Nanotech lab will be at HP a while
ONAMI will have home there for next 20 years
By KYLE ODEGARD
Gazette-Times reporter
Oregon State University will expand the microtechnology and nanoscience research it is doing on Hewlett-Packard’s Corvallis campus, where the company is donating use of an 80,000-square-foot building to the university for 20 years.
“The gift is worth about $25 million,” said Ron Adams, dean of the OSU College of Engineering. “We are going to invest $9.5 million in state money in labs in that building.”
The facility will provide OSU and affiliated researchers with additional space for the lab and research areas, as well as room for start-up companies developing technologies into new products and services that would generate new jobs here.
The Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, which has 50 OSU researchers among its ranks, and the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, a collaboration between the OSU College of Engineering and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, currently occupy about one-quarter of Building 11 on the HP campus.
Those operations will expand to the entire building in the coming months.
“This lease agreement is a phenomenal example of good will by one of Oregon’s leading businesses reaching out to partner with this state’s academic researchers and will ultimately be felt by the economic impact generated by the technologies developed inside this building,” Adams said.
Adams added that while Hewlett-Packard has long been a significant contributor to OSU, this gift was its largest ever and “very unusual” for any company.
“Obviously, this is a dream come true for an organization such as ours,” said Skip Rung, ONAMI’s executive director. “We anticipate great things as a result of this amazing opportunity.”
Investing in nanoscience and microtechnology will help develop new product opportunities for Hewlett-Packard and other companies, said corporate spokesman Ryan Donovan, who is based in Palo Alto, Calif.
“We believe that in today’s world, in order to be competitive, businesses must actively partner with universities and other companies to afford the high cost of technology development,” he added.
Donovan declined to address whether the donation provided tax benefits or the issue of vacant space on the company’s Corvallis campus, a result of HP scaling back operations here in the last few years.
In the mid-1990s, the company had about 6,000 employees in Corvallis. Multiple rounds of outsourcing, layoffs and buyouts have slashed the workforce in half, leaving the technology company not only with empty cubicles, but with empty buildings.
A year ago, HP put Building 1 and Building 10 — which have a combined 320,000 square feet of space — up for lease.
ONAMI has used part of Building 11 for free since 2003.
Since its inception in 2002, ONAMI researchers have attracted more than $110 million in grants in nanoscience and microtechnologies. Today, it has 150 researchers. ONAMI’s other partners include the University of Oregon, Portland State University and Oregon Health and Science University.
ONAMI also has distributed $6.8 million in grants to projects, and OSU has three newly developed technologies created through that money: a blood filter system to enable portable and in-home kidney dialysis; a tiny OSU-patented microreactor for distributed or on-vehicle production of biodiesel; and a system that will improve drug delivery within the human body.
Those technologies are being commercialized by the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute and will lead to new start-up companies. The institute has more than 15 workers, most of them connected to OSU.
“The enhanced facility will enable the MBI to further develop and commercialize energy and chemical process technologies — particularly with Oregon industry — that can transform our world,” said Rod Quinn, chief technology officer with the Energy and Environment Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Kyle Odegard covers Oregon State University. He can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.
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