Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 28, 1993 TAG: 9302260150
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
GROWER OF BUSINESS
Joe Meredith just may put on 20 pounds before his wife and kids join him from Newport News.It's the lunches, he explains. Economic planners, college professors, business people. Meredith will have to know them all for his new job as director of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center.
"I'm still trying to learn all of the players," he said, a week of lunches under his belt.
The Corporate Research Center is on 120 acres next to the university, with five buildings and 18 businesses occupying the space.
Meredith's job is to help it grow.
He markets the center, letting people know where and what it is: a research park, independent of the university, where private businesses can use Tech's resources and faculty expertise.
Meredith works with faculty, helping them commercialize the technologies they've developed in research.
"Some researchers don't have the entrepreneurial skills to start their own companies," he said. But some, of course, do. Tracy Wilkins, an anaerobic microbiologist, for example, has opened two companies in the center.
In the economic game, Meredith is both referee and fan. He helps professors decide what their next step should be, and cheers them on toward home. He hooks them up with coaches or consultants who can help with the start-up of a new business.
In time, he'd like to see the research center provide coaching, too.
"But we're not big enough yet," he said. "That's still down the road."
Meredith also encourages companies to locate their research organizations in the park and increase the amount of university research contracted by private companies.
The jobs that result usually are white-collar and highly technical.
Although the economy has been sluggish of late, research moves on.
On his fifth day of work at the center, Meredith gave a pitch to a company from Northern Virginia.
Meanwhile, Polymer Solutions Inc., a chemical analysis and testing company at the center, announced it would expand in March, nearly tripling to 1,800 square feet.
James Rancourt, owner and president of Polymer, said an increase in personnel and equipment contributed to the need for the move.
Meredith is proud of that growth, though he was not part of it. To him, it is a symbol of the future for this center.
"I feel like I've been here a year," he said.
Meredith had been following progress of the research park from afar since it was formed in 1985.
"I think I was made for this job," he said. It combines research, technology and a chance to help "sell" an area he has always felt strongly about.
He talks for a minute about "quality of life," stock words from economic movers as they discuss this valley with industry. From Meredith, they seem to come from the heart.
Meredith graduated from Virginia Tech in aerospace engineering in 1969, when there was only one fast-food restaurant - and that was outside the town limits. He has come back for reunions, he said. Now he's come back to live.
"Just look at that," he said, stopping his car for a moment to savor the view of mountaintops covered with snow.
Meredith received a master's degree in aeronautics, astronautics and engineering sciences from Purdue University in 1970. He spent most of his years since at Newport News Shipbuilding.
He is president of Advanced Engineering Processes of Poquoson, a consulting firm that is something of an extension service for manufacturers. And he is pursuing a second master's degree in systems engineering through Tech's satellite program.
"We have to become a learning culture," he said. "Just graduating from college and stopping isn't enough any more."
Meredith talks for a moment of bigger corporate centers, such as the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. He does not see Tech's center as competing with that, he said. But if Tech has the faculty experts, companies will come to Blacksburg to be near them.
"This place has tremendous potential," he said. "My job is to let the outside world know it's here. If I do that well, everything else will take care of itself."