Thursday, December 15, 2005Volume 5, Issue 7
I-99 Economic Development Partners Tour Penn State Materials Facilities
The depth and breadth of Penn State materials research were on display for visitors from the three-county I-99 Corridor Alliance in a one-day workshop that included tours of facilities at the Materials Research Institute, Materials Research Laboratory and the Applied Research Lab on the Penn State University Park campus. Economic development managers from Bedford, Blair, and Centre counties met with counterparts in the University community to discuss the leveraging of Penn State's national preeminence in materials science and technology with the regions growing industrial base.
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Jeff Catchmark, operations manager for the Penn State Nanofabrication Facility (the Nanofab) explained to the guests what a $32 million facility could do for Pennsylvania companies by helping them to develop new products and processes. Catchmark and his 14-member technical staff have worked with 90 companies over the past three years, gathering national attention for their ability to educate industry in the application of micro and nano processes to improve and develop commercial products. "Innovation Park (Penn State's high-tech research and development park) is within walking distance of one of the best nanofab labs in the world," he told them. "Materials, devices, biotech - we have staff with expertise in all of these areas."
When companies come to the Materials Characterization Lab, with its $12M in state-of-the-art analytical equipment, it's often because they have a crisis, Jeff Shallenberger, the lab's director explained. With specialty labs across the campus, the MCL is unique in the state when it comes to analyzing problems and finding solutions. The MCL will rapidly put together a "failure analysis plan" to understand the scope of the problem and can often offer solutions within as a little as a week's time. "It's $12 million that a company doesn't need to invest," Shallenberger told the visitors.
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These two labs are the door-openers for industry in Pennsylvania, according to Materials Research Institute director Carlo Pantano. "They can make the device in the Nanofab and walk down the hall to analyze it in the Characterization Lab, he said.
At the Materials Research Laboratory Building, the economic development leaders met senior faculty scientists and were given a tour of their labs. Clive Randall, director of the Center for Dielectric Studies, explained the properties of the novel materials they develop for industry partners, materials that will help diesel engines burn cleaner and more economically, or improve cell phone performance. In the Particulate Materials Center, director Jim Adair shined a fluorescent light through a liquid suspension of molecular dots, used for drug delivery and imaging inside the body. This system, he believes, will offer a safe and effective method of delivering targeted anticancer treatments to patients in the future.
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Across campus at the Applied Research Lab, senior scientist Greg Dillon demonstrated a new composite developed for the navy that is "stiff, light, tailorable and corrosion resistant." The ARL works with a number of Pennsylvania industries to commercialize the discoveries made as part of their Department of Defense research. "For instance," Dillon said, "we want to pass along a new door material structure to a small manufacturer who will then supply bulkhead doors for naval vessels." ARL works closely with industry for technology development and implementation.
Materials research at Penn State is the anchor of the I-99 Innovation Corridor, the Commonwealth's largest concentration of Keystone Innovation Zones, designed to link technology-based companies with University faculty expertise and resources. In May, Governor Rendell committed $40 million toward the construction of a new $80 million materials building at Penn State that will be the centerpiece of materials research and university-industry collaboration in materials science and engineering.
