Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 12, 1992 TAG: 9201120180
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
STATE CUTS THREATEN RESEARCH
Within the limestone walls of Virginia Tech's gothic Holden Hall, Roe-Hoan Yoon is working on the future in the Virginia Center for Coal and Minerals Processing.The equipment is state of the art and the center is respected and well-known, though it has existed for only a few years. The research conducted within these walls has led to more state-of-the-art equipment, used in industries across the country.
It takes time to see results like these, says Yoon, his hands clasped together on a wooden table. "MIT wasn't built overnight."
Yoon, director of the center, and others fear the center will lose its funding - if not overnight, then over the next two years.
The center is one of 10 technology centers established by the Center for Innovative Technology. Headquartered in Northern Virginia, the CIT has branches all over the state and research projects at many of the schools and at centers like this one.
Since the CIT's beginnings in 1986, its purpose has been to link university researchers to the needs of industry in Virginia, and to help with the transfer of technology.
Tech has received $59 million, either directly from the CIT or from industry grants through the CIT, over the past five years.
Gov. Douglas Wilder's budget proposal, released last week, cuts CIT funding 30 percent this year - by $3.5 million - and eliminates funding entirely the following year.
There is an added line, however, that says the program will undergo a review in 1992. If the review is favorable, the governor has said, funding may be returned in 1994.
So far, Linwood Holton, former governor and director of the CIT, is putting on a positive front.
"I realize this takes some faith," he said last week. "But I don't think they're trying to kill us. I hope they're not.
"We can withstand any examination," he said.
If the money isn't there to begin with, however, it won't be easy to get it out of the state's thinly stretched general fund, even if the review finds the center worthy.
"I'm convinced the CIT report will come out in glowing terms," said Ernest Stout, associate provost for Tech's research division. "But whether that will convince them in Richmond to add the CIT money back, I don't know."
In his State of the Commonwealth speech Wednesday night, the governor mentioned several priorities if any money was "miraculously" available in the general fund over the next two years. The CIT funding was not among them.
"I don't know if the review is a polite way to shoot the CIT in the head or not," Stout said.
But he chalks off statistics that will likely be presented to any review committee examining the CIT:
Tech has received $22.6 million in direct CIT funding to support research.
The CIT helped bring in $36.7 million in industry money to support additional research at Tech.
As of October, Tech has worked with 96 industries through the CIT.
Half of those 96 companies have been in Western and Southwest Virginia.
In its annual report, CIT reported funding more than 600 projects involving more than 550 companies, 460 university professors and 1,000 students, Holton said. CIT has brought in more than $96 million from private industry and other sources to match $50 million in its own research funding.
Small businesses, like a compressor company in Bristol, Magnox Inc. in Pulaski and fiber-optics companies in Christiansburg and Salem are reaping benefits and working with new technologies.
"CIT touches on so many areas," said James Stewart, who heads the agency's technology transfer office at New River Community College.
"Technology development centers, the engineering clinic at Old Dominion University," he said, citing a few. "I hope this will be resolved."
In time, jobs would be formed and other jobs saved by CIT-sponsored technology, Stewart said.
But there are many intangibles associated with the CIT; it takes time for many of the results to be seen.
"In research and development, six years is nothing," Yoon said. "It often takes 10 years from the conception of something to the time it reaches the marketplace. To pull the plug now . . . "
" . . . seems short-sighted, somehow," Stout finished.
They fear that the agency hasn't been given enough time to prove what it can do for the state's economy.
"It would be extremely easy to fold up tent and say, `That's it,' " Stewart said. "But if there's any logic to the idea that we need to prepare Virginia for the challenges of tomorrow, how can they justify cutting that kind of effort?"
Since the budget proposal came out, Stewart has received calls from concerned faculty members and business owners. "If this goes through, I guess some of us will be updating our resumes," he said.
And others, Yoon said, will be stepping backwards.
"We have now established a lead in coal-cleaning research in the country," he said. "We may lose that lead if we lose the CIT."
People at Tech refer to the coal and mineral center as a success story.
Yoon and co-worker Gerry Luttrell produced Microcel, a microbubble flotation device used for upgrading coal, and marketed it with the CIT's help.
The project was once just a part of Luttrell's doctorate thesis.
"Before CIT, it might have stayed an academic [issue]," said Luttrell, who grew up in the coal-mining town of Richlands.
Researchers in the center also are working in hazardous-waste treatment, process control and other activities.
"To entertain an industrial project you need a center - a group effort," Yoon said. "I wouldn't even dream of trying to latch on to a $10 million project as an individual."
But thanks to the CIT-funded center, Yoon and his associates are considering just such a proposal proposal from the Department of Energy to fund research at Tech.
Tech professors have been granted 19 patents, including the one for Microcel, since the inception of CIT, which sometimes pays the $10,000 to $12,000 for the patenting process.
CIT also helps with the marketing and selling - something, Yoon says, that helps professors, who are supposed to be doing the math and research.
"If a university professor goes around to companies to sell a product, it looks tacky," he said. "This way, we can retain our image as ivory-tower personnel."
The CIT helped market the microbubble technology, now in nine companies, including one in Roanoke. At least a half-dozen more will be buying them soon, said Hugh Rimmer, associate director of the center.
"And we have inquiries from all over the world."
Businesses are starting to seek out the center, Yoon said. "We're visible. I'd like it to be an eternity. . . . These ups and downs bother me."