UN University: open for business

The new rector of the United Nations University wants to raise its international profile, step up collaboration with other academic institutions – and reach out to the corporate world for new partnerships.

What the university has to offer potential partners, says Rector Konrad Osterwalder, is its international reach – especially into the developing world. It is also a politically neutral partner, without national biases. The university, headquartered in Tokyo, has 14 specialised research institutes, from Macau to Maastricht, and a network of research partnerships in more than 90 countries.

“I think its strength is as an interesting collaborator,” said Osterwalder. “It can be a place where there is knowledge of what is going on in a field in all the different places in the world. It is [also] an institution of the UN, and thus can guarantee a degree of neutrality that is hard to find in other institutions.”

Until August, Osterwalder was rector and acting president of ETH-Zürich, one of Europe’s best-known technical universities (and Einstein’s alma mater). At UNU, Osterwalder says his top goals include raising its profile and strengthening its finances. “If you are better known, you might have more respect” and funding, he observed. The university had a budget of $37.6 million and a staff of 356 in 2006.

Global, but virtual

The UNU is an unusual organisation – a global, “virtual” university with a small central staff in Tokyo but a network of thousands of research collaborators across the globe. Some of its strongest areas of research, observers say, include its computer software institute in Macau, whose projects include e-government systems and water-management software for the developing world. Its security institute in Bonn specializes in risk management and emergency response.  A leadership institute in Amman provides international policy and management training. And an institute in Maastricht studies international technology policy with a range of governments and companies.

The UNU was conceived in 1969 under then-UN Secretary General U Thant to be a think-tank for the UN and to foster scientific and technical capabilities in the developing world. Its focus is on research collaboration; while it has many training programmes, it doesn’t grant degrees except in partnership with other universities.

Its biggest backer is the Japanese government, which put up a $100 million endowment to get it started and last year contributed $6.6 million for operating expenses. The Malaysian government is its second-biggest backer, followed by Germany, Finland, Portugal and the Netherlands. Its 2006 annual report lists only two corporate contributors, Japan’s Kirin Brewery Co. and Canonical Ltd., an Isle of Man-registered software firm – though its individual institutes have ad hoc collaborations with many multinationals.

Eyes on the corporates

Increased corporate involvement is one of Osterwalder’s goals – but “first of all, I have to make it evident to the corporations that what the UNU is doing could also be of interest to them.” He cited sustainable-energy and climate change research as one example: using its network to connect researchers in the developing and developed world, for “a mutual building-up of knowledge and insight”.

Among UNU staff, Osterwalder’s arrival has stirred high expectations – in large part because of his tumultuous and fast-paced tenure at the ETH. A Swiss physicist, Osterwalder became rector of the ETH in 1995, and acting president in late 2006 after a public battle about the university’s future among the faculty, the central administration and the Swiss government. It resulted in the resignation of the then-president, and Osterwalder’s promotion. During his tenure, ETH completed a reform of its curricula towards a Bologna-style graduate, masters and undergraduate system; increased the size and range of its specialised research centres; and reorganized its technology-transfer and fund-raising efforts to expand corporate involvement.

Changing UNU, however, will be a different kind of challenge. To begin with, support from the Japanese government has been tapering off – in part because, despite its headquarters in Tokyo, UNU isn’t deeply rooted in the local political and business community. Support elsewhere has risen – for instance, last year it opened a new institute in Kuala Lumpur with Malaysian backing. But the price has been long lines of command from Tokyo to the remote institutes – with unpredictable consequences. For instance, the Macau institute last year was caught in an industry cross-fire over software standards, with Intel backing out of a plan to support the institute’s open-source software research for the developing world.

The local funding, Osterwalder said, gives the local institutes “a lot of independence and freedom to do what they want. Which per se is not bad. But nevertheless, there should be a central strategy. And to combine these two aspects in a reasonable fashion is quite a formidable task,” he said.