A growing number of our engineering faculty have expressed interest in
finding an alternative method of handling seed funding (under $20K) from
industry. The purpose of this is to pay for small projects to determine the
advisability of more substantial grants or contracts. These are not very
efficient for the research administration people, overheads eat up a major
part of the available funding and much time can be lost. In almost all
instances there will be no IP developed. These faculty would prefer not to
handle these as consulting.

Before I approach our research administration people I thought I would ask
the list for some examples of how some other universities handle these. I
will be happy to compile the responses and make them available to
interested parties.

Thanks for your input.

Ira J. Uslander
Director, Industry Relations
McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science
Northwestern University
2145 Sheridan Road.
Evanston, Illinois 60208
Tel.  847-491-8664
Fax.  847-467-3033
xxxxxx@nwu.edu