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TBEIC, KSU Announce Master Research Agreement
WARREN, Ohio – A new agreement between Kent State University and the Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center will expand the resources TBEIC can offer a company interested in partnering with it, officials say.
KSU and the Warren-headquartered TBEIC announced Wednesday the signing of a master research agreement for energy-related research.
“We are very pleased to enter into this agreement as a part of our partnership with TBEIC,” said Grant McGimpsey, vice president of research at KSU. “Kent State has a strong interest in developing new collaborations in the energy and clean-tech space, and TBEIC is a great platform to complement our efforts.”
The agreement encourages TBEIC-supported companies and KSU to conduct collaborative research and to commercialize new intellectual property derived from their work.
“This agreement lets TBEIC focus on the true value-added work, rather than on negotiating separate contracts for each collaboration,” said Ted Theofrastous, TBEIC’s general counsel and chief innovation officer. “And, it will help accelerate the process of bringing new, innovative and potentially game-changing ideas developed here in Northeast Ohio to market.”
Dave Nestic, chief executive, regional operations, for TBEIC, says the master research agreement with KSU "broadens the scope of resources that we could bring to the table. If a company wants to access resources at Kent State and their research faculty, it enables them to have an agreement with TBEIC so we can bring in resources from Kent State to work on research projects. It increases the collaborations we can help form for companies by having this agreement in place.”
Additionally, the master research agreement increases the interaction between TBEIC and KSU and allows them to jointly pursue research projects, Nestic said. “All the pre-negotiation of the terms, all that's in place, and it greatly speeds up the process of defining research and defining the scope of work and who owns what at the outset of the project,” he said.
The kinds of research and projects to be pursued at TBEIC could vary, Nestic said. “Kent has a research focus in the energy area so there might be some smart grid-related work,” or it could be related to sensors, software or water, he added.
When that work would get under way will hopefully be clearer in the next few weeks. TBEIC is awaiting approval by the U.S. Department of Energy, which provided a $2.2 million grant, for renovation of the Courthouse Square building where it will operate.
“We’re through the design phases of the building and we have our actual designs and renderings of what the space is going to look like,” Nestic said. “We’re hopefully just weeks away from getting complete approval on the construction. We can’t swing hammers until the DOE actually gives that approval because then we’d be at risk on the funding, but we’ve been assured that that process is going smoothly and that we should just be a couple weeks away from getting full approval.”
If that approval comes soon, the renovation work should get under way in time for operations in the TBEIC building to begin by later this year or early 2014, Nestic said. In the meantime, TBEIC’s partnership with KSU should allow some work to take place at the Trumbull Campus’ Technology Building. KSU is “very interested in working with us on that, and we’re going through the process of identifying work and lining it up for getting it started before the [TBEIC] building even opens,” he said.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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