DATE: Friday, November 28, 1997             TAG: 9711280067

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  130 lines

LEARNING HIGH TECH NORFOLK STATE RESEARCH CENTER HAS QUIETLY BUILT A REPUTATION

Orange glop. A wad of it, stuck on the end of a rotating rod inside a silver, head-high, vat-like furnace.

This is what cutting-edge scientific research looks like. This particular scientific research is taking place at Norfolk State University.

The glop was a ``seed'' for a crystal. Growing specialized crystals from various combinations of materials is one of the main activities at NSU's Center for Materials Research. The center quietly has gained a reputation for its work with lasers and crystals.

Scientists at the center experiment with different crystals to create different lasers to do different jobs.

Some work out; some don't. That's why it's called ``research.''

It's also called education.

Students, undergraduate and graduate, do much of the work in the center's laboratories. They learn on $5 million worth of state-of-the-art equipment more advanced than most will see in the workplace. A California laser company representative calls the Center for Materials Research one of the best-equipped labs of its kind on the East Coast.

The students perform experiments that not only make their textbooks and lectures come alive, but could lead to real-world patents - a handful are pending. Recruiters from businesses and other schools regularly swoop in and snatch these students.

And hardly anybody knows the place exists. Too new and too local, college officials guess.

``People have no idea of the depth of what's going on over here,'' said George E. Miller III, associate vice president for research at NSU and the CMR's first director. ``You've got Star Wars-type research right here in your backyard.''

Star Wars, but also down-to-earth.

Lasers already are being used to perform surgery on eyes, play compact discs and record the price of supermarket purchases. New ones may be developed to zap enemy missiles, but they also could detect radiation, improve communications and increase medical capabilities.

The Center for Materials Research opened in 1992, as NSU aimed to begin some research programs, and decided it should concentrate on an area of strength: science. Miller, recruited years earlier from NASA to teach, was tapped to head the new center and promote one of its goals: increasing the number of minority students preparing for science careers.

Miller accepted the challenge and has fashioned the center's crystal-design division - where the orange glop was being cooked - into one of the few such labs in the United States, creating crystals for laser and other applications as asked.

``We solve the problem,'' Miller said.

In addition to a laser lab, the center combines the disciplines of physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering to help develop materials - thin films and plastics in addition to crystals - that can be used to improve products in the aerospace industry and environmental management in addition to medicine and communications.

Much of the research is so new that the eventual uses are only hypothetical so far. The center's work with electromagnetic energy, Miller said, ``will eventually do for the microchip what the microchip did for the vacuum tube. The difference in speed will be similar to comparing the Concorde to the horse-and-buggy. We are redefining the boundaries between reality and fiction.''

Staff and students work in crowded labs stuffed full of complicated equipment, computers and desks. They study the properties of the different colors in light, check for contaminants in materials, experiment with injecting different gases into microscopic cracks in plastic structures to keep the cracks from growing.

A 10,000-square-foot wing to the Roy A. Woods Science Building is being built for the crowded CMR in the shadows of the campus' new football stadium. The two-story Ronald I. Dozoretz Materials Research Annex is scheduled to open in January. It will house seven or eight labs, and enable researchers to look at larger organic crystals and plastics.

The Center for Materials Research in 1996 also joined with the School of Education to open the B.E.S.T. Lab - ``Bringing Education and Science Together'' - as a training and resource center for science teachers.

No state or college funds are used for the CMR - it competes for grants from federal and private agencies, including NASA, the Departments of Energy and Defense, and the National Science Foundation, that now exceed $2 million a year, not including private donations.

The CMR partners with a score of other universities and international institutes, and works with the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Such a college facility and program ``is unusual,'' said Terry P. Hannon of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based Coherent Inc., a laser company that does business with the CMR. ``It depends - a lot of it depends - on the individuals at the school. . . . George Miller has great vision.''

The research, Miller said, pays off for the students. They train on the most-advanced equipment, learning the most-advanced procedures. Companies hire them. Schools recruit them - four universities have standing offers to accept all of the center's graduate and undergraduate students, said Heidi R. Ries, CMR's director.

Matthew E. Warren one recent afternoon was polishing manganese-based crystals for an experiment to see how much light they absorb. Warren, a 23-year-old senior physics student from Newport News, credited working in the center with helping him better understand physics and chemistry. ``I guess when you experience it . . . you understand the text and the theory you're reading about,'' he said, adding, ``It's a lot more fun.''

Warren knows about experience being a teacher - he used to take apart his toy race cars and walkie-talkies to see how they worked, or why they didn't work. Now he's looking at a career in crystals.

``It's such a rare field, that anybody who gets into this field is like gold,'' he said.

Amy Wilkerson, a 41-year-old graduate student from Suffolk studying materials science, laughed that the center was ``like the East Coast's best-kept secret.''

She's had her name published three times in national and international journals, and presented her research on electron spin resonance at several national conferences. The center's approach to students doing the research fit her background - she was a nuclear machinist for 10 years. ``I've always done hands-on,'' she said.

Science and teaching. Miller's office reflects both - a modernistic sideways tape dispenser on his desk, a print of student hands urgently reaching toward a teacher on his otherwise bare walls.

``Ultimately,'' Miller said, ``everything we do is, we want to produce a better student that we send out to the workforce and to graduate school. . . . It's mandated by my office that all projects involve undergraduates.''

It's the only proper way to train scientists or engineers, he and Ries said.

``We need to have undergraduates understand that science is not just textbook learning,'' Ries said. ``That true scientific endeavor is exploring something that's not already known.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos

Ian Martin/The Virginian-Pilot

Chahn Chess...

These lenses and mirrors......

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