If you’re good, why aren’t you a billionaire at one of those start-up companies?"

That was the unasked question Wen-mei Hwu sensed at a gathering of friends and family in the California Bay Area a few years ago. He could remember the same group being impressed a decade earlier when he introduced himself as a professor at the University of Illinois. Hwu is successful by every traditional measure: Recently named the Franklin Woeltge Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, his research is in high demand by industry, and he has advised more than 60 graduate students to successful completion of their degrees. He has received prestigious awards for teaching, research, and service.

Still, there was that sense of coming up short. A decade ago, few university professors envisioned being entrepreneurs, yet pressure to be successful in boardrooms as well as classrooms is mounting in some engineering fields, Hwu reported to the College of Engineering Advisory Board during the annual fall meeting.

"The news media have created a transition of prestige from academia to money. The new billionaires are portrayed as the bright people, as the elite of society," Hwu said.

"At the same time, recent trends at Stanford and MIT are for faculty members to take a leave of absence, start a business, make a great deal of money, and then go back to academia. It has become a peer pressure," he added, "and that mentality is propagating our way. But we’re in a different environment here, and a leave of absence can be stressful for faculty thinking about entrepreneurship as a short-term part of their career."

Hwu has served on committees working to enhance technology transfer and commercialization at the University of Illinois, testified at a state task force hearing, and met with company representatives interested in setting up research and development facilities. In addition, he has confronted many of the issues of faculty entrepreneurship first-hand. In the early 1990s, his research to solve key problems related to the application of instruction-level parallelism in high-performance microprocessors created a revolution in the computer industry. The IMPACT (Illinois Microarchitecture Project Utilizing Advanced Compiler Technology) research group grew out of that effort and, under Hwu’s direction, continues to deliver new, innovative compiler and architecture technologies to the computer industry. He briefly considered taking a leave of absence to create a start-up company in California.

"The tradeoffs are very difficult," he said. "The pivotal factor was realizing how much stress it caused for my students. They had committed to a five-year Ph.D. program to work with me and rightly expected me to be here for them."

For faculty members juggling entrepreneurship and academia, time is a critical problem. One day a week, which university guidelines allow for outside activity, is rarely enough to satisfy venture capitalists, Hwu said. During a leave of absence, a faculty member may be unable to keep up with advising students, renewing contracts, and other activities necessary to maintain research progress. In addition, junior faculty members who are focused on being successful in business may come up short on academic publications, which can adversely affect their academic careers as well as the prestige and rankings of the institution.

The second critical factor is lack of local resources. The local environment is improving, however, Hwu observed. In 2000, Governor George Ryan announced a $1.9 billion initiative to increase development through technology creation and commercialization. (See "VentureTech" in Engineering Outlook, Volume 40.) In addition, the university recently created a new office and is developing policies that address the potential tangle of intellectual property rights and patents. The intent is to help faculty be successful at technology transfer ventures.

"If anyone wants to start a company, they’ll likely be able to do so in a year or 18 months," he predicted. "The infrastructure will be in place by then."

The major problems left to resolve are attracting management talent and persuading engineers to stay in town after they graduate. "We can do something about the perception that this community has little to offer beyond the university," Hwu said, "but until true economic incentives reach a certain level, it will be difficult to attract management and marketing people.

"For a time, we’re going to have to work with ideas tailored to fit a model where the company doesn’t need a talented local marketing and management team," he suggested. "These kinds of new companies can build on a technical strength and connections with established companies and avoid confronting some of the marketing and management problems directly."

Finding the Right Fit

Many faculty members began developing connections with industry as the close of the Cold War brought an end to federal research funds and changed the economics of doing research. Researchers found themselves writing more grants to appeal to more sources for funding.

One problem with relying on industry grants, Hwu noted, is that these grants are rarely large enough to support such major initiatives as the 64-processor ILLIAC IV, the world’s first parallel (stored program) computer, or the Cedar project, which pioneered the use of clusters of commodity multiprocessors in a 32-processor supercomputer. In addition, industry often attaches expectations for funds to be used to solve particular problems and can be reluctant to support research that proposes sweeping, potentially costly change.

"The critical questions faculty have to ask are, ‘Where do I want to make my contributions? Should I fit into a current flow or stick my neck out and do something different?’" Hwu said. "These can be difficult questions in the current climate."

The social and economic forces reshaping the career paths of faculty members could also change the face of the faculty. With an increased emphasis on dynamic personalities suited to entrepreneurship and industry partnerships, the college is competing with business for the same kinds of people, Hwu pointed out. Tight industry job markets, the start-up company phenomenon, and increases in junior faculty salaries at peer institutions are driving salaries up and that may create different expectations for the new, more expensive hires.

These and other trends may leave little room for faculty who conduct the basic science that is critical for advancing a field of research, but which never shines on its own, or the "eccentric" professors who have a genius for solving certain problems but lack people skills. The need for new hires to prove their value right away may stifle the kind of research that pays off in 20 to 50 years or more.