February 2006

Rivals become partners to drive Indiana’s economy

Mark Miles

These days, though, people in black and gold and crimson and cream can cheer together, as a program supporting collaborative work in research labs from Bloomington to Indianapolis to West Lafayette offers great promise for Indiana’s economic future.

The universities have partnered to create a new grant program to encourage IU and Purdue researchers to collaborate on life sciences research projects - a collaboration that John Ketzenberger recently identified as a need to unlock our state’s economic development potential. This effort combines three components state leaders have said are integral to Indiana’s prosperity: higher education, life sciences and statewide cooperation.

Purdue and IU are two of the nation’s top research universities and are powerful economic drivers. In the life sciences arena, the state has a wealth of assets and a powerful partnership for continued growth through the BioCrossroads initiative. Indiana’s life sciences prospects depend on university engagement and collaboration; the “research corridor” from Bloomington through Indianapolis to West Lafayette will supply the innovation that will fuel the state’s “bio-economy.”

The Collaboration in Life Sciences and Informatics Research is providing up to $50,000 per proposal for Purdue-IU research in:

• studying DNA sequencing with the intent of improving disease diagnoses;

• working to advance gene-mapping techniques that could help scientists make better use of large sets of data;

• examinating a bacterial protein in order to improve knowledge of how infections work;

• researching DNA splicing that will help scientists better understand how genes work; and

• improving processes for predicting how genetic content will be expressed in cells.

IU and Purdue have a history of partnering for the greater good. They launched two successful programs in biomedical research, Collaborations in Biomedical Research Grants, involving Purdue and the IU School of Medicine. This effort, together with the Collaboration in Life Sciences and Informatics Research, represent a total investment from IU and Purdue of almost $1 million to fund 19 collaborative life sciences and informatics research projects.

These are the kinds of projects that can lead to groundbreaking discoveries and intellectual capital that can spawn new business opportunities and create high-paying jobs for Hoosiers. As Indiana builds its reputation as a center of cutting-edge research, we also attract and retain more top scientific talent, laying the foundation for future success in the years and decades to come.

Indiana is not the only state that has identified the life sciences as a key economic development engine. It seems like every state has jumped on the bandwagon. As a result, we must do all we can to marshal our resources, focus them effectively and generate new ideas that will be the fuel for tomorrow’s prosperity. Collaboration helps maximize our research dollars while increasing opportunities for outside funding, giving us a leg up on the competition.

This program offers all of us a glimpse at what can be done when we align for a common goal. Certainly, if Boilermakers and Hoosiers can put aside rivalries for the good of our state’s economy, then perhaps other rivals – competing firms or municipalities, for example – can find ways to partner. No one’s suggesting that we should no longer be divided on Oaken Bucket weekend or when our teams take to the hardwood. But these collaborations show us that, when it comes to economic development, we all can play on the same team.

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