Look up “future shock.” Futurist Alvin Toffler’s two words don’t come with positive meanings. Fear of the future. Too much change, too fast. Causing psychological paralysis for individuals and entire societies. Debilitating stress and disorientation.
But right here at Wichita State, our own Shocker futurists — scientists and engineers, teachers and entrepreneurs — are working on making our collective future better for all. In essence, they’re redefining the term future shock.
WSU innovators have already thought up ways to neutralize the ill-effects of anthrax and to deliver cancer-fighting drugs directly to cancer cells in the body — and those are just two examples of available technologies brought to you by Wichita State, with assistance from the technology transfer team of experts at WSU Ventures, led by Cindy Claycomb ’79/91.
“Right now,” says Claycomb, who was tapped to serve as director of the newly formed WSU Ventures this past September, “we’re standing up a whole new organization. That’s just exciting.” Claycomb’s new position lands her in the perfect environment to fit her professional skills and work history: a forward-looking, innovation-focused, university-technology-business ecosystem of interconnecting individuals and organizations — with WSU Ventures right at the heart of the network of interactions. In other words, right in the middle of Wichita State’s emerging Innovation Campus.
“My office overlooks the golf course, and I can see the Wheatshocker Apartments coming down,” says Claycomb, who offices on the third floor of the National Institute for Aviation Research located in the southeastern quarter of campus, the section of campus occupied by the recently closed Braeburn Golf Course and targeted for a complex of Innovation Campus construction projects that could result in more than a dozen new buildings at WSU over the next 20 years — all of them tied to the university’s mission as “an essential educational, cultural and economic driver for Kansas and the greater public good.”
The now demolished Wheatshocker Apartments, a former dormitory that had been standing vacant, is making room for an experiential engineering building projected to help cement Wichita State’s standing as a model for applied learning and research; construction is set to begin early in 2015. Other buildings deemed likely to go up in the first five years of Innovation Campus growth include partnership buildings, those built with private funds, and a new home for the W. Frank Barton School of Business.
Strategically Minded
Claycomb, who had just finished a stint as interim director of the Barton School of Business when named director of WSU Ventures, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from the school, as well as a PhD from Oklahoma State.
She put in 12 years of working in business — at Boeing, where she gained experience as a budget analyst for the company’s computer services operation; then at Pizza Hut, where she managed the accounts payable department, the corporate finance customer service center and served as corporate budget manager over the course of her decade with the company — before redirecting her career focus to higher education.
“I worked on my MBA from Wichita State at night during my last five years at Pizza Hut — Pizza Hut paid for that,” Claycomb says. “I liked being in the business world, and I really liked the university environment.” Why? Because in both worlds, she says, “it’s never boring. There’s always change.”
Encouraged to continue her education at the doctoral level by one of her WSU teachers and mentors, Robert Ross, now an associate professor of marketing, Claycomb received a doctorate from OSU in 1995; her dissertation was in the area of market-based learning organizations. The year before, she had joined WSU’s faculty as an assistant professor of marketing and entrepreneurship. Promoted to associate professor in 2000, she became a full professor in 2006.
“What I like most about teaching,” Claycomb says, “is being around young people. They keep everything fresh and new.” She has taught courses in services marketing, retail management and principles of online marketing, among many others, and has earned numerous teaching accolades, including the 2003 Award for Leadership in the Advancement of Teaching presented by the WSU Board of Trustees. In 2004, she was awarded a teaching fellowship and became the Neff Family Fellow in Business.
It was in June 2013 that WSU President John Bardo appointed her interim dean of the business school; the year before that Bardo had called on the native Wichitan to co-chair the university’s strategic planning committee, whose members oversaw the yearlong process of mapping out Wichita State’s future direction.
The result was a bold plan that emphasizes applied learning and research, with interlocking goals of developing an interdisciplinary curriculum and accelerating the transfer of new knowledge, the latter of which WSU Ventures is custom-made to assist with accomplishing.
“To fuel innovation and economic growth in Wichita and Kansas, we have to recognize and encourage innovation and technology transfer at Wichita State. That is WSU Ventures’ role,” says John Tomblin, whose responsibilities as WSU vice president for research and technology transfer and as executive director of NIAR extend to include oversight of WSU Ventures.
