Making Science Happen with Industry

Q&A with Ron Corley, Director of BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories

In 2020, when researchers at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) were working around the clock to understand a new virus called SARS-CoV-2, NEIDL Director Ron Corley noticed that his research teams had unprecedented opportunity to collaborate with industry as companies rallied to defeat the pandemic. The problem? Despite interest on both sides, initiating each collaboration was difficult, time-consuming, and worlds different from the traditional academic grant process to which Dr. Corley and his faculty members were accustomed.

Dr. Corley and Marc Scatamacchia, Associate Vice President of Industry Engagement, worked together to help identify a solution that would help NEIDL researchers ride the surge they were seeing in industry interest and in so doing accelerate their work—supporting the NEIDL’s role as a central player on the front lines of coronavirus research. Driven by COVID and new principal investigators and supported by a streamlined process put into place by Industry Engagement, NEIDL’s industry support increased from $1.2M in FY20 to $5.4M in FY21.

Below, Mr. Scatamacchia sits down with Dr. Corley to discuss industry support at the NEIDL and tease out lessons for other centers, departments, schools, and faculty interested in moving their research to the marketplace via industry collaboration.

Marc Scatamacchia (MS): Before working with Industry Engagement, what was the level of industry support for NEIDL researchers, and were there any issues working with industry?

Ron Corley (RC): In the past, it was pretty much up to individual investigators to figure out how to work with industry, and find advocates at BU to help them through the process. In every discussion faculty had with industry we were reinventing the wheel. The dramatic change we’ve seen in the last two years is that Industry Engagement has helped us understand and streamline the process, and they are available to shepherd us through it. Working with Industry Engagement as a facilitator and translator, we can suddenly speak industry’s language. From the perspective of our investigators, the process is easier and significantly more time efficient.

MS: When you reached out to us for support, you suggested that our office kick off our work together by interviewing your researchers to better understand their needs. Was that the right process? Would you recommend a similar approach to other BU units?

RC: Every faculty member has their own set of issues and priorities. It was helpful to go through a process that allowed us to capture some of the nuance around what faculty would find helpful, what they did want to pursue and what they didn’t, and ultimately develop key agreement terms of interest around funding, IP, publication rights, and so on. This allowed Industry Engagement to support collaborations that were generated by our faculty, by creating agreement templates to streamline the process. And now we’re also starting to see some work happening to bring industry to us, in situations where we don’t know who could benefit from our expertise—though this matchmaking approach is still in its early stages for us. An important part of this process has been about building trust in Industry Engagement, and knowing that you are there to work through issues when we need you.

MS: Do you think developing an industry strategy and streamlining templates helped NEIDL faculty? Did they see value?

RC: Yes. Faculty have limited time. In the past they thought industry collaboration was the molasses of the research enterprise. It used to take us 12-18 months to put together an industry agreement. No one has the patience for that. That has changed. We want BU to be a place where red tape doesn’t get in the way of the science. Your office has found ways to help us make things happen.

MS: For example, we created research services agreements—approved by Industry Engagement’s legal team and the Office of General Counsel—which had different terms that were more appropriate for work being done at the NEIDL and were aligned quite well with what industry was trying to do. We’ve probably turned the crank on this agreement about a dozen times. We essentially created a special purpose legal instrument that we could use repeatedly.

RC: It was a surprise to me, how different it was working out legal agreements with industry. We needed to understand what all of the parties involved cared about: the university, industry, the individual investigator. It took us a while, but once we had that process in place it all become much faster.

MS: You’ve seen the whole arc of NEIDL funding. You have a unique perspective on how all this comes together. Any advice for other BU units or faculty members interested in working with industry?

RC: My flippant answer is that I would rather no one else work with you so you can remain devoted to the NEIDL! [laughs] We have all found that this relationship has served us very well. The last three years has been a sea change in our funding portfolio. Part of that is from newer investigators, but it also reflects industry collaborations driven by veteran researchers who had only ever secured traditional grants.

My advice to other centers and faculty is to reach out to Industry Engagement. Tell them what you need. These conversations can’t happen solely at the unit level, they have to be about individual faculty needs. Meeting early on makes a big difference. You need to understand the shared goal that will benefit all parties.