OSU-Tulsa builds mammoth center for nano research
By Jim Stafford
The Oklahoman
TULSA - The landscape at the Oklahoma State University-Tulsa campus here just north of downtown is dominated by a pair of multistory construction cranes and a mammoth building rising from the west edge of campus.
Forklifts crisscrossed the site recently and dozens of construction workers labored under a hot August sun beneath a roof that was yet to be fully enclosed.
Construction continued uninterrupted as OSU-Tulsa President Gary Trennepohl led a group on a tour of what ultimately will become the 123,000-square-foot Helmerich Advanced Technology Research Center.
The $51 million center is scheduled for a November 2007 opening and will be home to 40 OSU faculty and researchers and 100 graduate students, all intent upon developing what are known as advanced materials that will be used in a variety of industries.
Trennepohl described the center as an economic development project for Tulsa and northeastern Oklahoma, despite the academic pursuits that it will house. Researchers will work in collaboration with businesses to solve technical problems using advanced materials, or strong, lightweight composites often based on nanotechnology research.
"As you talk to businesses here in Tulsa, most smaller businesses can't afford their own research operations, but they have research questions that are perfectly appropriate for a faculty at a university," Trennepohl said.
"It becomes a partnership where there is obviously funding provided to help us do research, and maybe the larger companies who have their own research departments can collaborate with their research and come up with an answer with a question."
The Helmerich Center is being financed with $30 million from Tulsa's Vision 2025 economic development initiative, $12 million in state bond money and a $9 million gift from Walter and Peggy Helmerich of Tulsa.
OSU will hire what Trennepohl called four senior faculty with international reputations who will bring their research and attract graduate students to the center.
With advanced materials as its "umbrella theme," researchers will focus on several areas beneath that theme, said Stephen McKeever, OSU's Vice President for Research and Technology.
"Underneath that umbrella there are going to be research specialties in nano materials, in aerospace materials and in bio materials," McKeever said. "They are all exciting because they are multidisciplinary subjects in which several scientific areas of expertise will need to collaborate and produce new science."
All are areas that are important to Tulsa area businesses, Trennepohl said. Tulsa's business community is dominated by energy, aerospace and information technology. Williams Cos. already has funded a research chair to fuel energy related research, he said.
"Aerospace and energy are two clusters that we have a concentration of here in Northeastern Oklahoma," he said. "It's easy to see that advanced materials make a whole lot of sense to both of those industries."
Construction of the Helmerich Center coincides with a nanotechnology economic development incentive act passed by the most recent state Legislature, said Jim Mason, executive director of the Oklahoma Nanotechnology Initiative.
The legislature created the Oklahoma Nanotechnology Application Act, under which $2 million is focused on helping Oklahoma companies adopt nanotechnology process to improve their products, Mason said.
"It really gives us a center or a base for nanotech research to kind of focus on those efforts," Mason said. "It is particularly interesting in Tulsa because there are a number of things happening there that give the opportunity for growth in nanotechnology."
Trennepohl stopped short of calling it a nanotech or advanced materials "center of excellence," but said its construction certainly is timely for Oklahoma.
"The analogy that I would use, is what we need to do here in Oklahoma is promote the leading edge of the new technologies, rather than get on the old technologies at the tail end," he said.
Computer chips, for example.
"Twenty years ago they would have been have been great," Trennepohl said. "That train has already left the station. It's too late now. We need to get on the next train that's leaving. Nanotech is getting ready to go. There is a lot of money being poured into nanotech research. We've been asking some of these folks that we've been interviewing for these jobs; their opinion is it's not too late."
