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New USTAR Director Ivy Estabrooke Seeks To 'Regain Trust'
Posted: Thursday, October 16, 2014 10:02 pm--By Kevin Opsah

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Ivy Estabrooke, director of the Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR), smile during an interview about the organization on Wednesday afternoon. (John Zsiray/Herald Journal)


NORTH LOGAN — The new executive director of Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) initiative said while she is impressed with the faculty’s efforts, USTAR has a lot of work to do to “regain the trust” of lawmakers after an audit last year found the initiative over-reported its success.

Ivy Estabrooke, who became the leader of USTAR this past summer, explained the steps she and the initiative’s governing authority are taking after a bill putting more oversight on USTAR went into effect in May.

Estabrooke cautioned against having unreasonable expectations for USTAR, which funds scientists and engineers at the state’s two research institutions, Utah State University and the University of Utah, with the intent of commercializing research.

“The unrealistic piece was the timeframe from which you could go from a research idea to a commercial product that would have an impact on the state in terms of jobs and bringing money into the state,” said Estabrooke, who spoke to The Herald Journal in the BioInnovations Building in North Logan — a facility dedicated in 2010 and primarily used for USTAR work. “The timeframe I look at is 20 years.”

So far, the initiative at USU has produced technology ranging from a wirelessly charged electric bus to manufacturable spider silk useful in a variety of applications.

“If you look at other commercialization investments at the seven-year mark, you’d say, ‘What have we spent all of this money on?’” Estabrooke explained. “But then in 15 or 20 years, you’d see a real return on investment.”

Estabrooke says she’s focused on setting expectations for what USTAR can do. The 2006 forecast for research progress was overly optimistic, she said, and the economic crash of 2008 put the brakes on a lot of the progress that could have been made to commercialize research.

Now, with S.B. 62 in place — the legislation that spells out reforms for how USTAR should report its yearly activities to the governor and the Legislature — USTAR can regain its footing, Estabrooke said.

“It takes time to fill those metrics,” Estabrooke said. “I hope to be able to show the Legislature in the next session that we take the recommendations very seriously, and USTAR is set up to meet the goal of commercialization in the state.”

Among the specifics, the law requires the USTAR governing authority — led by former Lt. Gov. Greg Bell — to submit an annual report to the governor and the Legislature by Oct. 1 of each year.

Estabrooke said the report has not been completed. Two firms USTAR looked at to audit its legislative report were found to have conflicts of interest with some of the governing authority members — something S.B. 62 prohibits.

The USTAR executive director said the organization is now asking the state auditor’s office to do that work in place of a firm. The audit will likely be completed in November, giving lawmakers time to look over the report before the next general session.

Estabrooke said USTAR may have to consult with an out-of-state firm to do the checking in the future.

“We’ll see how we’re doing. (The report) will be a good benchmark of how much we were able to implement (from last year’s audit),” she said.

Estabrooke anticipates meeting with the Legislature to answer questions about USTAR next year.
S.B. 62 also requires that individual research teams report on their grants and contracts on an annual basis or risk having their funding pulled.

Estabrooke described USTAR’s role as making sure “the intellectual property that’s generated by all of these faculty members has the best chance of being commercialized and realized ... Building actual products that do two things for Utah: building the economy and solving some of the challenges Utah has.”

To keep tabs on those fronts, Estabrooke has organized a meeting at the University of Utah — where another USTAR building is located — to have all of the research teams across both institutions share the kind of work they are doing.

Before becoming director of USTAR, Estabrooke was program officer in the Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare & Combating Terrorism Department at the Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Estabrooke is a cognitive neuroscientist by training, with technical expertise in psycholinguistics, pharmacological interventions and statistical modeling.

Rob Behunin, vice president of advancement and commercialization at USU, has spent a great deal of time with Estabrooke since she became USTAR executive director.

“As the new director, Dr. Estabrooke is addressing items raised in the previous audit and bringing together the various players on the state-wide USTAR team to help USTAR maximize its full potential,” Behunin wrote in an email to the paper.

Although many lawmakers held USTAR’s feet to the fire, the Legislature approved funding for USTAR through at least next year, amounting to $10 million for USU.

USTAR was founded in 2006 by the Legislature, and thus far, USU’s USTAR efforts have brought on approximately 30 projects spread among seven teams. Among them are the Applied Nutrition Research team, Veterinary Diagnostics and Infectious Disease, and the Synthetic Bio-Manufacturing Center.




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