He adds, “With the exception of President Bardo, Cindy Claycomb probably understands the university’s strategic plan better than anyone at the university. This, in addition to her experience and knowledge in business and marketing and her relationships with community members, makes her the right person to lead WSU Ventures.”
Ross, Claycomb’s mentor and current president of the WSU Faculty Senate, agrees. “From the time over 25 years ago when Cindy was a student in my MBA Marketing Strategy course, I have always marveled at her organizational skills, her intellect, and her strong worth ethic,” he says. “Serving as her department chair for the first eight years of her time on the faculty here, I had a chance to see her intellect and organizational skills demonstrated in the approach that she took to her teaching, research and service agendas. I have no doubt that she will accomplish great things as the head of WSU Ventures.”
The strategically minded Claycomb notes that for the Innovation Campus to become not only a reality but also the productive ecosystem it has the potential to be, it will take buy-in and “hard, adaptive work” from all quarters of the university community.
As head of WSU Ventures, as well as in her second role as assistant to President Bardo with responsibility for strategic planning, she’s up for the challenge. “Every day I wake up ready to go,” she says. “Our mission at WSU Ventures is to leverage all of the resources and people at Wichita State — to make them successful. That is what we’re charged with.”
Venturing Forth
Joining Tomblin and Claycomb at WSU Ventures are Sherry Gegen, who works with small to medium-size businesses; Becky Hundley, who handles intellectual property and licensing; Debra Franklin ’07, who develops proposals for grants and contracts (“big, game-changer grants,” as Claycomb puts it); Tracee Friess ’05, who deals with communication and publicity initiatives; and Peter Perna, founder and managing director of the tech consulting firm Alpine Strategy Group, who leads enterprise development and corporate engagement efforts.
This group of experts, Claycomb reports, works together to assist Wichita State faculty, staff and students with, as the new organization’s website phrases it, “applying and commercializing their collective ideas, intellectual properties, know-how, talents, capabilities, ambitions and energies” for the benefit of the university community, industry and for the public good.
More specifically, WSU Ventures engages in three interlinked enterprises: protecting and licensing Wichita State inventions and innovations; connecting businesses and industry with Wichita State researchers; and hooking up WSU researchers and technologies that have startup potential with investors and entrepreneurs.
Ross describes WSU Ventures as a “logical next step in Wichita State’s evolution as an economic driver for the state of Kansas.” He adds, “Utilizing WSU Ventures as a platform will allow the effective development of a portfolio of applications of new technology and new creativity from across campus. The launching of this organization places WSU in line with other similar universities focused on developing the building blocks of economic and creative growth for a region.”
Right now, WSU Ventures boasts four available technologies developed at Wichita State and ripe for the right investors or developers. Each of the innovations, Claycomb says, has unique potential for further development and/or commercialization. “Let me tell you about them,” she says. “There’s the Comprehensive Electronic Data Reporting System (CEDRS). So this is targeted at colleges of education to help with assessment and accreditation processes.”
CEDRS offers a significant decrease in the staff time required to prepare reports in support of accreditation, plus other efficiencies.
“Magnetic Nanocomposite Drug Delivery — this is really cool,” she says. “Researchers at Wichita State have developed a new way to use magnetic nanocomposites to deliver therapeutic drugs to targeted parts of the body. When you have chemotherapy, the drugs used to fight the cancer go throughout the body, hurting the good as well as the bad things. This delivery system targets only the bad, and has shown promise in reducing the side effects of chemotherapy and in the treatment of both skin and breast cancers.” In addition to fighting cancer, the drug delivery system can be used to treat inflammation, such as arthritis.
To date, WSU researchers have seen positive results for the nanocomposite drug delivery system in both in vitro studies, using petri dishes and test tubes, and in vivo studies, using mice, in testing conducted on campus at WSU’s Nanotechnology Research Lab, which was the first of its kind in Kansas when it was started by WSU associate professor of mechanical engineering Ramazan Asmatulu in 2006. The researchers, assisted through WSU Ventures, are seeking a patent for the process as a prelude to human testing.
