University of Florida gets a 1% cut of Gatorade profits
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UF had (has?) 3 major IP breadwinners, Gatorade, Sentricon termite bait, and a glaucoma drug. Likely as a result, they had a sophisticated IP licensing and commercialization operation. Later, when I went to Georgia Tech, I discovered their technology licensing services were rather amateur in comparison.
There was a time when University of Florida and Florida State University, both state schools, were top 10 ranked for revenue from technology licensure. A professor at Florida State first developed the synthetic chemistry for the drug Taxol.
Other schools were envious and there was pressure to release it. It's hot down there in the SEC.
By the time I got to the University they were starting to rake in the bucks on the Gatorade and there was an emerging culture where there was widespread pressure to "invent new things or new ways of making the same old things".
It didn't usually work out and has long since faded, but it was an exciting time, not exactly shared by other universities, even some of the most prestigious.
This was quite strong in the Chemistry department where competition was very fierce in this respect, which could be seen as unsustainable at the time.
So when I was still a teenager I realized it was already too late and there would have to be a way to own my own inventions other than academic research, that had to be crossed off the list early.
It looked like a pretty smooth track but it was not headed where I wanted to go.
Therefore no PhD, no Bell Labs, no IBM, etc.
I forked early without resources which always seems premature, but in hindsight it was almost already too late for entrepreneurial effort alone to allow me to later launch without outside capital.
Interestingly, none of the other most lucrative university royalties today are nearly as many decades old as Gatorade.
If they haven't got bottled water then potable water is OK too, just need to carry an empty Gatorade bottle in the truck.
I guess Amazon workers would need two empty Gatorade bottles then, and really need to keep track of which is which.
Really - there's almost zero potassium at all in the current formulation...pretty small amounts of sodium too. It just sugar water. Now you need to buy something like "Electrolit" to use for what Gatorade used to be. Or the "Gatorade Endurance Formula".
As long as it's 50% diluted, it's still as good as all of the more modern products for most use cases.
Then, when Robert Cade commercialized it and demonstrated sales, they sued him for a cut. The two parties settled on 20% for UF, plus reinvestment of some of the proceeds in Cade's research at the school. [0]
So apparently all schools are amateur at commercialization. UF just has more experience than most.
And generally, it seems like most universities do better spinning applied research and licensure off into an associated organization, who can focus on that. E.g. Ames, Argonne, JPL, LLNL, Lincoln Lab, ORNL
Someone once told me that no one gives a shit about your IP until you start making money.
If you start making money, then people will remember one of the following: a) your patent is invalid because they discovered it before you or b) they helped you with your discovery and they deserve a slice.
Using the "Gator" trademark entitles UF to a slice.
The professor that originally created the buckey ball (forerunner to carbon nano tubes) was at a community College, and he didn't realize what he had done. Then a nearby university (the one you are thinking of) saw his research and recognized what was happening - so they bought it and expanded it. The university professors eventually got a Nobel prize out of it.
I knew an engineering professor at a large state school with a renowned engineering program and one of his biggest complaints was how incompetent the licensing/commercialization office was at the school compared with, say, Stanford.
[0] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/07/21/university-of-flori...
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/h...
Because UF fucked up the Gatorade deal so badly.
I went to UF and worked for a seed investment fund that spun technology out of UF's research labs (and later one of their portfolio companies).
Their research to company pipeline is a beast because they're deathly afraid of making that mistake again.
It looks like they have minus grades again, but I can't find any sources online - this was in the 2000's.
Also, it looks like the "New Engineering Building" is now just "Engineering Building". Maybe naming rights are still available if someone wants to donate a few million?
NEB is still called NEB or the "ECE" building along with Larson/Benton Halls.
There is the new Herbert Wertheim Engineering Lab which is the "New"est Engineering Building. The Malachowsky Data Science Building is under construction south of the Reitz Union, replacing the parking lot at the top of the Center Drive hill.
