This has been a difficult quarter for our community. We’ve experienced several heartbreaking losses, including some recent tragic losses in our student community. Some of these losses have been private, and some well-known, and all are profoundly felt by the family and friends left behind. I’m deeply saddened to report another loss for our community. Vikram Jandhyala, UW vice president for innovation strategy, has died by suicide.
Tag: Innovation
Graduation marks a ‘magical moment’ for GIX
This past weekend, the University of Washington and Tsinghua University marked a significant milestone as the very first cohort of Global Innovation Exchange students received their degrees. I was proud and honored to congratulate these 37 path-breakers as they picked up their diplomas.
As new GIX building opens, collaboration holds the key to our future
Yesterday marked the official opening of the new Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) facility – the newly-christened Steve Ballmer Building – in Bellevue’s Spring District. The celebration was a momentous occasion, fitting for the scale of impact I believe that GIX will have in uniting universities, civic leaders, government officials, industry partners, artists and entrepreneurs around global challenges. With the launch of this building, GIX welcomes the students, faculty and industry experts from around the world whose work and education will serve to benefit our region, and the world.
Seeding a healthier world
Today I had the opportunity to once again meet with our Global Innovation Exchange partners during a visit to Tsinghua University. It’s a lush, beautiful campus, made even more vibrant by the fact that it was graduation season. There were countless graduates in caps and gowns all over the campus, posing for photos as they prepared to launch off into the world. It reminded me of our own commencement ceremonies just a couple weeks ago, and like then, I was inspired by the graduates’ optimism and how they have so much ahead of them.
Proposed budget would be huge step backward for innovation and economic security
Today, as anticipated, the President released a proposed federal budget blueprint for Fiscal Year 2018. The proposal is short on details, but it contains sweeping cuts that would harm American innovation and prosperity, the education of our nation’s students, and the research and creativity that is the foundation of progress in every field from medicine to the arts.
Without question, if passed, this budget would harm the University of Washington’s ability to serve our students, state and nation. It represents a major step backward for American scientific research and innovation, and reduces opportunities for millions of deserving young people. With devastating cuts to biomedical research and student aid, and to environmental science and the arts, this shortsighted proposal attacks the very investments that have made the United States healthy and prosperous. This budget is simply unacceptable and together with my fellow higher education leaders, I plan to work actively with Washington’s federal delegation and other congressional leaders to advocate for policies that keep America the global leader in innovation and opportunity.
To take effect, these proposals would have to be approved by Congress and we will be traveling to Washington, DC in early April to meet with administration officials as well as our congressional delegation. Many of the areas proposed for cuts have received strong, bipartisan support in the past, so I am hopeful that we will instead see the federal government continue to invest in the areas that, over the decades, have contributed to America’s prosperity and vitality. To support these efforts, we all can continue to demonstrate the value that every aspect of our University provides to our students, Washington and the world.
The list of affected programs is lengthy – those supporting students, such as TRiO and GEAR UP; those advancing research such as the NIH, Department of Energy, NOAA, NASA, and the EPA; and those creating a rich, vibrant national life, such as the NEA and NEH. The proposal does not reference cuts to the NSF. You can find more information about the specific cuts proposed on the UW Federal Relations blog.
In addition, we’ll also be speaking with our delegation about proposed legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act. The House legislation being considered would have significant negative outcomes for many of the patients who receive care at UW Medicine. If the proposed American Health Care Act were to be fully implemented, UW Medicine could lose an estimated $518 million per year in Medicaid/Medicare reimbursement and charity care costs, with significant impacts to UW Medicine services at Harborview. This would have dramatic effects on our ability to serve our patients and our communities.
Budgets are values made real. And so our nation faces a choice between a future in which our global competitors surge ahead of us, reaping the benefits of their investments in education, medicine, science, the arts and humanities; or a future in which we continue to discover, to teach, to create and to cure. I am fully committed to doing everything I can to ensure that brighter, more prosperous future becomes reality.
The University’s Role in the Innovation Ecosystem (Times Higher Education Asia Summit keynote)
Universities play a vital – and unique – role in the innovation ecosystem. Leading the University of Washington, I see every day the ways in which the environment and community of a university are not only conducive to creation and discovery, more often than not, they are the drivers of innovation. Universities both augment the innovation in companies and institutions around them and they compensate for the fact that some organizations are not as well-equipped to do so.
The power of unleashing ideas
One of the things I most appreciate about a major research institution like the University of Washington is that our ideas are limitless. In every UW college, school, program and discipline, people are individually and collectively engaged in the pursuit of ideas with the potential to become something transformative. With thousands collaborating in the creative process each day, the UW is able to sustain an environment of ongoing discovery, and the possibilities for innovation are boundless.
Much of the university’s focus is on finding ways to unleash this vast storehouse of human ideas and potential, and one of my principal endeavors is to lead that effort. We strive to empower people and to create an environment in which everyone feels encouraged to think expansively and broadly for the greater common good. At the same time, we aim to provide people the freedom to innovate, knowing they have the support and resources to take risks, choose unexplored paths and try bold approaches. And when great ideas are conceived, we take them where they have the capacity to make a difference.
Innovating with a purpose is and always has been fundamental to the UW’s mission. Like many others engaged in the creative process, our ideas are not complete until we connect them with the larger world, to the great opportunities and challenges of our time. One way we achieve this is through commercialization — licensing faculty research or incubating student startups.
Korvata Inc., a UW student-led startup, won the top award at the 2014 UW Environmental Innovation Challenge. Launched in April, the company provides customers in the food and beverage and consumer-packaged goods industries with cutting-edge alternative chemistry products to help mitigate their environmental impact. Members of this student team succeeded in turning their passion for cleantech into a marketable opportunity that meets a genuine need, and many other UW students are engaged in similar pursuits.
Commercialization and incubating startups are not the only creative ways we link with the larger community. Ideas with impact can be found in scholarly publishing, delivering health care, crafting public policy and creating partnerships with the community on a host of activities essential to a vibrant, successful society. Indeed, nearly every aspect of our world is predicated on ideas that can be applied in solid, practical ways.
No matter how our faculty, staff and students innovate, the UW is committed to providing the opportunities and the resources that will unleash their ideas. This is the higher purpose of higher education — where the real strength of our thinkers, creators and doers will flourish.