Panning for patents

Tampa biologist Paul Sanberg, with expertise in stem cell research, has spent the better part of two decades on a mission far from his normal objectives.

Sanberg's aim is to alter an institution not known to accept change with any sense of urgency: academia.

The focus is on the University of South Florida, where Sanberg is a vice president of research and innovation. His goal has been to prod professors, and by extension, students, into pursuing research and inventions that have marketable, practical and moneymaking possibilities. “When I first got here,” says Sanberg, who holds 100 health-related patents worldwide, “it was all about getting grants and publish-or-perish.”