Oregon State University and the University of Oregon detailed plans on Monday involving their respective technology research centers. They are but two research centers in a world-wide competition.
OSU is seeking to develop a research park near its Corvallis campus that would house technology-oriented companies and new companies spun off from OSU research. Meanwhile, UO has started planning for a research facility at its Eugene campus that will focus on nanoscience and microtechnology.
OSU said it will soon issue a request for proposals to develop a 52-acre parcel of land just south of Highway 20 in Corvallis. Rich Holdren, OSU’s vice provost for research, said he hopes the RFP process will be completed by the end of 2004. He said the cost of the project would be assumed by a developer and that the university was willing to grant leases of 25 to 50 years to companies that would locate in the park.
Holdren said the university would like the research park to have as many as three anchor buildings that could include multiple clients occupying lease space from 200 to 20,000 square feet. Additionally, the park would have a number of lots to attract new businesses, which could build free-standing research and development facilities to their specifications. Sectors the research park might attract include mixed signal processing, bioscience and health, and pharmaceuticals.
The Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONMI) will focus on scientific and technological developments at the nanoscale — on a fundamental understanding of phenomena and materials that are generally 1 billionth to 100 billionths of a meter long.
Funding for the Eugene facility at the U/O was authorized last year by the state Legislature. The legislation authorized $9.5 million for UO in lottery bonds and general bonds, matched by donations, grants and contracts. Construction could begin within two years.
The 60,000 square feet facility will be located on 3.75 acres south of the railroad tracks in the Riverfront Research Park, adjacent to the university’s Eugene campus.
ONAMI is a collaboration between the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Portland State University, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and private industry. A grand opening of the temporary headquarters for ONAMI will be held on Thursday, May 27, in Corvallis in space recently donated by Hewlett-Packard.
Intel’s Hillsboro, Oregon,Emerging Platforms Lab, at 5350 NE Elam Young Parkway, employs thousands of full- and part-time workers in numerous buildings. It’s also home for the Microarchitecture Lab, where advanced processor/system architecture and microarchitecture concepts for both IA-32 and IA-64 are designed and the Circuit Research Lab where component and system hardware issues are resolved.
Oregon’s Open Software Development Lab (OSDL), is the center of gravity for Linux and home to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux - is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise.
Seattle-based PlanetLab, a global test bed for inventing and testing prototype Internet applications and services is being developed by the University of California, Berkeley, HP, Intel Corporation, Princeton University, the University of Washington and more than 60 universities from around the world. The researchers aim to “overlay” the internet and expand the Internet’s features and capabilities.
The Austin Technology Incubator has hired high tech entrepreneur Erin Defosse to run day-to-day operations of the organization and to eventually form a wireless technology incubator. More than 80 wireless companies operate in the Austin area and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce recently cited wireless as a key industry.
New York’s $50-million wireless “Center of Excellence” planned for Stony Brook University within three years, will include research labs and collaboration projects. The facility is expected to incorporate a prototype wireless home and a “wireless city.”
It’s expected to draw $250 million in investments over the next five years, university officials said. Key projects at the center will focus on the health care, transportation and mobile commerce industries, officials said. Radio frequency ID technology, “mesh networks” for roaming devices that join various networks on the fly, and “smart dust,” ever tinier wireless sensors embedded into household items, as among the center’s focus areas.
The largest donation to date has come in the form of a $6.8-million software contribution from Mentor Graphics, an Oregon company.
IBM and Stanford University have announced a new research group dedicated to the emerging science of spintronics, with the goal of creating prototype CPUs that complete computations through magnetism instead of today’s electrical charge.
“We’re trying to do something that could be as significant as the launch of the transistor 50 years ago,” says Robert Morris, vice president of IBM’s personal systems and storage. He directs the Almaden Research Center, where Big Blue and Stanford luminaries announced the new joint development effort.
The Department of Homeland Security has tapped Analytic Services to run the department’s first think tank to provide technical and analytical support for setting priorities and guiding projects and investments. The Homeland Security Institute is the federal government’s first federally funded research and development center in a decade. Its funding may reach almost $130 million over the next four and a half years, according to a department announcement.
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