A scientist who specializes in the molecular genetics of blood cell cancers, and a pioneer in computer virtual reality were introduced Wednesday as Arkansas Research Alliance Scholars.
Dr. Gareth Morgan moved to Little Rock two months ago from London to become director of the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Morgan, who will make $857,450 a year, replaces Dr. Bart Barlogie.
Carolina Cruz-Neira moved to Little Rock from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she headed telecommunications, electrical and computer engineering. She is the director of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's George W. Donaghey Emerging Analytics Center. Cruz-Neira will make $240,000 a year, with the salary split among UALR, the University of Arkansas Foundation and the Arkansas Research Alliance.
The two were introduced during a ceremony at the state Capitol.
The Arkansas Research Alliance's scholars program was patterned after the Georgia Research Alliance, which has attracted more than 60 scholars and more than $2.6 billion since it was founded more than 20 years ago. The Georgia group has helped create more than 150 companies that support more than 5,500 jobs.
Morgan decided to move to Arkansas so he could work on transforming his expertise in patient diagnostics into the commercial arena.
Morgan said he thought it would be better to convert his skills into business uses in Arkansas instead of London because of the entrepreneurial attitude in America.
"Here, that kind of research is welcomed, whereas back in the Old World everything is a bit more in silos," Morgan said. "If you're in medicine, you're in medicine and if you're in business, you're in business. So I felt there was an opportunity in Arkansas to do that."
Cruz-Neira had served on the advisory board at the Emerging Analytics Center and was approached this year about being the director. One reason she decided to make the move was because funding is being reduced in Louisiana, she said.
Mary Good, former dean of UALR's College of Engineering and Information Technology and now a special assistant to UALR Chancellor Joel Anderson, said Morgan and Cruz-Neira will be able to work together in their research.
"What this does, particularly in the Analytics Center, the supercomputing center and the supercomputing center in Fayetteville, is allow us to handle huge levels of data which we have not been able to do before," Good said.
There have been three other research scholars recruited to Arkansas.
In 2010, the Arkansas Research Alliance recruited Daohong Zhou, an authority in stem-cell and cancer research who works for UAMS in the College of Pharmacy, and Ranil Wickramasinghe, who works in bioenergy management at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Peter Crooks, a former University of Kentucky professor who specializes in anti-cancer drugs and works at UAMS, came to Arkansas in 2011.
There were no Research Alliance Scholars hired in 2012 or 2013.
The Arkansas Research Alliance had good candidates in those years but was unable to land the prospects, said Jerry Adams, chief executive officer of the organization.
After those two years, the Arkansas Research Alliance tweaked the way researchers are recruited, Adams said.
Instead of leaders at Arkansas universities focusing most of their recruiting of the potential eminent scholars on the final one or two months of the process, the campuses modified the process by taking more time on the candidates, Adams said.
"This allows the chancellor, the provost, the dean of the college to take an almost 18-month to two-year process as opposed to a six-month sprint," Adams said.
In 2009, Gov. Mike Beebe set aside $1 million for the alliance to recruit scholars to Arkansas, who in turn would help create high-tech jobs and companies.
The first three eminent scholars have more than 30 employees on their research teams and have raised more than $2.3 million in grants, according to the Arkansas Research Alliance's 2013 annual report.
Business on 08/28/2014