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Partnership Opportunities

Work With Researchers Who Understand The Value of Public-Private Partnerships

The purpose-driven research community at Iowa State understands the value of collaboration across disciplines and with partners outside of the university. We know meaningful innovation that drives economic development and benefits society doesn’t happen in a vacuum. That’s why we prioritize and have a proven track record of forging productive partnerships with industry collaborators and commodity organizations.

Over the past five fiscal years, Iowa State research has yielded:

  • 715 total intellectual property disclosures;
  • 634 total filed patent applications;
  • 160 total patents awarded;
  • 312 total executed license and option agreements on institutional intellectual property;
  • 152 executed license and option agreements on institutional intellectual property within Iowa; and
  • A total of $65.7 million in revenue to Iowa companies as a result of licensed technology.

These results help illustrate why year in and year out more than 150 companies invest millions of dollars in research at Iowa State.

Productive Partnerships

Here are just a handful of the many public-private partnerships Iowa State and the university’s research community have forged to advance innovation and technology transfer.

  • Iowa State is taking a lead role, working with the state and industry to build innovation ecosystems in three key platforms in Iowa’s Bioscience-focused economic development initiatives. Click here to learn more about Iowa State’s work in the Biosciences arena.
  • John Deere – a long-standing research partner and collaborator – has invested in Iowa State research focused on areas that include precision agriculture, telematics data analytics, next-generation machinery automation and hybrid manufacturing. In 2019, the company opened the new John Deere Technology Innovation Center – Ames Lab in the ISU Research Park.
  • An ongoing Iowa State collaboration with Argo Genesis Chemical – and parent company, Seneca Petroleum – and the United Soybean Board is yielding promising new polymers derived from high-oleic soybean oil that can be used in the asphalt industry and many other products and markets that use thermoplastic elastomers. The Seneca Petroleum/Iowa State partnership received the 2021 Cooperative Research Award in Polymer Science and Engineering from the American Chemistry Society, Division of Polymeric Materials. The award is given each year to recognize cooperative research between industrial and academic or industrial and national laboratory scientists.
  • AbbVie – a global research and development-based biopharmaceutical company – is the first to collaborate with Iowa State’s Center for Multiphase Flow Research and Education (CoMFRE) through the College of Engineering. AbbVie’s researchers are working with CoMFRE to enhance fundamental understanding of granular flows encountered in manufacturing processes.
  • The new Kent Corporation Feed Mill and Grain Science Complex – with support from the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, Sukup Manufacturing Co. and California Pellet Mill – will be a state-of-the-art research and teaching facility when opened in 2021.
  • The Boeing Undergraduate Research Experiences program partners College of Engineering students with faculty members and Boeing engineers in cutting-edge research projects in aerospace engineering, cyber security, autonomous systems, machine learning and more.

Connect With Us

Contact Vice President for Research Peter Dorhout at dorhout@iastate.edu or 515-294-1785 to discuss opportunities to partner with researchers. Consider these additional resources as well: