UC Leads All Tristate Universities
In Patent Income

The latest national rankings for patent income show the University of Cincinnati cracking the $4 million level for the first time, the best performance among all universities in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

UC earned a record $4.7 million in income from university inventions, according to the fiscal year 2000 report just released by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). That figure was 33rd best nationally out of 138 academic institutions surveyed, and an improvement on UC's $3.9 million performance in fiscal year 1999.

"The big thing is we're still tops in Ohio and still tops in the Tristate. Given our level of sponsored research, I think we're doing extremely well," said Richard Kordal, UC's director of intellectual property.

UC's strong performance was impressive in light of the university only coming in at No. 62 in the AUTM rankings of total sponsored research expenditures. UC received approximately $137 million in sponsored research in fiscal 2000, which led to the filing of 66 invention disclosures. That disparity in expenditures versus income indicates a strong return-on-investment ratio of one disclosure to every $2.1 million funded.

"The general rule of thumb in this area is about one invention disclosure for roughly every $2.5 million in sponsored research," Kordal said. "So we're above average in that category."

The figure of 66 invention disclosures was up from 47 in fiscal 1999.

UC's research excellence is expected to continue into the future through developments such as Extreme Photonix, a start-up high-tech company developing the work of Andrew Steckl, an Ohio Eminent Scholar and Gieringer Professor of Solid State Microelectronics in the electrical and computer engineering and computer science department. In October, the company announced it had attracted research and development funding from Research Corporation Technologies of Tucson, Ariz.

UC's research growth continues to be reflected in the National Research Foundation's annual rankings. In the most recent survey released in January, UC is ranked 47th overall in federally funded research expenditures. That's up from 50th place the previous year. When public universities are compared, UC also moved up from 28th to 26th place nationally.