The Mission of the OCIR is to coordinate the University's commercialization and industry activities, to enhance and promote its applied research and develop activities, assist in the capture of commercial research and development funding, to enhance the University's entrepreneurial platform, and to provide resources for the support and enhancement of 'education with relevance'.
OCIR offers assistance to faculty and staf to coordinate industrial activities to enhance the applied research and establish formal working relations with industry partners.
Services include:
Contact and coordinate meetings with Texas State researchers and industrial partners to identify innovations, commercial opportunities and funding possibilities.
Negotiate and reveiw industry related agreements such as Nondisclosures, Sponsored Research Agreements, University Industry Partnership and Service or Testing Agreements.
Industry wishing to access current available technologies should contact Dr. Reddy Venumbaka.
Promote and manage the University’s IP portfolio
The Office for Commercialization and Industry Relations was created in May 2010 by combining the Office of Technology Commercialization and the Center for Research Commercialization and several institutes and centers to create a single more efficient single structure. The OCIR is structured to permit the utmost agility to be able to respond to commercial and industrial opportunities.
Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
August 12, 2010
A partnership between Texas State University-San Marcos and the City of San Marcos has landed a $1.85 million award from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) in support of the new Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) building.
The grant funds the construction of a state-of-the-art research and commercialization center at Texas State through the Office of Commercialization and Industrial Relations (OCIR).
“We are thrilled that an important technology partnership between the City of San Marcos and Texas State University will take a major step forward with the award of a significant federal grant,” said Mayor Susan Narvaiz. “This project will help us attract corporate research on alternative energy projects and establish San Marcos as a place for university graduates to find high tech careers.”
The new facility will serve as a technology accelerator for start-up and early-stage businesses, and will provide university and STAR tenants access to secure wet labs, clean rooms and office space. Green and bio-technology companies will be a major focus, and backers hope that San Marcos' convenient location between Austin and San Antonio will work to attract corporate research interest from those cities' technology communities.
"This building will house 'spin-offs' from research conducted and intellectual property generated by university faculty, and 'spin-ins' from companies outside the state that want to come in and strategically work with the university," said Terry Golding, executive director of the OCIR. "Our mission is education with relevance, and this is expanding our university's research profile, and adding depth and breadth to our educational and research programs.
"It will have clean room facilities for materials development, and there is a dire need of wet labs for small business start-ups in this region," Golding said. "We see convergent technologies -- the merging of semiconductor nanotechnology with biotechnology as a major opportunity for economic development in the state. Our location along the I-35 corridor is ideal for linking the large biotech/medical activities in San Antonio and the semiconductor community of Austin."
Interdisciplinary partnership will be a major selling point of the STAR facilities, incorporating expertise from the McCoy College of Business Administration and the Materials Science, Engineering and Commercialization program at Texas State.
“The STAR project is a success story of collaboration among federal and local government, higher education, economic development and the private sector,” Mayor Narvaiz said. “These mutual investments will mean educational opportunity, environmental and technological advances, and 21st Century jobs for the future.”
Of the project's overall $6 million cost, Texas State has already committed $5 million. The university's share of the grant will go directly toward construction of wet lab and clean room facilities. The city's share will finance infrastructure improvements to the 40-acre site at Hunter Road and McCarty Lane.
"This is a very meaningful relationship between the university and the city for economic development in this region," said Golding. "We had great support from the San Marcos Partners for Progress and also people such as Pike Powers in Austin."
The EDA awarded the grant through the Global Climate Change Mitigation Incentive Fund, which is intended to foster the green economy by promoting economic competitiveness while enhancing environmental quality.
Austin Business Journal - by Sandra Zaragoza
Texas State University in San Marcos is out of space, but $633 million worth of construction slated to take place in the coming years will make room for more students.
Last semester, thousands more students enrolled at the university. And demand is so high for on-campus housing that Texas State is conducting a dormitory lottery for upperclassmen next semester.
“We are absolutely one of the fastest-growing universities at 30,800 students,” Texas State President Denise Trauth said. “To grow by 2,500 students [over a semester] is very rapid growth, and I think it shows the demand for our programs.”
The growing university has been moving forward with expansion projects and renovations that will eventually position it to enroll more students in academic programs such as engineering, materials science and consumer sciences.
Everywhere you look, development at the university, which is the middle of its 10-year master plan, is starting to heat up. In the past couple of years about $109 million has been invested to expand the campus. But that’s only about one-sixth of what the university has in the pipeline.
Texas State has four major projects under construction, including a new family and consumer sciences building in San Marcos and a nursing building in Round Rock. This year, it will break ground on a new undergraduate academic center and a recital hall and theater renovation.
Meanwhile, multiple projects being planned are awaiting funding, including a $56.7 million music building and an $82 million engineering and science building in San Marcos, and two health professions buildings in Round Rock that would have a combined price tag of about $80 million.
The next project to get under way at Texas State will be a $4 million to $5 million research and commercialization center. Funding for the center is in place, and the university will be issuing a request for proposals for land planning in the next few weeks. The site for the commercialization center is just south of campus, at McCarty Lane and Hunter Road.
