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THINK THE WORLD will beat a path to your door if you build a better mousetrap? Think again.

In today's world, even developing a revolutionary treatment for malaria—as PSU chemistry professor David Peyton is doing—is no guarantee that anyone will come calling.

Whether it's a medical breakthrough or implementing an innovative approach to learning—such as the work of Applied Linguistics Chair Steve Reder—getting a better mousetrap into the hands of the people who can use it is no snap.

Patents need to be filed, business agreements made, and intellectual property protected. If you're not a business maven, it gets complicated and in Peyton's case, expensive. Just filing for a patent can cost $15,000.

Enter the new PSU Innovation and Industry Alliances (IIA) program. It takes on the role of business consultant, helping professors get whatever their particular project needs—funding, patents, and/or business partners—to turn their research ideas into something the public can use. Any royalties are split among Portland State, the department, and the inventor or project.

"The goal," says Dana Bostrom, IIA director, "is to maximize the impact of the research for the public good."

Rethinking malaria

Researchers have sought a cure for malaria for more than 50 years, but still the parasite kills between one to three million people every year—mostly children and pregnant women.

Some drugs have temporarily stopped the parasite, but the one-celled critter always adapts, becoming resistant. How?

A major way is an internal "pump" that quickly learns to recognize and then eject drugs out of the malaria cell.

David Peyton (right), professor of chemistry, has discovered a way to turn off this pump, and since a lot of infectious diseases have the same pumping mechanisms, his approach has the potential for helping rid the world of some serious scourges.

Early results are stunning, but Peyton is quick to point out that more testing is needed. "We can cure malaria in mice," he says, but "between here and the goal there's a lot to go wrong."

The question is, how to get this potential treatment into the hands of people who can deliver doses to the corners of the world where it's needed.

With the help of IIA, Peyton is patenting the process and establishing DesignMedix, Inc., a startup company that will finish lab testing, then contract with appropriate partner organizations to complete the testing in animals and humans. Establishing a company allows Peyton to apply for a wider variety of grants, hire scientists, and provide a legal entity for licensing the technology to a pharmaceutical company.

Peyton hopes to have the drug ready for human trials in two to four years. "The endgame," he says, "is to do something real with this research. Something real and good."

Sticking points

If you've ever painted house trim, you know how important it is to prep the surface. Too smooth and your new paint won't stick. Too rough and the new paint quickly chips off.

Mingdi Yan (left) does something similar—except that she's working on the nano level—75 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

Yan, professor of chemistry, uses a laser and light-sensitive chemical to change the surface of a material so that one thing will stick to another. This may sound ordinary, but the range of applications for the technology is vast and exciting.

For example, scientists are looking at ways to change the surface properties of implants so the body doesn't reject them, at how to keep barnacles from growing on ships and submarines, and even ways to coat microchips so they can recognize biological materials.

"There are so many applications," says Yan, of surface-altering research. "It would be a waste to not pursue them." But Yan, who helped start and run a biomedical company in the 1990s, knows that spending hours and hours outside the lab for everything from talking with investors to dealing with vendors is not for her.

Enter IIA, which helped Yan license an application to SurfaceSolutionS, a Swiss company. Yan is helping the company find ways to make contact lenses more comfortable through changes in their surfaces.

Licensing helps move Yan's research from the lab to the production line.

"I prefer research," says Yan. "Generating new ideas, working with graduate students, publishing—that's my passion.

Blueprint for learning

While conducting a nine-year study of 1,000 Portland area high school dropouts, Steve Reder (right), chairman of Applied Linguistics, and his colleagues discovered something surprising. More than half of the dropouts were trying on their own to improve their reading, writing, or math skills.

They had the desire and motivation, but lacked the know-how to reach their goals. One dropout, for instance, wanted to become a doctor, but she didn't realize she had to go to college before med school.

Reder figured that if students had a simple online blueprint to help them reach specific goals, they could apply their desire and motivation with better results.

So he developed Learner Web (www.learnerweb.org), which offers specific, self-paced learner plans. For instance, how to get a GED or improve your reading or get the skills for a particular job. Each step-by-step learner plan includes links to online and community-based resources such as classes and tutors.

Last fall, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Reder a grant to conduct a three-year demonstration project with seven partners nationwide-from the Boston Public Library to the New Jersey State Employment and Training Consortium. Each partner will develop learner plans to meet the needs of their community and links to local resources.

This fall, Reder will develop a learner plan for Portland State applied linguistics majors and freshmen and transfer students in the University Studies program.

As the idea spreads, Reder hopes that communities will adopt and adapt the idea--creating a site for their local student needs with appropriate resources.

To that end, he's working with IIA to develop licenses to first, preserve the standard of quality of a learner plan, so that anyone who puts up a learner plan site meets the quality of the original. Secondly, he wants to protect the open source software so others can use it to develop sites. And thirdly, he wants to protect the content submitted to the site.

Reder hopes the protections will make it easier to get others on board. "We're trying to give this away," says Reder, "so when the grant goes away, the program keeps going."

Melissa Steineger, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the article "Women Leaders in the Making" for the spring 2008 Portland State Magazine.

Oregon-based photographer Kelly James is a frequent contributor to Portland State Magazine.

Paying for it all

Looking for a way to launch promising new technologies and ideas out of a university lab and into the world, the Oregon Legislature recently set up a tax credit program called the University Venture Development Fund.

It works like this: Any individual or company that pays taxes in Oregon can make a donation to an Oregon university and receive a state tax credit for up to 60 percent of the donation. In addition, federal charitable deductions may apply.

For donations made to Portland State, the University will distribute funds through an advisory committee. Professors will then be able to use the money to develop prototypes, promote their ideas at conferences or events, or launch startup companies to get an idea from the campus to the marketplace.