The Unfair Advantage at RIT: Sponsored Research Services

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The Unfair Advantage at RIT: Sponsored Research Services

An interview with RIT President Bill Destler and PAETEC ASG President Jack Baron

4/24/2008

By Dian Schaffhauser

Baron: There are two goals coming out of the program. To streamline the negotiations that often slow collaboration between universities and companies like ours while still having some very measurable results. And from a business perspective, we now have access to some extraordinary minds at RIT, many of whom are perfect for PAETEC long term in terms of hiring. We have over a 100 RIT grads working at PAETEC now. We have access to the faculty as well. Ideally it's going to be at a much lower cost than people we'd bring in from the outside. We'll still do R&D as well with employees we hire. This represents an opportunity to use some of that IP more efficiently.

CT: This is a million dollar agreement. What's that pay for?

Destler: It's a pledge by PAETEC to work with RIT to identify projects, and each project would be separately funded based on the requirements of the project, how much time it would take, how many people would need to be dedicated towards it, and any costs of supplies or materials or equipment that might be needed for the project...

Baron: The first project [RIT is] going to work on for us is mobile devices--PDAs, and cell phones and managing the usage in the plans associated with those devices. That's been a big issue for us... We have customer advisory boards in over 40 of our markets nationally. Just as a result of our most recent acquisition, we're in 82 markets across the country...

One of the biggest problems they bring up with us is the difficulty they have in managing those mobile devices--all the plans associated with those devices from various carriers, as well as the devices and applications on those devices. This software the RIT folks are going to be working on with us, for us, will help address those concerns and those issues.

CT: PAETIC has a research division already.

Baron: Within this area that we're talking about, specifically, the PAETEC software group, we've got 16 software engineers inside that group. The issue is that they are very busy full time working on new features and new product enhancements for our existing product. This opportunity is really a new path we're charting in the mobility realm. This is a way for us to gain access to some of the great intellect at RIT and not have to take that kind of work inside and divert some of our existing engineers to that work.

Destler: RIT probably has 150 faculty and a thousand students working in areas of interest to PAETEC. That represents an intellectual reservoir that PAETEC can access at relatively modest cost. The institution is already paying the academic year's salary to these faculty. The students working on these projects are typically either advanced undergraduate or graduate students, and they tend to come fairly cheaply. It can be a cost-effective way for PAETEC to operate and to ensure that our faculty and our students work on the most interesting problems as well.