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Strategies for funding university scientific research: economizing, collaborating and specializing
The new Timken Engineered Surfaces Laboratory will be housed in the University of Akron’s new engineering research building. Credit: University of Akron.
Back in July, the top story in national news was the budget and the debate over the debt ceiling. In the 11th hour Congress and the president came to an agreement that raised the United States’ debt ceiling and avoided a potential government default.
What this episode and perhaps others in the future means for US research universities is unclear but probably not good, according to an Aug. 12 article in Science by Jeffrey Mervis. The budget bill holds all discretionary spending static for the next two years and calls for trimming out $917 billion over the next ten years, and R&D comprises around 12% of federal discretionary spending. Mervis cites lobbyists who estimate that cuts in discretionary spending starting in 2013, including most research programs, will be in the range of 7-11%.
On the other hand, President Obama had requested increases of 13% for the NSF and 12% for DOE’s Office of Science.
The funding stall-out is disappointing, especially in light of all the attention that the administration and funding agencies are giving to innovation and manufacturing initiatives, specifically the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership and the Materials Genome Initiative. However, according to the article, the administration says there is enough money to advance research programs, although “the agreement doesn’t spell out how the money will be allocated across federal agencies.”
The future is anything but clear as the House and Senate have yet to determine their 2012 spending priorities and begin the painful slog through the 2013 budget cuts. Mervis in the article, sums up the views of a staffer at MIT’s federal relations office, William Bonvillian, noting that “[Bonvillian] thinks there are simply too many variables, including a presidential election, to even hazard a guess beyond 2012.”
Meanwhile, a recent Nature News article first reminds readers that Congress commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to advise them on effective ways of providing long-term stability to research universities without increasing investment much more, and then article goes on to say that the NAS recommendations are expected to be released before the end of the year. (The Nature article did not say when the study was commissioned, but NAS studies typically span about 18 months, so the study had to have been commissioned before this year’s epic budget battle.)
Although the NAS document, being developed by a 21-person “influential” group of researchers, business people and university administrators,” is still in its draft stages, Nature says it was able to learn that it will probably call for universities to become more thriftier and much more efficient (the story also refers to it as “fat trimming”). One recommendation will be for researchers to economize by “sharing equipment, facilities and supervision duties—not only between research groups, but even between institutions in the same city.” The example cited is collaboration programs like the multi-institutional DOE Energy Innovation Hubs.
The NAS report is expected to urge federal and state funding agencies to simplify regulations that apply to research grants, especially regarding reporting. The article says the report will also recommend that funding agencies pay the full indirect cost of research (i.e., overhead). In 1991 Congress capped indirect costs at 26%, despite actual overhead amounting to about 30%.
According to the article, research universities have been tapping undergraduate tuition fees to make up the difference. (For years, universities have been selling prospective students and their parents on the research opportunities available to undergrads. Undergrads would be well advised to participate if they are helping pay for it.) The NAS panel realizes that calling for more overhead spending in an era of flat budgets will mean less money for research. The article says the panel’s solution to the dilemma is that the report “will urge the government to target funding strategically, concentrating on research areas with the greatest potential to produce innovation and jobs.”
The problem, of course, was eloquently stated by American zoologist Marston Bates, “Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.”
There is another way, which may prove to be an effective mechanism for funding university research. Because it has a grassroots-or perhaps boutique-flavor, it may not get as much press beyond local interest.
Last week the University of Akron and the Timken Company announced a “specialized research” collaboration to “accelerate technology development.” The press release says Timken will provide funding and equipment valued at about $5 million to establish the new Timken Engineered Surfaces Laboratory. Timken’s chief technologist Gary Doll will join the academic ranks and lead the lab’s efforts when he assumes a newly established endowed chair.
The dean of UA’s College of Engineering says in the press release that the agreement “creates a new, important platform for innovation that will benefit our engineering students, Timken, UA, and the region through our joint research and commercialization efforts.”
That is, innovation… and jobs.
(For some of the tenor that is going to be coming out of the NAS report, check out the recent video of a presentation Chad Holliday, one of the members of the aforementioned 21-person NAS panel, made July 15th to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.)
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MemPro’s ceramic catalytic converters get NSF boost
MemPro CEO John Finley holds a bit of the ceramic fiber that's at the heart of the company's technology.
According to a press release, MemPro was recently awarded another Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Science Foundation for $147,000 — bringing the total the company has received from NSF to $847,000.
