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Quacking about Oregon's new nanoscience research center |
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Sep 21, 2007 at 11:02 AM |
A few minutes' stroll from the University of Oregon student union, near the science buildings, there's an open space, recently turned and partially landscaped.
Last year, the same area was an unsightly hole in the ground, a muddy, fenced-off construction zone. Now, the work's almost done, the big ditch filled up. What lies beneath, embedded in vibration-resistant bedrock, should become one of the planet's leading nanoscience research facilities.
The new Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories represent the first phase of the university's most prized projects, the Lorry I. Lokey Integrative Science Complex (ISC). Lokey, the founder of Business Wire, donated $20 million, thus earning the right to naming honors. (Nice to see someone other than Nike's Phil Knight ponying up serious cash donations to the U of O.)
The 30,000 sq ft labs will soon house an impressive array of analytical and characterization tools and be a key part of the interdisciplinary Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI). The second phase of the ISC project, an even larger integrative science building still in the development stages, will house life-science research and education assets. At the heart of the effort is a determined push for even-tighter cross-disciplinary interaction.
Why I am writing about this particular university lab in the Pacific Northwest? My daughter Brenna's a Duck. We were visiting Eugene last week, spending time with her before the fall terms begins and she hits the books. Curious about the status of the new lab and program specifics and hoping to get a tour, I eventually got in touch with Mark Lonergan, a key professor involved in the Materials Science Institute's Center for Advanced Materials Characterization in Oregon (CAMCOR). He invited me to the MSI's Science Odyssey event (including a tour of the new ISC), which took place on "Game Day." That's the official moniker around the football-crazy town for the Saturdays when Oregon's gridiron warriors play; later that afternoon, the Ducks stomped Fresno State.
Shortly after I arrived at the event, I saw a familiar face, someone as surprised to see me as I was to see him: Loren Sutherland, biz-dev maven for the Loomis Group agency. Loren told me that his boss Jeff Loomis, a proud, active, and generous Oregon alumni, had donated some money to the project for a conference room that will be named for Jeff and/or his group.
Following a series of short, upbeat speeches (education! collaboration! innovation!) by the university president Dave Frohnmayer and others, as well as an award presentation or two, the mostly green-and-yellow-clad attendees started walking over to the new site. Once you enter the building, you have to descend a flight of stairs to reach the subterranean, supremely vibration-isolated Lokey Labs. The suite of freshly built lab rooms now sits mostly empty, except for a few items of furniture and some clean-hood lab benches. But not for long.
Jim Hutchison, chemistry professor, former MSI director, and chair of the building committee, told me that occupancy of the labs will start in mid-October, with instruments installed in stages. The tools will be a combination of new and existing gear that will be relocated from other labs. One tricky piece of the move-in, according to Jim, is minimizing downtime for those heavily booked CAMCOR tools (such as their e-beam litho system) which help provide part of the revenue stream.
In lieu of the actual instruments, papers with photos and descriptions of the various tools were taped up on the individual lab windows, so the visitors could get an idea of what will eventually be housed there. As one might expect, the signage represented the plethora of acronyms and initialisms---SEM, TEM, XRT, XPS, ION TOF SIMS, AFM, STM, FIB, SAM, et al.--found in a state-of-the-art nanolab. Jim said the majority of equipment will be installed by next spring, with the official grand opening sometime in early 2008.
"It's really incredible to see it come together," he beamed. "We have such a wide range of top-down and bottom-up nanomaterials preparation and characterization capabilities, pinching in from both sides. Our strength in bottom-up is quite amazing." As an example of that bottom-up expertise, an article in the autumn 2007 edition of the university's Oregon Quarterly describes Hutchison and others' groundbreaking work in the "green nano" and nanotoxicology areas.
Down in the lab areas, I recognized another familiar face: Andrew Grenville, the former Intel assignee at Sematech, who most recently served as the consortium's associate director of lithography. He's now involved with what he called "a very early-stage company," something to do with "solution-processed oxides," but didn't want to tell me too much about what he's up to. (Actually, he did tell me a bit more, but asked to keep it off the record.) Andrew will also be advising ONAMI now that he's back in Oregon.
The increasingly strong relationship among Oregon's research universities like the U of O and Oregon State and companies like FEI, Willamette Valley Co., Invitrogen, and that little outfit called Intel, as well as the collective experience of industry veterans like Andrew and ONAMI head honcho and former Hewlett-Packard R&D vp Skip Rung, should solidify and enhance the region's reputation as a leader in nanoscience education and research and nanotechnological commercialization.
Once the Lokey Labs are up and running, measuring and characterizing, investigating and discovering, the facility will augment existing MSI facilities, which are already "as good as any in the world," according to what FEI's globetrotting engineering guys have told company executive, Duck alumni, and Science Odyssey speaker Bob Gregg. "No one has anything on this facility."
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