Industry Funded Research Impacts on Engineering Faculty’s Research Experiences: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature

Participation in industry funded research can have significant impacts on faculty’s research experiences. As industry funded research tends to have different characteristics than government funded research, i.e. industry funded research is relatively short term, deadline driven, more applied, and more focused on commercial outputs than government funded research, these characteristics can lead to measurable impacts on faculty research experiences when participating in industry funded research. This is especially true for Engineering at R1 institutions, where industry funded research is a much higher percentage of R&D expenditures than overall industry funded university R&D expenditures (typically 10 25% for Engineering alone, compared to about 6 8% of the university overall). This paper examines the existing literature for impacts on Engineering faculty’s research experiences when participating in industry funded research, including research productivity as measured by publication output, innovation as measured by patent output, and the likelihood for collaboration with others. Results of the literature review will be synthesized for a better understanding of each of these impacted areas and where there are opportunities for further research on the subject. Tags: industry, research, faculty, engineering, literature review