Times have changed since Pat Frain took up his job. These days, the academics he's dealing with are quite likely to among a new breed of millionaire - the ones who've made their money as a result of campus research.

It's hard to believe, but just over a decade ago becoming a college researcher and moving into academia meant little more than an interesting job (if you are lucky, for life) and a reasonable salary. Nowadays, college research can lead to multi-million pound businesses and the chance to enjoy millionaire lifestyles.

Already, there are, Frain says, a handful of millionaires on the UCD campus. He, however, isn't one of them. Instead, he's the director of UCD's University Industry Programme. Frain describes himself as a lapsed physicist, who has been spending recent free time boning up on genetics. "If you want to find out about genetics, you should read Getting a Grip on Genetics by Martin Brookes," he advises. "It's an excellent introduction."

A graduate of UCD, Frain moved out of scientific research quite early in his career. Back in the heady days of the 1970s, soon after Ireland had joined the EU, he got a job in the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and spent a good bit of his time travelling backwards and forwards to Luxembourg, working on the harmonisation of statistics.

When, later, he moved to the National Board of Science and Technology (NBST), he was involved in manpower planning - at a time when Ireland was undergoing another skills shortage.

In 1989, he came back to UCD as director of the University Industry Programme. He has, he says, been lucky. "All the jobs I've been in have been development oriented. When I went to the CSO, we'd just joined the EU. Everything was new. There was a lot of excitement about how we would merge with the existing six.

"In the NBST, I was given responsibility for the development of the first national science and technology plan. Innovation was becoming an important issue. The UCD job came at a time when there was very little research funding and interaction between the university and industry took place on an individual basis, rather than being driven by university policy."

The centre was set up 15 years ago to promote links between the university and the industrial and business communities.

A main thrust of the centre's work is to identify and exploit the intellectual property arising from university research through licensing and the establishment of campus companies. The centre acts as a contact for companies seeking assistance or access to university expertise. Another significant part of its work is in the area of continuing professional education.

The centre works to promote entrepreneurial skills on campus and provide support for knowledge-intensive companies. "We have a number of activities which aim to provide students and academic staff with exposure to enterprise and to help them establish new businesses," Frain says.

All the signs are that it has been a huge success. It's still at the hush-hush stage, but UCD will shortly announce a £10 million project - a new innovation centre, largely funded by the private sector.

The new innovation centre will be a boon to Frain's department, which can currently offer only 17 incubation units to budding campus entrepreneurs. "Almost 50 companies have gone through the innovation centre and 85 per cent of these are still in existence," Frain says. Some of these companies have attracted vast amounts of investment funding. Take WBT Systems, for example. It's a spin-off of the computer science department, and delivers web-based educational training programmes. Already, the company has attracted $30 million in private investments, via Davy Stockbrokers.

Massana, which can trace its roots to UCD's electrical engineering department, is close on the heels of WBT. This specialist integrated circuit design company has attracted investments worth more than $23 million. Meanwhile, Nanomat, a chemistry department spin-off, has won investments worth more than $4 million.

For the future, these campus companies are likely to become a lucrative source of research funding for the university, which, Frain says, takes up to 15 per cent of the equity in each spin-off.

Not all companies are set to make vast profits, though. "It's recognised," says Frain, "that we will have a small number of companies making a lot of money. On the other hand many companies will license their technology." Some academics move into business, others decide to stay in academia, while a third group opts to work part-time at both - and the university facilitates all of this."

The big change that Frain has noticed, he says, is the growing interest in enterprise on campus. "People are more confident about setting up their own businesses and they're no longer looking for a job for life. An increasing number of academics see setting up a successful business as being a validation of what they're doing."

Although some campus companies are attracting major investments, Frain expresses some concern about the relatively cautious nature of some of the venture capital companies. The strength of university companies is the quality of their ideas, rather than their business expertise, Frain says. "Venture capitalists have to realise that it's worth investing in these companies at an early stage. Their technology is strong - the business capability can be added later."

Factfile

Education:

Westland Row CBS, Dublin. UCD: BSC in physics. Master's and PhD in atmospheric physics.

Family:

Married to Caoimhe, a physicist. Five children - a teacher, two engineering students and Leaving and Junior Cert candidates.

Hobbies:

Sport and choral music.

Holidays:

Family holidays in France.