Year-old-plus babies are usually up and walking, albeit at an unsteady gait. Sprinters they're not. But the 15-month-old Applied Research Center (ARC) is one toddler that seems confident with a fast, sure pace.

Students set up research equipment, donated by Xerox and Kodak corporations, in the Old Dominion University laboratory located on the first floor of the ARC.

In a series of short-term projects conducted for industrial customers and government clients, ARC has easily met or exceeded many of the financial and institutional goals set for its first full year of operation. In particular, ARC's Center for Plasma and Photon Processing (CP3), funded by the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology, has succeeded in developing a portfolio of business and analytical services, technical alliances and short applied-technology courses.

"All of our customers have received what they came here to get," says ARC managing director Dennis Manos. "It's a big deal to give customers what they want. It's a fundamental business principle that not every institution is able to fulfill. We are."

ARC is an $18.4 million, seven-story, 122,000-square-foot research complex built as a result of a collaboration between the College of William & Mary and Christopher Newport, Norfolk State and Old Dominion Universities and Jefferson Lab. ARC design and construction costs were underwritten by the City of Newport News. Although state funds have initially supported the Center's research programs, faculty salaries and equipment purchases, recent industry projects are generating an increasingly healthy cash flow. Center universities individually and collectively have also submitted several grant proposals which, if approved, will bring additional, major investment.

ARC universities are also working closely with JLab's Free Electron Laser (FEL) program in several technology transfer projects, including the demonstration of the FEL's laser capabilities to Siemens Automotive and DuPont Precision Concepts. As a result, Siemens has established a laser laboratory at the Center which is being overseen by Prof. Mool Gupta, ODU's ARC director, to assist company experts with micromachining experiments and in small-batch production.

The Lab and ARC are collaborating on a number of other FEL-related ventures, including a NASA "Space Sail" materials-research project with corporate partner Northrop Grumman; fabric surface-roughing experiments with a Hampton Roads firm; and fabric experiments with a North Carolina-based manufacturer of floor coverings, apparel and industrial fabrics. An intellectual property agreement has been established between JLab and ARC; two patent applications involving high power ultraviolet lamps are in the process as well.

"If you want to borrow a cup of sugar it's nice to have a bunch of cooks in the neighborhood," Manos says. "We're able to propose things no one else can because of JLab. The Lab is obviously a separate entity, but there's a permeable barrier there. Their help gives us a real edge in photon processing and in lasers."

Sharing The Vision

Although ARC's four partner universities have made clear progress in participating in joint ventures, Manos concedes that articulating a common vision is more difficult. The quartet is still working to find the right balance between competition and cooperation.

"Whenever you put stars and superstars together there will be some level of competition," he says. "You don't want to end up with a cast of prima donnas, and you sure don't want a bunch of wallflowers waiting for someone else to take the initiative. Any organization tries to find the right balance between the two extremes."

Federal government contracts may be one means of involving all of the ARC partners. Such agreements now account for half of the Center's business, up from one-third earlier this year. ARC's immediate federal neighbors - the Navy, Air Force and NASA Langley Research Center - are logical and possible clients. Efforts are underway to identify common areas of interest and ways the Center may be able to provide expert assistance locally.

Ideally, says Manos, the Center will sustain itself with a mix of private and public-sector projects as alliances forged in the present develop and enlarge in the future. Ground should be broken in the next two years for the first of several phases of the long-planned Jefferson Research Park. Its presence, and the increased tempo of innovation at ARC, should encourage the development of what Manos describes as a "nucleating environment," a place around which will coalesce entirely new kinds of ventures that rely upon and directly apply the advanced laser and materials techniques developed by Center and JLab scientists and engineers.

"If I have a dream for ARC, it is that it will be a place for people to come with their wild ideas and turn them into reality," he says. "Anyone who's able to do that, to provide a place where innovation happens, can end up with a whole new industry or industries in their backyard."

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