Source: Finished masters in 2019.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBctnZ2phUw
[2] https://bora.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bora_StanfordHuan...
I considered going to a college that used a non-linear grading system: you’d receive an in depth essay explaining your strengths and weaknesses.
They would still create a standard lettered grade, but they would not give it to you unless you asked, and they advised you not to ask.
It was implied they needed to create the lettered grade to comply with some regulation - possible to show there was no racial bias? Not sure.
New College, Nova University, and FAU were considered to be the destinations for the experimental high school students who attended the original Nova from 7th through 12th grade. The high school had a bizarre stanine grading system that could not directly translate to mainstream ratings.
This was years before they invented "Middle School" for everyone else to replace Junior High.
I interpreted that move as more internal politics. The EE and CISE programs for "doing computer stuff" compete with each other for dollars and mindshare. The squishyness of the CS tracks (there's an engineering and a liberal-arts track both) also complicates the picture.
My angle is, the reasons quoted to the press for any of these decisions is a deliberate fabrication. Don't make inferences about how the university functions from the press releases. It might be different at other multibillion-dollar businesses, but somehow I expect not.
And here is a video of the announcement:
Basically the gap in demand is huge, but the gap in funding can never be proportionate because it would mean other departments barely get anything. So the CS department is perpetually underfunded, but e.g. the philosophy department probably has more money than it really needs based on natural demand (demand is artificially propped up by required courses)
In fact in recent years, CISE has really helped to propel UF. See: [https://news.ufl.edu/2021/06/top500-rankings/].
https://catalog.ufl.edu/UGRD/colleges-schools/UGENG/CPS_BSCS...
Go Gators!
If you deal in any kind of bulk good, you will typically sign a contract with your distributor with some sort of terms.
Note that that no doubt will include the products of the companies that now have the monopoly.
Coke Pepsi Diet Coke Diet Pepsi
etc
Center for Latin American Studies Director is around $210K - Carlos De La Torre Espinosa.
Others make a lot more - would be curious if this includes some type of payout that is not standard
UF DAVID NELSON PROFESSOR $957,900.00 UF BRIAN HOH PROFESSOR $942,946.10 UF LEON HALEY PROFESSOR $874,750.00 UCF DEBORAH GERMAN PROFESSOR $850,000.00 UF THIAGO BEDUSCHI PROFESSOR $830,000.00 UF MARK SCARBOROUGH PROFESSOR $812,528.74 UF TOMAS MARTIN PROFESSOR $801,940.00 UF GILES PEEK PROFESSOR $781,740.00 UF PHILIPP ALDANA PROFESSOR $750,236.01 UF WESLEY FUCHS PROFESSOR $731,587.09 UF THOMAS BEAVER PROFESSOR $705,956.38 UF PAUL DOUGHERTY PROFESSOR $702,960.00
Your argument is akin to saying that poverty isn't an issue in the U.S. because Bill Gates.
Somewhere in between, full-time lecturers (called "instructional professors" these days?) were and still are exceedingly rare (albeit probably safe to assert all ECE alumni of roughly the past 2 decades were Schwartz'd and/or Gugel'd in some capacity).
The fancy/official term for this is usually Lecturer. It’s a permanent position that’s usually not equal to professor in power and prestige, but it’s permanent, the pay can be good and you don’t have any expectation of research.
Graduate students and adjunct professors have largely taken over this responsibility because they are much cheaper.
Not sure about that[1], but acknowledged.
Graduate TAs were par for any course with a lab component or recitation, even courses that were taught by a lecturer; never felt like I was somehow being shorted opportunity in those though. It's the infamous adjunct part that my experience draws a blank on.
[1] https://fora.aa.ufl.edu/docs/10/2019-2020/Faculty%20Senate%2...
Either way, unless you eliminate government subsidies, education is paid for by getting a cut on the productive industries. I in fact prefer the UF getting royalties from juice, because at least they earned it.
Regardless, $20m split tens of thousands of ways also doesn't go very far. On the order of like $300 per person per year.