Initiate Research and development center

[hisham.i]

Am studying electrical engineering, i was wondering about how to initiate research and development in engineering field, and how

to select and find the ideas that will be studied and solved.

Suppose a study is done, for whom this new technology will be sold and who will save your rights for this technology not to be

copied and stolen?

 

[Choppy]

There's a difference between academic research and industrial research. When a research idea is pursued on an academic basis, the goal is usually to solve a particular problem. Making your results known through publication has merrit in and of itself.

If you want to sell your solution, it becomes a different matter. Most companies that I work with aren't so anxious to publish their methods, but will publish (or assist with the publication of) results that use their products. The proprietary material is kept secret though and often investigators are left to treat it as a black box. For the companies, or individuals with marketable ideas, the normal system for protecting ideas is through filing patents.

How do you find ideas? You have to immerse yourself in the state of the art and read a lot of what's been done and learn what other people are doing. You have to understand what the critical problems are in the field and develop the tools that you need to attach those problems. You learn how to do much of this during graduate school.

Most ideas won't be so much of a grand 'cure for cancer' type magnitude. Rather, they will lead to incremental improvements on particular problems.

 

[hisham.i]

I can give an example of one research and development center in manchester which is DEKA R&D for the inventor Dean Kamen, they have many innovative ideas like the iBot, the prosthetic arm project funded by darpa.

Such R&D is industrial research according to your explanation Choppy, right?
How can one achieve to make such R&D, and can make such innovative projects?

I think every R&D should start small, with small projects which are important for people and companies to buy them in order to get more money in return which allow you to buy better machinary and better instruments, which will improve the quality of the work and allow you to make bigger projects in future.