Technology Blossoms in Virginia
CIT funding helps Lab, local universities

by James Schultz

Amateur gardeners thrill to the sight of a healthy sprout. Properly attended, a fledgling flowers to adulthood, adding to the grace and beauty of a backyard landscape.

For Jefferson Lab, a long-standing collaboration with Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) has likewise led to the robust maturation of two major projects and collaboration on several more.

In particular, says JLab technology transfer manager Fred Dylla, CIT provided start-up and other monies to the Free Electron Laser (FEL) project, and has been a vocal supporter of, and funder to, the Applied Research Center. Dylla estimates that an initial, aggregate infusion of $600,000 of CIT funds has resulted in an approximate return to the Lab of $50 million in terms of infrastructure and equipment.

"For us, it has been an essential relationship," Dylla attests. "I don't know where else we would have gone for the FEL seed money. And I believe that because of the FEL, the ARC building is here."

CIT was created in 1984 by Virginia's General Assembly as a non-profit organization designed to enhance the research and development capability of the state's major research universities. In its first decade of operation, CIT fostered relationships between the universities and state-based businesses. Ten years later, in 1994, CIT adopted a new mission, one that measured the agency's success in terms of technology-related companies and jobs created and retained. In the past four years, CIT has helped create nearly 10,000 new jobs and more than 220 new companies within the Commonwealth.

Although the Center's relationship with JLab dates back to CIT's founding, the partnership gathered steam in 1990 with the FEL proposal. Other projects followed. In 1994, joint memoranda of understanding were signed that allowed CIT to seek marketing licenses for JLab-developed intellectual property. As part of that agreement, the Laboratory agreed to keep CIT apprised of the potential marketability of any current and future research.

"From its inception, CIT has been a champion of concentrated intellectual talent," says CIT president Robert Templin, Jr. "It is the fountain from which innovation springs. In the new economy, innovation is the competitive advantage. Jefferson Lab is one of the crown jewels within the array of technology resources around the Commonwealth."

Laboratory as Jobs Generator

Encouraged by congressional legislation and subsequent government regulations that make public-private partnerships easier to initiate and maintain, the nation's federal laboratories have been undertaking ways to accelerate the transfer of technology from workbench to marketplace.

"Many people have traditionally seen federal labs as the 900-pound gorilla," says Karen Jackson, Tidewater Region director for CIT. "The labs have become much more approachable and flexible in accommodating different projects with companies. We consider all the federal labs as partners in everything we do. Our goal is to draw out in-house expertise and match it with the companies we have."

For technology startups, CIT offers assistance with feasibility studies, business plans, access to capital and manufacturing assistance. The agency also advises high-tech entrepreneurs on developing short- and long-range plans. The Lab and CIT view the Applied Research Center as one venture that will attract its share of entrepreneurs. Over the next five years, CIT will contribute a total of $2 million to ARC's Plasma and Photon Processing Center, one of the agency's select Technology Innovation Centers.

"Locally, we can't ask for a better situation than the Applied Research Center," Jackson says. "It's an excellent regional platform for the universities and JLab. We're starting to pull all the main players together. It's wonderful."

CIT's Templin, a past president of Thomas Nelson Community College, has a personal interest in the Lab dating back to the years he spent in Hampton. Templin praises Lab Director Hermann Grunder for his community outreach and aggressive support of education. It is Grunder who Templin credits for inspiring him to seek the CIT presidency.

In his current capacity, Templin has watched approvingly as Jefferson Lab has grown and achieved. He believes the kind of relationship CIT and the Lab have developed is a prototype that can be applied elsewhere in the state.

"Jefferson Lab has been a sterling success," Templin asserts. "By virtue of our collaboration here, people nationally and abroad can see the value of the application of knowledge. My hope is that, modeled after the relationship CIT and the Lab have, Virginia can incubate other centers of excellence around other emerging technologies."

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