CU, Mines get science grants of $16.5 million
By Tillie Fong, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published September 23, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
CORRECTION: This story should have said that the Colorado School of Mines has received its first National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center grant specifically for renewable energy. The college has received other NSF grants in the past.
Two Colorado colleges have been awarded a total of $16.5 million in grants from the National Science Foundation for research into renewable energy.
The Colorado School of Mines will receive $9.3 million to establish a facility to study renewable energy materials and technology.
This is the first NSF center that will be dedicated solely to renewable energy.
The University of Colorado will receive $7.2 million to continue and expand its work at its existing Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center, which was founded in 1995. This is the third round of funding from the NSF for the center.
"It recognizes the cutting-edge science and technology and research being done in Colorado," Gov. Bill Ritter said of the grants.
Ritter announced the awards at a news conference at the Colorado Capitol Monday afternoon. The grants are part of the NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program.
"There are only 26 centers around the country," he said. "So for Colorado to receive two multimillion-dollar grants is an incredible achievement."
The grants are also made possible with the creation of the Colorado Higher Education Competitive Research Authority, which provides research institutions in the state with matching funds from the state so that they can compete for federal grants.
For the Colorado School of Mines, this is the first NSF grant that the college has received.
"When it comes to scientific research, Colorado (School of Mines) was clearly competitive with the best," said Paul Taylor, a physics professor at the college and associate director for the Colorado Energy Research Institute. He also was the lead investigator for the college in applying for the grant.
The NSF grant will provide the center with $1.5 million a year for six years.
Mines' new center will research how to improve solar cell technology, including finding ways to bring the cost down, making fuel cells more efficient, and develop ways to use hydrogen and methane.
The college will work with scientists of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
For CU, the grant to the Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center will help bring students and faculty members from different departments together to study and develop liquid crystal materials.
The center will get $7.2 million over six years from the NSF, along with $800,000 of matching funds annually from the state and CU.
"It means that we can pursue a lot of new ideas," said CU physics professor Noel Clark, director of the Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center. "We've been pretty good at staying ahead of the field and we hope to keep on doing that."
The center has already spun off six companies, including 2-year- old Naxellent in Broomfield, which develops liquid crystal technology for solar control panels.
The center is also working with three other companies to develop non-display applications for liquid crystal that will improve the efficiency of solar heating.
Other institutions that received NSF grants this year included Harvard University, Princeton University and MIT.
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