Sharpening the focus-SIRTI’s new leader, Patrick Tam, wants to move agency to a more prominent level

Patrick Tam has a comfortable view of the river and Gonzaga University from his new office on the Riverpoint campus. Tam has recently been named the executive director of Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute (SIRTI).

Tom Sowa
Staff writer

Patrick Tam is a bit like an engineer guiding a train down a winding track.

As the new executive director of SIRTI, Tam’s job is to keep the state-funded agency rolling forward through budget woes in Olympia and a struggling regional economy.

While the 54-year-old Tam faces some challenges, he’s already devising a plan that will give SIRTI a stronger role in the region.

His first goal is to erase the perception that the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute is a fuzzy-headed bureaucracy. What SIRTI needs to do, he said in a recent interview, is sharpen its profile.

He tackled the image problem head-on last week during SIRTI’s first "tech showcase" at the Davenport Hotel.

The event featured a slide-show overview of promising technology projects in the region. As much as possible, Tam wants to talk about the trickle-down impact of SIRTI.

"We want to keep it at the level where people see the impact. Not just what does nanotechnology (the study of very small machines) do, but what does nanotechnology imply for my life and for this business community?" he said.

When SIRTI’s board of directors pared a list of more than 50 candidates from around the country down to six finalists, Tam was easily the consensus choice. He replaces interim executive director Jerry Straalsund and will earn $140,000 a year.

What Tam possesses, said board members, is the right mix of technology background and entrepreneurial experience.

“We saw him as someone who would run SIRTI like a business and be accountable to the taxpayers,” said Stu Stiles, chairman of the board and Spokane general manager of XO Communications.

In contrast, leaders with backgrounds in higher education or corporate management were at the helm during SIRTI’s first decade in operation.

Tam has degrees in technology and aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

Several years ago, after working at the Washington Research Foundation in Seattle, Tam started ARRAE International. The company obtained patents from Chinese researchers, then helped bring some of their products to commercial development in this country.

Tam is already committed to building bridges to the area’s universities. The goal, he said, is to get leading-edge researchers to understand that SIRTI can provide them assistance and support to bring their ideas to commercial development.

This fall, SIRTI will open first-ever branch offices at Washington State University in Pullman, Eastern Washington University in Cheney and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Richland.

Tam also hopes to discard the name SIRTI for something that better defines the agency’s mission and strategy.

“The name is inaccurate for two reasons,” Tam said.

First, it implies the agency’s mission is only Spokane-based. Tam insists the focus is regional and includes much of Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

While Tam and the board are months away from selecting a new name, they agree that SIRTI’s strongest role is as a regional coordinator of good ideas that can be turned into new companies.

Second, Tam said, the SIRTI name wrongly implies the agency conducts research. While it acts as a commercialization midwife — offering help with business and marketing plans, and locating financing — it doesn’t do research, he said.

SIRTI’s other role is to be a business incubator — providing office space at Riverpoint Higher Education Park to startups like Biomedex and Translation Technologies Inc., said Tam.

SIRTI’s current staff of 12 estimates they’ve helped about 60 companies raise about $40 million in outside financing and investment.

The agency draws its funding from the state and has a two-year budget of $2.8 million.

After a quick survey of the region, Tam said he found numerous examples of promising ideas and talented research faculties.

“I’m like a gold miner. Every day I discover new things about what’s happening in this area,” he said. “I want to place this region on the technology map, the same as Austin, Texas, or Silicon Valley.”

But Tam makes it clear SIRTI’s turnaround won’t be quick.

“This is a long process. There’s no easy solution.”

Money will play a crucial role in what happens at SIRTI, he said. His experience in the private sector convinced him that young companies are always in need of investors and support.

One short-term goal, he said, is the possible creation by SIRTI of a revolving fund to give loans to promising startups. He also wants to recruit financial help from outside sources.

In fact, board members have been talking with Tam about adding an incentive clause to his contract that would pay a $10,000 bonus based on how many dollars he finds from outside sources.

The board, said Stiles, hasn’t yet set a formula for determining the bonus — which wouldn’t start until calendar year 2003.

“We want to target outside dollars that can be funneled toward businesses here,” said Stiles. “If SIRTI can be a part of that process, the end result will be helping those companies grow and creating jobs.”

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