form NSF, NASA, USDA, Air Force (AFSOR) and the Army.

Our SST foundation account has grown substantially due to contributions by the following organizations: Laser Fare, Amtech, Alpha Omega, Raytheon Inc. Contributions range between $3,500 and $5,000 each.

In kind contributions have amounted to more than $350,000.00 over the last three years. Contributors include Video Display Corp. (vacuum pumps, plasma oxidation system, etc) Teltron Technologies Inc.(capacitance meters, IR cameras, integrated electronics, SEM fixture), Cherry Semiconductor (now ON Semiconductor - Dektak II Surface Profilometer, Rudolph Research Auto ELII Ellipsometer, thousands of silicon wafers), Alpha Omega (oxygen meter), American Power Conversion (20 backups for computers) and Dewal industries (kapton and teflon films, polyethylene films), Elmwood Sensors Invensys Systems (scanning electron microscope with low element EDS), Pfizer (benches and benchtops for Kirk 215 laboratory), Motorola (plasma oxidation system).

4. Give examples of how the Partnership activities are or will be self-sustaining? For those Partnerships that no longer receive funding from URI, has this objective been met? How? For those Partnerships still receiving URI funding, what is the plan to become self-supporting? For both groups, what is the management plan for self-support?

Sustained funding could be accomplished if future overhead could come back to the Partnership. If that does not happen, the only way to generate a revenue stream is through royalties from patents. SST has negotiated a deal with the Deans of Engineering and Arts & Sciences to return a portion of the Dean’s share of royalties back to SST. It only takes a few big winners though: as an example, the thermochromic polymers disclosure has the potential to generate tens of millions of dollars for the university and is only one of several intellectual properties that could generate this level of funding.

5. How have Partnership activities affected faculty workload? Give examples.

Our workload, particularly that of the co-directors, has substantially increased since the Partnership was first formed. We have no secretary or business manager and we take no funds from our budget in the way of release time to carry out the administrative functions of the Partnership. We generate our own announcements for seminars and student poster contests. We run a seminar series and a student poster session at the end of the academic year. We keep track of all expenditures for equipment, supplies and materials and keep the student payroll. We administer the request for proposals for student stipends and administer the review process to determine successful proposals that are funded. These result in the funding of student stipends. We hold board meetings for the SST Advisory Board several times a year. The faculty members in the Partnership have increased workloads due to the mentoring of students in their labs and attending the SST seminar series. Also, they must help their students prepare for a seminar once a year and assist their students in preparing a poster for presentation once a year.

6. What new courses have been created from the result of the Partnership? List the enrollment in these courses.

The only new course added to the catalogue is the SST seminar series course, cross-listed across several departments, which is required of students being funded by the Partnership. The students must register for the course, attend seminar, and deliver a seminar once a year. Enrollment has been about 5 students per semester.

7. How many undergraduate students and how many graduate students have participated in the Partnership? How many of the publications and presentations listed in question 2 have had student co-authors?

Since the beginning of the Partnership, approximately 30 students a semester have been involved in the Partnership about ½ being undergraduates. Each of the presentations and papers mentioned in question 2 have included student co-authors, both undergraduate students and graduate students. A total of 54 different undergraduate students and 40 different graduate students have worked on SST projects, many over several years. About 10 students per year, with a varying mix between undergraduate and graduate, are supported with SST funds at the present time.

8. What have student participants done after they have left URI? Give examples, especially highlighting how the Partnership benefited the student.

Most students have taken jobs in industry or gone on to graduate school. We have not tracked where they have gone nor if their Partnership activities influenced their ability to get a job or enter graduate school.

9. What service contributions have arisen from Partnership activities, to the professional community, URI, or to the State of Rhode Island?

One of the major contributions of the Partnership in terms of outreach to local industries is to assist them with problems related to manufacturing. More than 20 RI companies take advantage of our surface analysis capabilities each year. Many of the parts and devices made by local industries periodically suffer from contamination issues (and other interfacial reactions) and only analytical techniques based on our Perkin Elmer PHI 550 SIMS, ESCA, Auger surface analyzer can be used to address these issues. Also, more than a dozen criminal cases are handled by our analytical facilities where forensic analyses related to crime scene evidence are performed for the RI State Crime lab each year, including paint chip analysis, metal analysis and gunshot residue analysis.

10. What does the Partnership need to become more effective?

1) Clerical help: SST doesn’t have enough clerical work to keep a person busy even half-time but some clerical assistance is needed. Perhaps a secretary or fiscal clerk could be hired to be shared by all the Partnerships. 2) SST could be much more effective is we had a full time person to promote our interactions with local industry. An attempt to secure funds from the RI Economic Development Corporation to hire such an individual fell through when their number one candidate declined their offer 3) $$$

11. What changes to the Partnership program could be made to make it better?

1) The place of the Partnerships in the University structure needs to be more clearly defined. The Partnerships report to the Provost’s office but individual faculty report to Chairs and Deans. Participating faculty from different departments and different colleges are treated very differently regarding their Partnership activities. Perhaps a university wide workload policy for Partnership activity is in order.

2) A mechanism for Partnerships to receive grants outside of departments is needed. Grants to individual faculty probably should be accounted through the faculty member’s department, but funding to support the Partnership are also credited to the individual (probably a director) and the director’s department, probably inappropriately.

3) A more secure funding line through the university is needed. Some activities cannot be supported from grants in a long term, continuous fashion. Some examples of this are: a) seed money for investigators with new ideas to have the resources to generate enough data to write a competitive proposal; b) the SST seminar series hosted each year by the Partnership; c) funding opportunities for undergraduates to work in laboratories on research projects.

12. For those Partnerships no longer receiving URI funding: Did the Partnership receive additional funds from the Provost after the initial grant expired to support student activities? How were those funds used?

SST received $30,000 in 1999 to support student stipends. Matching funds were also provided for the new environmental SEM recently purchased and installed. The bulk of the funding for the SEM came from NSF.