Typical catalytic converters rely on expensive metals such as platinum, palladium and rhodium, so industry has long looked for a way to get the same level of catalysis using less of those pricey metals. MemPro’s “nCATfiber” ceramic material works essentially like the catalytic material found in a car – but uses a lot less of the rare metals.
MemPro innovation is that it uses flexible nanoscale ceramic fibers that still contain the catalytic material, but in much small amounts. The nanofibers provide more surface area and can more efficiently use the embedded metals. Company head John Finlay claims MemPro’s ceramic catalytic converters reduce materials cost by 75 percent. MemPro also claims its fibers allow operations at much higher temperatures and are completely recyclable.
Nanofibers holding particles of metal catalysts. Credit: University of Akron, Sneha Swaminathan.)
MemPro’s fibers are produced by electrospinning using advanced techniques developed at and licensed from the University of Akron.
The company is currently marketing its product to the makers of small nonroad engines for consumer goods like lawnmowers, snowblowers and weed whackers. Although currently unregulated, these engines will be required to meet a new set of EPA emission standards by 2012. MemPro says the new grant will allow research on systems for “larger engines, biofuel synthesis, new battery technologies, and removal of hydrogen sulfides from natural gas streams.”
In an interview with the Summit (Colorado) Daily News, Finley said the NSF believes MemPro is doing good things from a technical perspective, but that the company also has a good shot at commercializing what they do. “And NSF likes that because they get money from Congress, and they like to point to successes,” Finley said.
In the following video (at about 50 seconds in), Findley is interviewed and claims their is a potential $10 billion market for converters like his. The video also has displays some samples of the material and a few applications. He also boldly claims that this technology can make coal a “clean” energy source.
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Learning from lizards how to improve dry adhesives
Change in vertically-aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes during adhesion measurements.
What can a team of highly trained researchers from four different U.S. universities learn from the feet of a gecko lizard? According to the researchers, how to improve carbon nanotube-based material so that, for the first time, it demonstrates “directionally varied (anisotropic) adhesive force” and gripping power nearly three times the level of existing nanotube dry adhesives.
The team - comprised of researchers from the University of Dayton, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Air Force Research Lab and the University of Akron - describes its achievement in a paper published in the Oct. 10 edition of Science magazine.
As Science reports, the team believes their advance could lead to solder-free connections between electronic devices, longer-lasting adhesives for use in outer space and a broad range of other important applications.
In the article, team members explain that a gecko’s ability to scale vertical walls is due to atomic-scale van der Waals interactions that occur naturally in the microscopic hairs on the lizard’s toes.
These hairs - actually minute setae - give the gecko resistance to perpendicular shear force, enabling it to grab vertical surfaces with surprising strength. The setae also allow the gecko to easily release its strong hold.
By manipulating carbon nanotubes to simulate and intensify the anisotropic adhesive forces at work in gecko hairs, the team has created a carbon nanotube dry adhesive that is “ten times better than a real gecko at resisting perpendicular shear forces.”
According to team member Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Material Science and Engineering, the newly developed adhesive’s performance depends on the use of “rationally designed multi-walled carbon nanotubes formed into arrays with curly entangled tops.”
Wang likens the tangled tops to a “jungle of vines” that replicates the structure of a gecko’s foot, down to its “branching hairs of different diameters.”
These tangled tops become aligned with a surface when pressed against it, significantly increasing the contact area between the tops and the surface, Wang says.
Wang says, “When lifted off the surface in a direction parallel to the main body of nanotubes, only the [nanotube] tips remain in contact [with the surface], minimizing the forces of attraction.” He claims this “allows us to truly mimic what the gecko does naturally.”
Wang explains that, “When you have line contact along [a surface], you have van der Waals forces acting along the entire length of the nanotubes but, when you have a point contact, the van der Waals forces act only at the tip of the nanotubes.”
As the Science article reports, the researchers have tested their new adhesive’s grip on a number of surfaces, including glass, polymer, Teflon and rough sand paper. Wang says they found it measured up to 100 newtons per square centimeter in the shear direction and only 10 newtons per square centimeter in the normal direction. The team’s conclusion, he says, is that resistance to shear increases with nanotube length, while resistance to normal force is independent of tube length.
Funded by NSF, the project is led by the University of Dayton’s Liming Dai, the Wright Brothers Institute Endowed Chair in the UD’s School of Engineering. The research team also includes the UD’s Liangti Qu, Morley Stone from the Air Force Research Lab and Zhenhai Xia from the University of Akron.
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