A Proposed Research Program

By Nick D. Panagiotacopulos, Ph. D, and CEO, FKW Organization

The purpose of this program is to create an undergraduate and possibly graduate research activity modeling a small startup research company. The basis of the program will be the FKW nonprofit organization and its objectives presented here and everything that comes with it.  More specifically, we envision embedding the existing FKW activities into the collaborating university research environment. The program will be operated by students as a small self-funded research company, and will be supervised by a committee consisting of faculty from different departments, qualified volunteer members of the FKW nonprofit organization, a representative from the organization which is financing the activity and probably retired Alumni or retired faculty. These members, will advise  selected  students while keeping their mind comfortably and pleasantly busy (Here, it should be pointed out that now days, cognitive problems of the elderly (dementia, and Alzheimer’s diseases) are on the rise with frightening prognosis for the next 25 years. This activity could help slow down cognitive problems because of the involvement of the elder with new and different projects (a very important factor for the improvement of cognitive problems). The mixtures of young and older experienced people will make older people feel younger and young people learn and mature better from living legends. By doing that, everybody is going to be a winner. The students, after understanding the scope of FKW, will maintain and advance the existing work done by FKW. They will search for funds (by writing proposals, and contacting potential supporters, organizing concerts, and other events such as sports events, etc.), conduct educational lectures for the general public, and publish their achievements as reports, scientific papers, books, and make their work known using various media. The benefits will be, for the students to gain experience of how to create and operate a startup research company, pay off their tuition, and living expenses from the funds generated from their activities, and for the collaborating university to initiate new challenging and immediately useful research activities, involving the rather wealthy food industry and not only. As an example, we wish to mention here that about 40 years ago, Dr. P., in collaboration with Professor Ellis Cumberbatch (at that time, Chairman of the Applied Math of CGU (Claremont Graduate University), created a joint Ph.D. program in Industrial Mathematics and Engineering (various Engineering fields) between the college of Engineering of CSULB and Claremont Graduate University (Dept. of Applied Mathematics). This program was designed to serve the needs of the local industry. For example, to help explore new ideas that the local industry wanted to investigate before realizing it. For the above program these projects required the combined thorough knowledge of Applied Mathematics and various disciplines of Engineering, and medicine. The program is operational for more than 30 years. The program we are proposing here is similar to that one just mentioned but involves different disciplines, and includes international cooperation. Again, the potential benefits from the proposed program could be:

1. To the industry: A company could use university students to explore a new idea at a low cost by paying the student’s Scholarships, and a small portion to the supervising faculty salary by the industrial organization involved,

Before implement the idea to a real product.

2. To the University and the students: Provide financial assistance to eligible students, and faculty, promote collaborative opportunities between the industry, the university, for joint patents, for students/industry job shopping and faculty consulting opportunities. An interesting example is the example of a UCLA summer student at JPL that introduce the gravity assist spacecraft S/C orbiting the outer planets, about 50 years ago and open up new educational and research windows for the Caltech Community,
3. Bring together students, people from industry, experienced highly qualified alumni, faculty from all disciplines, FKW volunteers, and possibly ignite international cooperation.

4.Interaction with local organizations (JPL, Huntington Research Institutes for activities R1, and R2, Huntington Botanical Gardens for activity R3, and the USDA, as well as universities and organizations abroad i.e. UK, HK, Greece, and Germany).

5. As mentioned in R1 project’s description,, students can create numerous highly focused epidemiological, and MRS projects which can provide important information for specific diseases.
6. Based on R2 project, students can create numerous similar projects which can provide important information for diseases such as ones related to human muscles and the design of equipment which can facilitate human mobility.

We believe that, if the significance of this program is well understood, and if it falls under the attention of a charismatic, passionate, director with good vision, it could be of great importance for the university, and humanity. A detailed program description (organization, management, etc.) can be available for your consideration; if there is serious interest for its realization.