“Another of our available technologies is a new anthrax antitoxin and vaccine,” Claycomb continues. Anthrax, a disease caused by spores of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus anthraces, has a mortality rate in untreated cases of the inhaled form of the disease of almost 100 percent.
This dire statistic was a spur to Wichita State researchers, including associate professor of biochemistry Jim Bann, in their efforts to develop a defense and an antidote to the disease. After lab testing demonstrated that the amino acid fluorohistidine shielded cells from the anthrax pathogen’s ability to produce toxins within infected cells, Bann received a patent.
Now, Claycomb says, this innovative countermeasure to anthrax is ready for further testing, testing that will require a special lab not currently available at Wichita State. Helping find such a lab to partner with the WSU innovators is, she notes, another good example of the ongoing work at WSU Ventures.
“The High Performance, Fast-Setting Composite Article for Improved Stabilization — we’re looking to license this technology,” she says. “This moldable material feels like little pellets in a cloth. When you pull a tab, it forms to, for example, a broken limb or to all kinds of other things – to almost anything that needs support or stabilization in a customized form.”
Developed by researchers at WSU’s Center of Innovation for Biomaterials and Orthopaedic Research (CIBOR), this innovation has particular commercial potential as a field splint, to be deployed on the battlefield or at the scene of accidents.
Perhaps the best part about this impressive quartet of available technologies through WSU Ventures is, Claycomb says, is that it’s only the beginning.
Emerging Technologies
“I don’t like to be bored,” Claycomb says, an avid bicyclist and former runner who is a past president of the Wichita Running Club. She and her husband, Charlie, are both Shocker sports fans, especially of the volleyball team, and they enjoy traveling — being on the move, seeing new things.
From her vantage point as director of WSU Ventures, coupled with her unique perspective as assistant to the president for strategic planning, Claycomb has a grand view of Wichita State-developed new things, and she’s anything but bored in her dual roles at the university.
Soon to emerge from their incubators in Wichita State labs and research centers are myriad innovations and inventions ready for commercial development or application.
“I’ll share a couple of our emerging technologies with you,” Claycomb says, a touch of anticipation evident in her voice. “Wichita State researchers have developed an energy-absorbing seat, one that could save lives. When a helicopter crashes, a Humvee gets hit by an explosive device, or in a heavy-duty crane accident, for example, your spine can take only so much compression. This seat stops that rapid compression that can shake the brain and cause death. The developers have this licensed for use in a fixed-wing aircraft — but there are so many other potential applications.”
Another of the emerging technologies, sounding not far removed from pure science fiction, is self-healing composite materials. “This technology,” Claycomb reports, “is applicable to airplanes, wind turbine blades, just about anything made of composites that can get cracks in it.”
Even if this self-healing technology were developed for application in only the manufacture of wind turbine blades, researchers in WSU’s mechanical engineering department projected in 2012 that such development would create 25 new jobs in five years and 250 new jobs in the next decade.
In microcosm, that example of a WSU innovation spurring economic growth and technological progress that will benefit the university and the wider community as well is precisely what Wichita State’s developing Innovation Campus is all about.
Claycomb sees Bardo and Tomblin as two of the key architects of the university’s changing landscape, culture and outlook. “I work for two of the people who are changing the face of the university,” she says. “President Bardo understands the details, but gives you all the freedom to accomplish the end goal. That’s an amazing combination. And John Tomblin is a very visionary person. He can see where we want to go — plus, he’s just totally full of energy.”
“Together,” Claycomb adds, “we really are trying to create an ecosystem where we engage everyone who wants to be part of this.”
Innovation Ecosystem
One of Claycomb’s own award-winning research pursuits won her a trip in 1992 to Karlstad, Sweden, where as co-author she presented “On Consumer and Managerial Judgments of Product Quality and Satisfaction: The Marketing Lens Model.” The paper explores how different perspectives, how looking through a different set of lenses — to broaden the point well beyond its intended meanings in marketing research — can redefine a person’s outlook on, let’s say, the future.
Go ahead, think “future shock.”
No more fear of anthrax. Positive, inclusive change. Innovative thinking, productive action. Time-saving efficiencies in education and at work. Life-saving and disease-defeating products. Self-healing technologies.
Go on, Wichita State, bring on the future shocks.
