Esri and University, Government, or Non-Profit Research Labs

If you’re reading this, chances are – you’re working on a research project and hope Esri can help. I’m Dawn Wright, Esri Chief Scientist, and this is a frank and informative guide to help you find the resources you need.

We strongly urge a careful reading of this StoryMap in its entirety before making a collaboration request. Please direct any questions concerning this StoryMap to Esri Chief Scientist Dawn Wright, dwright@esri.com.

To cultivate a relationship with us, here is some information on Esri’s worldwide scope and market share:

Esri’s carefully managed growth and zero debt give the company stability that is uncommon in today's highly volatile business world. Private ownership of the company means that there are no stockholders forcing short-term decisions at the expense of long-term objectives. And as a company privately-owned by Jack and Laura Dangermond, that will always remain as such. Esri as a whole still functions according to its non-profit roots. The Professional Services division within Esri is our soft-money environmental consulting firm, that can assist users with customized implementations. Everything there is billable and must be paid for or covered by the user seeking the customized implementation.

• We are first and foremost a commercial software company. 
• We do not have a foundation nor dedicated staff that would run such a program. And the Esri Chief Scientist cannot fund research proposals coming to Esri, nor does she function as the equivalent of a National Science Foundation (NSF) program officer.
• Instead, we donate our software, and more importantly, our time, pro bono. We invest 31% of our revenue into research & development (R&D) and we have numerous Esri R&D centers where academics may get involved, including for sabbaticals (explained later in this guide).

Our users are extremely important to us, but our “philanthropy” is in the form of donated software and training, as well as in-kind, pro bono support and participation in projects.

Our philosophy is to give away our software, as well as our time, helping people to do great things with it. Esri gives away so much of its software (and so much of our time and travel pro bono), that many have the impression that we provide funding as well.

“While we are very interested in using our technology (and occasionally our people) to support our values and visions, especially in conservation, we do not do ’corporate sponsorship’ with money. It is not our philosophy.” – Jack Dangermond, Esri CEO

Our primary focus is to use our limited resources to build our technology and support our users via our many conferences, online resources, and our pro bono participation. In addition, Esri’s newly modernized  Education Enterprise License Agreement  now serves to remove many obstacles to broaden a deeper usage of the ArcGIS platform in higher education.

First, it is helpful to understand the difference between the two requests we often receive.

1: A request for Esri to give sponsorship dollars for a conference, workshop, or similar event or

2: A request for Esri to collaborate with you on research (and in rare cases, to fund your research).

To request Esri to sponsor a conference, workshop, or similar event; please first get to know the Esri account manager for your campus or your contact in Industry Solutions.

As the Chief Scientist, I cannot process requests for event sponsorship dollars. In my role, I deliver keynotes and papers, often at the behest of Esri CEO Jack Dangermond (and sometimes at the behest of an Esri distributor). Arrangements for sponsoring and exhibiting should be handled by the  Esri account manager for your campus  or your contact in  Industry Solutions , especially as they may have a specific budget for such. These contacts may also be able to assist with arranging for the appropriate Esri short courses at your event.

To request to collaborate with Esri on your research (and in rare cases, to fund your research):

Please be prepared to articulate what Esri is to get out of the collaboration and what role you envision for us. We are generous and caring (e.g., our extensive university and non-profit licensing and resources), but we are a for-profit business. Our resources are not infinite. Also, consider cultivating a relationship with Esri before making a request. Get to know us and let us get to know you (e.g., come to our user conferences, summits, or specialists meetings). In this way, we will be much more receptive to requests for collaboration.

The benefit to you: free access to our valuable staff and software, and/or a NSF letter of support from an industry partner.

• No-cost participation in an advisory research capacity, including involvement in regular project meetings;
• No-cost technical advice from us as you seek to extend the capabilities of our technology in an advanced or customized mode;
• Our assistance in developing a data management plan for your proposal and project, given that we can often host or help you to host that special kind of infrastructure;
• Close collaboration with and pro bono work from us to develop a new workflow or GIS tool, app, or web experience (including a portal or hub).

• A copy of your NSF or similar letter of intent and project summary so that we may know what research is being proposed that Esri would support. Please forward also the names and institutions of all lead Principal Instructors (PIs) on the project, and the name of the program that you are applying to (ex: NSF EarthCube Conceptual Designs, NSF Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences unsolicited, Etc.). Please decode all acronyms in NSF program names.

