Clarkson partners for access to research

POTSDAM — Certain types of research coming out of Clarkson University just got a lot less expensive for companies to access.

The university, through its Center for Advanced Materials Processing, has been named an Industry and University Cooperative Research Center by the National Science Foundation. Three other universities — the City University of New York and two in North Carolina — have partnered with Clarkson to form the center.

The partnership will give CAMP scientists access to developments at the other three schools, thereby expanding the types of research coming out of Clarkson, as well as giving its reputation a boost.

"It is prestigious. For the National Science Foundation to approve a center is a big deal for us because Clarkson is relatively small," CAMP Director Suryadevara V. Babu said. "It's also a validation of our approach to working with companies and being at the cutting edge."

To be part of the center, companies and industry will pay $40,000 a year for access to the research generated by all four university research institutions that year.

Under conventional arrangements, a company pays the university to do research in one area or for one project. From 10 to 15 companies, including Xerox, Lockheed Martin and the Air Force, are expected to subscribe to the research center.

"It's the technology that goes into these products and then the company can use that to create their own products," Mr. Babu said. "The intellectual property is now shared between all these properties."

There are more than 50 of these recognized centers across the country. The four universities have been working to form theirs, the Center for Metamaterials, for at least a year.

Metamaterials are a relatively new field; scientists have been working on them for only five or six years, and the area of study is not yet common, Mr. Babu said.

Metamaterials are used to develop new or improved optical and electronic devices, including energy harvesting, cloaking materials and biological and chemical sensors, among other things, by manipulating light. Practical applications include being able to get more energy from the sun through improved solar panels or making objects invisible, on either radar or visible or other frequencies. The latter, obviously, is very interesting to the military.

The Center for Metamaterials will operate for five years; the NSF will give each of the universities a small grant of about $55,000 a year to keep it running. After the five years, the group will have to reapply.