In times of tight state budgets and a population sensitive to tuition increases, universities are turning more and more to research as a way to pump up revenue.

A recent report by the Association of University Technology Managers shows that in 2006, Kansas State University did a good job of monetizing the work the university’s researchers did. At Kansas University, the results weren’t as good as in years past, but both universities were among about a dozen featured for the work they’ve done.

Kent Glasscock, president of the Manhattan-based National Institute for Strategic Technology Acquisition and Commercialization, said the past two or three years have been exciting for K-State in terms of technology transfer.

“In the last two or three years, Kansas State has become much more aggressive in this arena,” Glasscock said. “Not only through the research foundation, building its tech transfer capability, but also the relationship to NISTAC has allowed us to become much more aggressive in how we approach business licensing and startups out of the university community.”

NISTAC helps with the licensing and monetizing of most of the research done at K-State. In 2006, K-State had $1.3 million in patent licensing revenue. Not tops nationally by any means – the University of California system and New York University both topped $100 million – but good enough to more than triple the amount of revenue at KU and more than that at Oklahoma State, the University of Oklahoma and Nebraska as well.

Slowly, Glasscock said, K-State has changed the attitude among researchers so that they now often think of ways their research can be brought into the commercial setting. Glasscock credited KSU President Jon Wefald for much of the attitude change.

“President Wefald understands that academic entrepreneurism is going to be critically important in the near term,” Glasscock said.

While it certainly has been a good few years, Glasscock sounded a cautiously optimistic tone for the future.

“I’m not sure we’ll be able to sustain the new revenue growth we’ve had over the past three years, but over time the trend line is going to be decidedly up,” he said. “We don’t intend to go backward. K-State leaders expect continued progress and we do as well.”

At KU, the combined licensing revenue of KU and Kansas University Medical Center was about $340,000. Jim Baxendale, director of technology transfer for KU, said this year’s total was the result of several years of aggressively licensing technologies and creating startups.

“We’ll often do a startup around an early technology to get the technology to the market,” Baxendale said. “Many times, faculty have an interest in doing a startup.”

Baxendale said that KU is at a point – particularly in pharmaceutical research – where the amount of licensing revenue is going to change from year to year. A few years ago, for instance, KU had millions in licensing revenue because the university sold its royalty rights to a particular patent. At the same time, a pharmaceutical startup merged which led to more revenue.

It can take a decade or more to get a drug to market and until the university develops a pipeline of consistent success, there will be annual fluctuations. In terms of major moneymakers, pharmaceuticals are the major source of licensing revenue.

And while KU is not having major success in that arena right now, one of its smaller operations is the subject of a vignette in last week’s report. The Computerized Assessments and Learning company of Lawrence offers a computer testing system to school districts that can be used for state-mandated tests.

Baxendale says the university has a number of technologies that would fall into a similar category: beneficial, but not exactly big moneymakers.

“Benefiting society is a major goal of ours,” Baxendale said.

Looking to the future, both Glasscock and Baxendale expected to outperform 2006 in 2007. Baxendale said the university has seen success with its Radio Frequency Identification technology, which recently has been licensed. Glasscock said K-State expected more startups and technology to come out of K-State’s strengths in food safety and animal health research.

“We had some good things happening this year, and we’re hoping for more in ’08,” Baxendale said.