University researchers are increasingly forging alliances with industry to fund their work. It's a practice that some find troubling, but one with such strong benefits for scientists and the state's economy that it's surely the way of the future. This is the first of three parts of a story on the subject originally published in UC Davis Magazine. By Sylvia Wright One year ago, 30 of the 32 members of the plant and microbial biology department at UC Berkeley made a startling announcement: They had sold first rights to much of their research over the next five years to Swiss biotechnology giant Novartis. The biologists got $25 million, access to Novartis databases, endless public scrutiny and two pies thrown at them at a news conference. UC Davis didn't share in any of the Novartis money or access, though we did get a pie of our own, hurled at Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef at a public question-and-answer session. But the Novartis deal did leave us an enduring legacy: It helped inspire a similar group of UC Davis biologists to begin exploring the opportunities for a large corporate alliance of their own. And it revived a slumbering debate about the relationship between the university and its industry supporters, a debate that could inßuence the fundamental values and direction of the campus long after the last whiff of banana creme leaves the chancellor's coat. "This is an important discussion for UC Davis," Vanderhoef said. "Some people fear that industry partnerships will make us betray our duty to impartiality. But our working philosophy has always been that we value and need ethical, well-crafted, mutually beneficial alliances with industry. And we are taking steps now to increase those alliances and the many benefits they bring to our faculty, our students and the state of California." While there is no single corporate research grant at Davis as large as the Berkeley-Novartis pact, a significant proportion of our research funding comes from industry and always has. "The original role of the land-grant university was tied to what was then the primary industry in the whole United States-agriculture," said one successful local capitalist, Charlie Soderquist, also a UC Davis alumnus (Ph.D. '78), a former University of California regent and a longtime financial supporter of the campus. "That role was to train people to be agriculturists and then to have them bring their problems from the farms back to the institution, to be worked on by the faculty and the students who followed behind them. It was an industry collaboration from Day Zero. Then in the intervening 100 years, that relationship became less important. "Now it's coming back, and not just in agriculture, but also in biotechnology and computers and everything else that goes on in society," Soderquist said. The numbers show that rebound. From 1980 to 1997, industry support for research and development at American academic institutions grew an estimated 8.1 percent annually in constant dollars--more rapidly than support from all other sources, according to the National Science Foundation. Industry's share of R&D funding in the United States increased from 4 percent to an estimated 7 percent. At UC Davis, industry's share of total funding for research contracts and grants rose from 9.9 percent in 1989 (the oldest data available) to 11 percent in 1998 and 15 percent in 1999. Of Davis' $247.7 million in 1999 research funding from all sources, about $37 million came from industry. About half of that industry support ($19.6 million, including $7 million from pharmaceutical maker Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories alone) went to the School of Medicine. Of the remaining $17.4 million, about $10.3 million went to the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, $2.3 million to the College of Engineering, $2.2 million to the Division of Biological Sciences, $1.5 million to the campus's numerous organized research units, $700,000 to the School of Veterinary Medicine and $420,000 to the College of Letters and Science (with virtually all of that going to chemistry, mathematics or physics research). "Last year, we saw stunning growth in our research support from industry," said Kevin Smith, UC Davis vice chancellor for research. "And the reason is that faculty members are soliciting that support, saying, 'Here's a chance to get uninterrupted funding for a project for a reliable number of years. Can we do some kind of deal with a company that has interests like ours, where we have a genuine programmatic connection?'" In more and more cases, the answer is yes. And the business arrangements that faculty members and administrators are employing are increasingly creative. The largest single corporate contribution last year was of the traditional type-that $7 million from Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, a contract with associate professor Mary Haan in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine for a large, five-year study of hormone replacement therapy and eye disease in women. And research contracts from fruit, vegetable and livestock commodity boards, which levy surcharges on producers to support research and marketing, have always been mainstays of Davis agricultural researchers. The biggest such supporter in 1999 was the California Strawberry Commission, which supplied almost $1.1 million. Most of that money-$700,000-went to the pomology department. In fact, of pomology's almost $2.4 million in total research funding for the year, 87 percent came from industry sources, and virtually all of that came from commodity boards. Of the 300 researchers at UC Davis who received some industry funds last year, about 115 received funds from commodity boards. Next week: The new corporate alliances