The Promise and the Payoff. UNAM’s Research Partnership with the Discovery Partners Institute

In late 2022, only a month after the University of Illinois System (UIS) opened its first international office in UNAM, on the University City campus, both institutions launched a new cross-border program. With equal investments of one hundred thousand dollars they provided seed funding for five jointly conducted research projects in food, health, energy, water and the environment.

Enrique Graue Wiechers, UNAM’s rector, and Timothy Killeen, President of the UIS, were optimistic when announcing the alliance, and talked about their wish of seeing results from these research projects.

Researchers routinely collaborate with others from beyond their own campuses and even their own countries, knowing that teamwork is crucial in solving today’s complex problems. Similarly, universities often promote international collaborations, recognizing the benefits of having scholars from different countries and academic disciplines work together. But few have gone as far as the UIS, which has its own in-house organization dedicated to creating and sustaining academic and corporate partnerships.

The Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), based in Chicago’s business district, has a lofty mission—to bring together world-class universities, government labs and private-sector businesses to turn breakthrough technologies into real-life solutions. In practice, that means funding research and development, training tech talent and nurturing startups.

DPI began as a public-private innovation hub in 2017 under then-Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, to make Illinois more competitive in a world economy increasingly driven by technology. The state then committed 235 million dollars in capital funding in 2020 under Governor J. B. Pritzker, a Democrat, to build a permanent facility for DPI in Chicago.

Meanwhile, under Killeen’s leadership, the UIS has broadened its outreach in Mexico, which began in 2016 with an agreement with Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT), to support doctoral studies for 10 Mexican students a year at the UUIS’ three campuses. The University of Illinois initiated the Mexican and Mexican-American Students Initiative (I-MMÁS, see UNAM Internacional 3, pages 320-327) in 2021 to increase enrollment of Mexican students as well as academic and research partnerships with universities, government agencies and private industry in Mexico.

The efforts seem only natural. Metropolitan Chicago has the second-largest immigrant population from Mexico in the United States, behind only Los Angeles, and Latinos now are the largest minority group in both Chicago and Illinois.

“I can only underscore the importance of having forums such as DPI where scientific research ideas and business opportunities are discussed and, most importantly, the ways and means are available to make them happen,” says Francisco Trigo, head of UNAM’s Office of International Affairs. “These kinds of forums are living proof of the importance of the internationalization of our university.”

“We are delighted that UNAM, our long-term higher education partner, has joined with DPI,” says Pradeep Khanna, executive associate vice chancellor for corporate relations and economic development at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “This will provide new collaboration opportunities for our faculty and our students.”

DPI’s global network is growing. Earlier this year, Germany’s DESY particle-accelerator lab formed a partnership with DPI to commercialize each other’s research. DPI’s other international research partners include universities in India, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan and the United Kingdom as well as, in metro Chicago, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

So far, DPI has supported more than 20 research projects with seed funding, and while each is led by scientists from the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign or the University of Illinois Chicago, every one of them is deepened by the inclusion of outside partners.

The Illinois Wastewater Surveillance System best exemplifies how collaboration pays off. Formed in the early months of the pandemic, the DPI-managed wastewater surveillance team pulled together experts from a half-dozen organizations to detect levels of COVID-19 in raw sewage and provide public health authorities with timely and reliable data to guide their policies.

Each partner is essential. More than 75 municipal wastewater treatment plants across Illinois take samples twice a week, which are delivered to a microbial lab at the University of Illinois Chicago, where they are screened for telltale bits of the virus excreted by infected people. Argonne National Laboratory then sequences the DNA to identify which variants are present. Northwestern University assists in data modeling and analysis. The findings are published online by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Chicago Department of Public Health and are incorporated in the national COVID-19 database maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the start of 2023, DPI began publishing test results on its own dashboard, too.

The surveillance system has expanded its scope to track other communicable diseases such as influenza, RSV and polio. Additionally, through a separate project, the DPI team is working with a leading Chicago hospital, Rush University Medical Center, to uncover the presence of potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant microorganisms in long-term care facilities. Altogether, the Illinois Wastewater Surveillance System has received more than twenty million dollars in funding. Last year, it also won a Chicago Innovation Award.

DPI Executive Director Bill Jackson says:
Though they’re at earlier stages, DPI’s other teams are working on autonomous vehicles, robotics, artificial intelligence, healthcare diagnostics and treatments, climate change, infrastructure, among other research areas.

DPI also has hired a half-dozen researchers among an overall staff that now tops more than 70. They, too, believe in teamwork. One, for instance, is part of a multi-university consortium that recently received a 7.5 million dollars award from the National Science Foundation to improve science gateways, which are web-based platforms that enable researchers from multiple organizations to collaborate by sharing data and computational methods securely walled off from hackers. Another is leading a group of scientists from five U.S. universities and three more in India that won a $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant to employ weather and climate modeling to predict how switching to electric vehicles will affect urban air quality and public health.

As scientists have learned, diversity—in experience, in background—can enrich research. Diversity can also enrich organizations and societies. It’s a big reason why the U of I System has programs in place to welcome more Mexican students to its universities.

Guillermo Pulido, director of UNAM Chicago, recalls taking part in a two-day program hosted by DPI last summer. “It was a wonderful opportunity to interact with relevant stakeholders and to make the case for more inclusive policies,” he says, which could mean expanding partnerships perhaps to universities in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires.

The new research projects funded by UNAM and the UIS each pair up a professor from Mexico and Illinois and provide them with 40,000 dollars over the year to sustain their work. Their queries range from saliva-based biosensors to predict periodontitis and oral cancers to the conversion of waste nitrate to ammonia. The teams will share their findings in late 2023. Will there be a second round of joint projects next year?

Based on the enthusiasm they’ve expressed as they’ve broadened their partnership, the leaders of UNAM and the U of I System certainly seem supportive. In opening remarks to participants of a mutual symposium on energy last year, Graue said: “We will hopefully mark the beginning of many other activities. […] Dr. Killeen and I are convinced that working together is the best way to enhance research, education and bilateral development.”