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Secat Featured in WUKY Interview with Dr. Lee Todd About Academic-Industry Collaboratives
07/15/2005
UK Perspectives: WUKY
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Tom Godell: Welcome to UK Perspectives with UK President Lee Todd. I'm Tom Godell.
Last time we talked about UK's new Commonwealth Collaboratives.
UK has been involved with a lot of different collaboratives with different industries for many years,
and today I'd like to focus on one of them that's called SECAT.
Dr. Todd: It's a very interesting arrangement. It was established in 1999, and it's dedicated to
research and development of innovative technologies and products for the aluminum and automotive
industry. It's a collaboration among our researchers and Kentucky's aluminum industry, which is
pretty powerful in this state. The board is actually made up of the executives of the aluminum
industry, and they come together and talk to our researchers and Subodh Das, who heads this,
about what their problems are in their industry that are common to all of them.
TG: I can understand why UK would be involved in the equine industry, but why aluminum?
Dr. Todd: It's an interesting thing. I don't know if you knew it or not, but two aluminum cans out
of every six-pack sold in the United States are produced right here in Kentucky. And it has a strong
presence, providing many jobs and opportunities for Kentuckians throughout the state, providing
about 18,000 Kentuckians with income from this industry. And so it's one of our great power users,
and that's one of the reasons they're here, because of the low cost of power in Kentucky, and the
accessibility of riverways, but it's one that a lot of people just don't know about, and it's one
that's crucial for us, if we're going to continue to have the kind of income and revenue streams
for the state of Kentucky.
TG: Tell us a bit more about how this partnership between UK and the aluminum industry is working.
Dr. Todd: They come in with a set of problems that they have in common. They could be in some
environmental area, some noise controls, some thermal properties that they all face. It's kind of
an interesting example of what Andy Grove, when he was CEO at Intel, used to call "co-opetition."
Sometimes it's smart for them to cooperate, and they do that through SECAT, but in some other cases,
they compete for business. I've been amazed at the board meetings I've sat in. We have some of the
leading executives in this state who sit around the table and try to look at problems, and they've
helped us tremendously, because we've made the Department of Energy proposals with their support to
bring in grant money. I think six million dollars was the most recent grant, to look at how we can
improve aluminum recycling for the whole industry, and that would help America. We've made a
proposal, too, to the Sloan Center Foundation, to become a Sloan Center of Excellence in aluminum.
There are only 15 universities in the nation that have Sloan Centers. MIT, Carnegie Mellon,
Pittsburgh, Georgia Tech, Purdue, those types of technology schools - and we now are one of them.
TG: You talked about this initiative allowing the aluminum industry to both compete and collaborate
at the same time. Does the fact that this initiative is coming from the University of Kentucky mean
that there are no concerns about the anti-trust rules?
Dr. Todd: I think, Tom, that's interesting. Universities have the right, and are known to bring
people together, for summit meetings, for conversations. And I think you bring the folks in under
an academic umbrella, and even though they're talking about their business problems, they find that
a different environment than what they typically have, and so it does lend to a much broader
conversation, and one that we feel helps everybody involved. And we can also allow them to do
separate contracts. If they want something proprietary done, they can write a separate contract
for us, and we'll do that, and that will be exclusively the property of that company.
And so it's really a broad-based initiative, it's something we want to emulate across the university.
TG: I was going to ask that - is this something that can be duplicated elsewhere on campus?
Dr. Todd: It is. We're looking at a painting consortium right now that would involve most of the
major automotive companies, and so that, and also with the equine industry, a collaborative where
you bring the thoroughbred owners, the saddlebred owners together to talk about problems like MRLS
that affect all of them. And then we as a university convene the group and do research to help solve
that problem.
TG: Thank you very much, President Todd. You've been listening once again to UK Perspectives
with President Lee Todd. For WUKY radio, I'm Tom Godell.
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