Unless it changes, the university faces the prospect of becoming ''a boutique, with narrow specialties, limited funding and limited impact,'' admits David W. Oxtoby, dean of physical sciences. Chicago is moving quickly to license its technology. Stanford and MIT, aggressive pioneers of such arrangements, are way ahead of the pack, with 259 and 257 active licenses and options on technology, respectively. To regain its influence of old, Chicago hopes to reap commercial fruit from its reinvigorated combined division of biological sciences and Pritzker School of Medicine. Three years ago, Sonnenschein recruited Glenn D. Steele Jr., then a cancer-surgery professor at Harvard Medical School, to head the operation.
Steele wants Chicago back among the top ten science schools within five years.
The arrival of Anthony A. Kossiakoff, who started on July 1 as chair of the biochemistry and molecular biology department, reflects the new emphasis on entrepreneurialism. Steele's other new catches will join other recent hires such as Craig B. Thompson, an immunologist who arrived at Chicago from the University of Michigan five years ago. Thompson recognized that funding pressures from the feds and third-party health insurers would force researchers to become more entrepreneurial. That mercenary formula, to be sure, fuels misgivings. Perhaps universities can find a productive balance.