Thank you very much.
Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today. I really appreciate the opportunity to have you here and to hear your various perspectives on this important matter.
Mr. Gaffield, maybe I'll start with you. You made some remarks in your opening statement that struck me: the word “catalyst” and how these research-intensive institutions that are larger could be playing a catalyst role. I found that interesting, because it gets to the heart of the issue.
I did a lot of work in the non-profit, charitable space for most of my career, and we found there's a lot of competition for limited resources, similar to what we're discussing here today. We found that organizations that can be competing for those resources can also overcome that by intentionally collaborating. We also found that some of the larger institutions in that space that have capacity can be treated as shared platforms. That was the term we were using back when I was doing work on this. They can utilize their administrative capacity, etc., to help smaller institutions do a lot of collaborative, in-depth work.
Ultimately, what are we all about and what are we trying to achieve? It's not institution building, really; it's about the research. It's about advancements in research and innovation.
How does U15 accomplish this, and is there more that U15 can do? Given this opportunity to talk this through together, is there a way that U15 can do even more in lending its capacity and its scale to float all boats, in a way?