• An indication (by email – dwright@esri.com) of how you would like Esri to be involved and why, as well as when you’d be seeking the advice of Esri personnel. Some expression as to the research and development that you see us participating in that may potentially push the limits BEYOND what our software and services can already do, or vice versa would be particularly helpful.

The above will help all of us to better understand, even beyond your letter of intent, where we would fit in. It will also help the Chief Scientist to craft the best possible narrative letter of support if it is allowed to go beyond the one-sentence “we promise to collaborate” type. Further, it will assist the Chief Scientist in justifying and promoting to Esri managers and Esri Corporate, the pro bono research work that our staff would be doing as part of your project.

After submission of your proposal to the agency, please forward to the Chief Scientist a full copy of the proposal for our records. Please keep in touch to advise as to whether or not the proposal got funded, and whether it will be resubmitted at a later date.

NOTE: As members of a private, for-profit company, we cannot serve as paid co-PIs or senior personnel, on an NSF, NASA, USGS, or other proposals to a federal agency. We can only serve at no cost. Please note also that we do NOT participate in NSF I/UCRC (Industry/University Cooperative Research Center) proposals.

Please fulfill the standard requirements above, including a request to the Chief Scientist for a letter of support at least ONE MONTH in advance of when you need everything (e.g., before you have to submit the proposal to your research office for processing).

If you are merely planning to use the basic capabilities of ArcGIS for your project (with our software available to you at no cost under your institutional licensing), there is no need for us to provide a letter of support.

If you need higher-level, higher-quality GIS implementation and customized software code on a shorter time frame than a graduate student or even postdoc may be able to provide, a second option is for us to connect you to our  Professional Services division , which can quickly and efficiently custom-build something for your project using our technology, or even aspects that are not yet standard functions in our technology.

They'll need to be a subcontractor on your proposal at considerable cost, to cover the rates (upwards of $100-$400/hour) for our developer and other implementation services. It is also a good entry into the division at Esri where most of our domain scientists reside.

The Esri summer internship program can be a highly successful third option. One of the hardest ways to fund students is via summer salary. Our summer internship program can take care of that, as students are: (a) paid, housed, and mentored over the full summer; (b) get to work on an R&D project that advances your interests as well as ours, and (c) are immediately in line for hiring by Esri.

This may also be a useful entry into getting an approach adopted or incorporated into our core technology. Students interning at Esri headquarters have access to our product engineers and developers, where good ideas may get the attention of middle managers and directors. Currently, nearly 40% of our summer interns receive an offer for a full-time position after graduating. In some cases, internships may also be arranged at Esri regional offices or one of our R&D centers.

NOTE: We cannot guarantee that your student(s) will be offered an internship. Our internship program has a global applicant pool and acceptance rate of 30%. However, we CAN guarantee that your student applicants will receive full consideration, and we can state this in a letter of support.

If you’re a faculty member, consider a longer-term engagement with Esri via our  sabbatical program . Your sabbatical can last as short as a few days.

An example of a short sabbatical: Two University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members spent a few days with us working alongside our Education Team to create a new curriculum for geodesign. This collaboration was formed when one of the faculty member's presentations at our  Geodesign Summit  caught the eye of our CEO Jack Dangermond. This set the process in motion for their subsequent visits to our headquarters and for project work with that team.

Please note also that we are already making significant investments in dozens of innovations and applied research areas in our own Esri R&D Centers. These are spread across the globe and with a large number of us here in Redlands. Approximately 31% of Esri revenue goes toward R&D (the norm for other, similar companies is 8-10%). The Arlington,  DC , Portland, Zurich, and  New Delhi  R&D Centers have been the most receptive in the past to external research collaborations.

We often receive special requests for our time so that users “can show us what they’ve been up to” or “where they are headed” with leveraging Esri tools and integrating them into their work. While we appreciate this, this does not always require specific intervention from us. If asking for our time to “show us something,” please let us know at the outset specifically what you would like us to consider, and ultimately what you would like to achieve. Is it Esri possibly adopting an approach or an algorithm you have developed for our core software (given of course that we are not already providing an equivalent)? Or are you perhaps seeking a collaborative relationship with us where there would be a new tool produced, jointly between your colleagues and our developers? This is often the goal of a research proposal described prior, or of our sabbatical program (see Strategy (4)). Or would you like us to promote your work to the broader Esri user community (again, beyond already presenting at our conferences or having your work published in our proceedings and monographs)? Going beyond just telling us that you’d like to “show us something” will help us to respond more quickly and positively to your request.

For more information on collaborative pathways, consult Esri’s  online scientific portfolio  which is regularly updated with new initiatives and resources as they arise.