When David Deamer, professor emeritus at Baskin Engineering, applied for funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop nanopore sequencing technology, his invention had scores of doubters. The NIH even brought in two Nobel laureates to determine if the laws of physics agreed that the concept was feasible.
With NIH support, Deamer brought on Mark Akeson, now professor emeritus, and together their team refined the daring idea from paper to prototype. When patented and licensed, the technology was brought to market in 2014 for the amazingly low price of $1,000, and nanopore sequencing went on to democratize DNA research and fundamentally change our understanding of human genetics. Without that early government investment, the idea may have never been developed, and commercialization of a brilliant technology may never have been possible.
This story reflects how the U.S. innovation ecosystem has long been fueled by federal government investment, providing the essential resources for new ideas—the good, the bad, the revolutionary—to surface and undergo a filtering that is remarkably cost effective.
This crucial filtering phase enables industry to “outsource” the risk of bluesky ideation to government-funded university research, eventually bringing only the most promising ideas to market and setting off a chain reaction of economic growth, growth that the government then taxes and uses to fund new rounds of university research investment. And this model has long paid off—California, and the U.S. at large, have been global leaders in innovation for decades due in large part to the government-university-industry ecosystem.
This ecosystem is now under threat. The UC system, and other universities across the country are pushing hard to restore federal government funding. Ideally, our advocacy pays off such that sufficient levels of research funding continue to reach universities in support of basic research. Because, without federal support, it’s not just our researchers and students who will suffer—it’s industry, too, and the wider economy and society.
But if the government continues to take itself out the equation, who will step up to fund experimentation into the next big idea?
It may well be left to academia and industry to jointly reimagine what a new university research funding environment may look like, one that will sustain innovation and economic development with reduced federal government support. Will state-level investments, like that proposed by state Sen. Scott Weiner, fill the gaps? Can we fortify and expand partnerships between academia and industry so that promising research can advance, talented students are equipped to solve real-world challenges, and innovation can continue?
This is a crucial moment to put our heads together to address this very real challenge, and I invite all of us in the wider Baskin Engineering community—and our partners in government and industry—to be part of that conversation.
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