Ohio State University Wins $8 Million For Research, Technology

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(Last updated 7/18/03)

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY WINS $8 MILLION FOR RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Five new awards totaling $8 million from the Ohio Board of Regents will help Ohio State University take the lead in tomorrow’s materials technology.

The Regents are providing the awards through the 2003 Hayes Investment Fund Program, enabling the university to lead five research consortia. Partners in the consortia will include other Ohio research institutions and industries. Of the nearly $11 million in Hayes funds awarded this year, Ohio State-led consortia have won the majority.

The Hayes Investment Fund Program provides support for major equipment purchases and facilities to enhance the research infrastructure of Ohio's universities and to foster collaboration among them.

Though each consortium will address different areas of industry -- including electronics, energy, automotive, aerospace and biomedical technology -- all five focus on laboratory efforts to understand and control the behavior of materials, particularly through micro- or nanotechnology.

“Ohio State had a fantastic showing in this round of the Hayes Investment Fund,” said Tom Rosol, interim vice president for research and a professor of veterinary biosciences at Ohio State. “These five new consortia will let the university take a leadership role in making Ohio a center for high-tech research, creating new jobs and new opportunities throughout the state.”

In its meeting July 17, the Board of Regents approved the following Ohio State-led projects:

Center for the Accelerated Maturation of Materials (CAMM)

Award: $2 million

Principal Investigator: Hamish Fraser, Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor of materials science and engineering.

Description: This consortium will work to design software tools to accelerate the development of new materials at greatly reduced cost. A Hayes Investment Fund award established the creation of CAMM in 1999.

Ohio State will partner with: University of Cincinnati, Wright State University, Air Force Research Laboratory, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Alcan Technology and Management, Ford Motor Co., the Timken Co., and General Electric Aircraft Engines.

Consortium for Affordable Manufacturing of Polymers at the Nanoscale

Award: $2 million

Principal Investigator: L. James Lee, professor of chemical engineering, Helen C. Kurtz Chair of Chemical Engineering, and director of Ohio State's Center for Advanced Polymer and Composite Engineering. Kurt Koelling, associate professor of chemical engineering, will be site director for Ohio State’s role in the consortium.

Description: This consortium will develop new methods for fabricating materials with useful structural properties, to improve the manufacture of biomedical and other devices.

Ohio State will partner with: University of Akron, University of Dayton, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Air Force Research Laboratory, Ashland Specialty Chemical Co., Applied Sciences, Inc., Owens Corning, Procter & Gamble Co., and Honda of America Manufacturing.

Ohio Nanoscale Patterning Consortium

Award: $2 million

Principal Investigator: Paul R. Berger, associate professor of electrical engineering and physics.

Description: This consortium will create a facility for patterning a variety of materials -- including electronic, magnetic and photonic materials and devices and biomedical devices -- at the nanometer (one billionth of a meter) scale, in order to strengthen ongoing university-based nanotechnology research, spark the growth of high technology start-up companies in Ohio, and create new jobs in existing companies.

Ohio State will partner with: Ohio University, Wright State University, Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc., Battelle Memorial Institute, Air Force Research Laboratory, and NASA Glenn Research Center.

Ohio Organic Semiconductor Consortium (OOSC)

Award: $1 million

Principal Investigator: Arthur J. Epstein, Distinguished University Professor of Physics and Chemistry and director of the Center for Materials Research.

Description: To speed the development of electronics made from alternative materials, including polymers, this consortium is working on better fabrication and materials synthesis technologies. This award continues support of OOSC from the last Hayes Investment Fund competition.

Ohio State will partner with: Kent State University, Case Western Reserve University, BTG International, Inc., DuPont Circleville, AlphaMicron, Inc., and Nanofilm, Inc.

Production and Storage of Hydrogen Consortium

Award: $1 million

Principal Investigator: Prabir Dutta, the Robert K. Fox Professor of Chemistry and deputy director of the Center for Industrial Sensors and Measurements.

Description: With the goal of making hydrogen a viable energy source, this consortium will work on new processes for generating hydrogen and developing porous materials for safe hydrogen storage.

Ohio State will partner with: Kent State University, University of Akron, University of Cincinnati, and NexTech Materials Ltd.

The Board of Regents also funded a consortium led by the University of Toledo, with Ohio State as a partner. The leaders of the Ohio State portion of the Macromolecular Crystallography Consortium are Michael Chan, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Charles Bell, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry.

That consortium, to which the Board awarded approximately $1.2 million in Hayes funding, will work to modernize and increase the power of X-ray facilities used to study protein structures in the human genome. Doing so will give the researchers insight into the roles certain proteins play in metabolism, cellular signaling and the transmission of genetic information.

The Hayes Investment Fund Program requires that each university provide partial matching funds -- 10 percent of its share of the requested equipment costs -- to maintain laboratory equipment and operate the consortium. The matching funds are provided by the colleges and departments involved.

Since its inception in 1991, the Hayes Investment Fund Program has awarded almost $95 million to individual universities and university consortia.

In July of 1998, the Board renamed the program in honor of Edward F. Hayes, the Ohio State vice president for research and president of OSU's Research Foundation, who died suddenly in March of that year at the age of 56.

Contact: Tom Rosol, (614) 292-1582; Rosol.1@osu.edu

Written by Pam Frost Gorder, (614) 292-9475; Gorder.1@osu.edu