Miguel Garcia-Diaz, an administrator, researcher and educator with more than 15 years of higher education experience, was named vice president for research, scholarship and innovation at the University of Delaware in the summer of 2024. We caught up with him to hear about his perspective on innovation happening at UD, and to chart a way forward amid federal funding uncertainty.
What does “innovation” mean to you, and how is that definition embodied by the work happening at UD?
I think there are multiple ways of defining innovation, but it’s core to what universities do. Innovation comes with every new idea. We tend to think about it in terms of IP and commercialization, but that’s not all there is to it.
One of the things that drove me to UD was realizing how embedded innovation is in everything that our faculty does. I think more than other places that I’ve been to, that spirit of “We want to do something new and creative” is really found everywhere.
What were your goals for this position when you first took it up, and how have they evolved over the past year?
I took this position at a time where UD had already undergone this transformation into a major research powerhouse, but I think that happened sort of in advance of the support structure that normally one will have in place beforehand.
My goal in many respects was to catch up the structure of the university with the reality of a major research powerhouse. A lot of that had to do with administrative support, compliance support — the more boring aspects of what a research university needs to do to allow its faculty to be successful.
One of the things I realized when I was researching the university was that we’ve underperformed a little bit when it comes to engaging with industry. UD is very diversified in terms of the research portfolio, but it was kind of obvious that the amount of investment coming from industry partners was not up to the level that one would have expected, based on the research prowess in general and also based on having such as strong College of Engineering, which is by its nature a bit more aligned with developing new IP.
The goal was to develop a strategy to enhance corporate engagement and develop partnerships between UD researchers and industry. One of the great things about having a major research university is that they serve as magnets for companies, especially companies that are invested in research and development — for a number of reasons, the simplest of which is workforce development. Another reason is the opportunity to engage in collaborations with the world experts that we have, and to take advantage of the instrumentation that universities maintain.
Have you seen some success in engaging more industry partners?
It’s baby steps. One thing that needs to happen is that we need to rationalize our approach to corporate engagement. Recently, the VP for corporate engagement was moved under the umbrella of the research office. I think that will lead to considerable synergy. One of the very successful units under research is the Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships (OEIP). That unit has really been driving a lot of our efforts to improve the innovation culture and ecosystem at the university.
It takes a little bit of change management to change the culture, but we’re working towards that. I think we’re really moving the needle, and Julius Korley at OEIP has done a lot of excellent work on that.
What are some of the achievements you’re most proud of so far in your tenure?
Universities have been historically somewhat hostile to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activities because they’re not covered very well in the traditional activities of faculty members, which are more centered on publishing papers or books. We don’t really know what to do with entrepreneurship in that context.
It’s been about a year now since the faculty senate adopted new guidelines for tenure that will recognize entrepreneurship as one of the factors that decide whether a faculty member should be granted tenure. Julius has been spearheading a lot of progress there as well, in harmonizing the policies of departments and colleges with this larger university policy.
I will point to another thing I was particularly proud of: we have this Inventors Recognition event and it was so well attended last fall. Sen. Coons came. It’s become such a high-profile event at the university, and to me that signals a change in culture. It sends the message the university really cares about this.
Another success is the NSF ART [Accelerating Research Translation] Grant, which the university received as part of the first cohort of universities selected. It’s an award that’s precisely meant to catalyze transformation in the innovation ecosystem. It’s supposed to support the growth of infrastructure for innovation and entrepreneurship.
What is your goal for the future of innovation at UD, especially at a time when there is a lot of uncertainty around federal funding for research?
There’s a lot of ways to answer that. On the one hand, I think the future of innovation at UD is safe. When I first came in, I tried to understand where the different grants were and saw that one of our NASA grants was in the fashion department. It seemed odd at first, but we have a collaboration with chemical engineering to develop new materials for spacesuits. That’s great, but you have to turn the material into something you can wear. That’s where fashion comes in.
So you have all this really wonderful interdisciplinary innovation, and I think you have an environment in the state of Delaware where it’s actually quite easy to develop ties and partnerships. For instance, we work closely with Delaware Bio. I come from New York, where this idea that you’ll be able to go in a room and find a who’s who of an industry, that just didn’t happen. But the climate here really supports that.
If you follow the news, there’s a lot of concern about certain areas of research, but those are not core science and technology areas for the most part, and one of our major catalysts is the College of Engineering. Those disciplines are less likely to be affected. I’m not trying to minimize the potential disruption, but I’m still optimistic that science and tech will be supported by the federal government.
Recognizing however that even though the funding won’t be entirely cut, there will be reductions in agency budgets, it’s more important that we think strategically and diversify our sources of funding. Instead of relying so much on federal funding, we need to consider if we can encourage our faculty to work more closely with industry. But also, how we can be easier to work with so that this engagement with companies is smoother and we are a partner that companies want to come and work with.
