jointly—for example, faculty may have joint appointments at NIST and UM in nanotechnology. They offer special appointments for people at government labs, including the title of College Park Professor, giving no pay but otherwise conferring the rights of a faculty member, such as the ability to supervise graduate students’ research projects.

In response to a question about intellectual property, Dr. Mote said there is significant effort to commercialize intellectual property developed at the university, led by the Office of Technology Commercialization, and UM-Net, a university-wide network of venture and commercialization services, researchers, and entrepreneurs. “They are constantly looking for entrepreneurs who want to do these kinds of things,” he said, “and in the research park they can do proprietary work, with strong encouragement from us.”