Additionally, the university will seek regents’ approval for a $47 million housing residence hall complex, which will have about 600 beds. Given enrollment increases, there is a huge need for on-campus housing, Trauth said.
Unlike the other projects, the residence complex would not require funding from the Texas Legislature because it would be funded by revenue from residence halls.
The planned commercialization center will assist the university in its effort to become a top research university in Texas.
“We have a responsibility to continue to grow and become a research university,” Trauth said. “That will take some time, but that is the ultimate goal. The master plan supports that vision.”
The commercialization center would house the materials science program, an interdisciplinary program that consists of engineering, physics, chemistry and other disciplines.
The center also would link faculty and entrepreneurs with cutting-edge research with the goal of spinning out inventions and startup companies. The university is looking closely at research involving energy, security and health.
Amy Madison, economic development director for the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce, said the city has taken a special interest in the commercialization center.
The center “will allow us to bring that [commercialization] effort forward, not only for our own businesses and community, but also for businesses that we can recruit to our area,” Madison said. “Texas State University is an economic engine for the city of San Marcos. Obviously, their expansion only increases that capacity for our city.”
Trauth said Texas State hasn’t decided how much it would like to increase capacity, only that it wants to accommodate Texas’ growing population for years to come.
According to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the university uses 100 percent of its space.
One of its fastest-growing programs is the engineering department. Launched in 2007, the school’s inaugural electrical engineering class anticipated 25 students but had 90.
“We believe there is a great deal of pent-up demand for baccalaureate engineering programs here in Central Texas,” Trauth said. “And we really believe it’s the job of Texas State University to step up to that. But we can’t do that until we get the funding for a building.”austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2010/02/01/story2.html
Nov. 18, 2008
Materials science research at Texas State University-San Marcos is poised to become a national leader in the developing field of multifunctional materials, thanks to a grant of $4 million from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.
The grant was announced Nov. 17, 2008, at the annual Ready for Commercialization conference in Austin .
The grant will be used to operate and staff a newly established center for the research, development and commercialization of multifunctional materials to drive the development and innovation for the next generation of devices used in the fields of energy, security and health.
The establishment of the materials growth facility has been a priority of Texas State President Denise Trauth and Provost Perry Moore.
Trauth said, “This is a momentous event for Texas State. It takes us to a new level of prestige within the research community and allows us to better serve our students and the state of Texas."
Tom Myers, professor and director of the MSE program, said, “The establishment of this materials growth capability at Texas State will allow us to attract additional world-class researchers, especially those with an interest in solving real-world problems that have commercial applications and societal impact."
The term “multifunctional materials" refers to the use of a material or class of materials for multiple functions. Information processing and high-density, light-weight information storage are applications that could reap immediate benefits from the field of study, but other, more diverse uses include more efficient solar power generation and entirely new classical and quantum approaches to computing and communication. The federal government has even expressed interest in sophisticated, next-generation sensors that could be developed from this research for homeland security purposes.
Terry Golding, holder of the University Chair in Materials Science and Engineering, and director of Texas State's Center for Research Commercialization, said, “This will give Texas State an unprecedented capability in terms of different types of electronics materials that can be produced and researched. In effect, this immediately places Texas State at the center of multifunctional materials research."
The MSE program is a collaborative effort involving the chemistry, biochemistry, physics, technology and engineering programs at Texas State, as well as the Nanomaterials Application Center, the Center for Nanophase Research, the Center for Coatings and Biobased Technology and the Institute for Environmental and Industrial Science.
Gary Beall, associate professor of chemistry and associate director of the MSE Program, said, “The interdisciplinary research fostered by the study of multifunctional materials is also having a strong impact on student education, allowing them to be a better-prepared resource for emerging high-tech industries within the State of Texas."
One of the key roles of the MSE program is to nurture and expand the expertise and talent necessary to foster new fields, industries and technologies. Research conducted within the program will have an immediate impact on the Texas economy, and is expected to attract additional federal research funding as it produces new commercial endeavors in support of civilian, defense and security applications.
“Such developments are at the forefront of current science and technology and promise to provide breakthroughs that can strengthen current industries and facilitate the emergence of entirely new industries," said Bill Covington, associate vice president for research and federal affairs.
The multifunctional materials center has also been supported by equipment gifts from Freescale Semiconductor and Motorola.
Freescale Semiconductor donated a molecular beam epitaxy tool and related equipment valued at more than $4 million. Motorola has donated a dual chamber production type molecular beam epitaxy system in support of the materials science program at Texas State.
The grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund was made as part of the program's Research Superiority Acquisition effort. Priority for ETF Research Superiority Acquisition is given to proposals that involve scientific or technical fields that have a reasonable probability of enhancing the state's national and global economic competitiveness, may result in a medical or scientific breakthrough, are interdisciplinary, have or may attract federal and other outside funding for research superiority, and are likely to create a nationally or internationally recognized locus of research superiority.
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