On the afternoon of Nov. 20, The University of Memphis held the last of its open sessions to allow faculty, staff and students an opportunity to meet the finalist candidates for the vice president of research position in the Union Center River Room. One of the candidates was Dr. Grant McGimpsey, former vice president of research for Kent State, a school whose achievements include inventing the touch-screen for cellular devices. He discussed his credentials, his expectations for research on the University level and the role of a VPR.
In 1989 McGimpsey was researching laser photo chemistry and came to the conclusion that he would rather put his knowledge to work helping people, and so he began researching high-tech medical systems, such as neuro-prosthetics.
Since 1994 he has held several consultant positions for companies like Bayer and Polaroid. His credentials show a long history of interaction with private industry and attempting to bridge the gap between it and the research and education sector.
Professor McGimpsey has been working in upper-level research positions since 2005. As the director of the bioengineering institute at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, he was responsible for securing funding and pulling research to be highlighted in the public eye. He also held a provost position at WPI.
McGimpsey also tried to break into the public sector, but found out that “he was not an entrepreneur” when the soft funded company he’d helped get off the ground “made no revenue whatsoever.” Despite that failure, McGimpsey also learned that he, “really, very much more, liked helping other faculty do research, and spinning their research into commercial opportunities.”
2011, McGimpsey took a job at Kent State where he created programs focused on recruiting post-doctoral students, something the University of Memphis has been attempting to implement. McGimpsey spoke about his move to Kent State.
“In Kent State, I really wanted to experience something different, so I was at WPI and it was a small, 3500 student, science and engineering intensive private university in Massachusetts,” McGimpsey said. “Kent State is a large, public, more comprehensive, but liberal arts type of university in the Midwest. I think that my experiences at both those places basically kind of bookend the entire spectrum of educational institutions here in this country.”
McGimpsey likened the disciplines represented at the different colleges of The University of Memphis to Kent State. The differences between the two are what interested McGimpsey in the position, and specifically in the Engineering department.
“There are very few institutions in this country that bring in more than $100 million that do not have either a medical school or a college of engineering,” McGimpsey said.
McGimpsey is also interested in the Memphis area, as he believes that setting up a way to carry bio-medical engineering research would be a good opportunity for the University of Memphis.
“That’s an important partner for the university in ramping up the amount of research funding that being brought in,” he said.
