Funding the Future

As Featured in the Vol. 6 No. 5 Fall/Winter 2008

The 21st Century Jobs Fund is a $2 billion, ten-year initiative to accelerate the diversification of Michigan’s economy and grow businesses in the areas of alternative energy, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and homeland security and defense. The commercialization of university research into real businesses has been a major focus of the jobs fund. Here are two examples:

Kettering University has partnered with Flint's Mass Transportation Authority (MTA) to conserve energy through the use of hybrid vehicles. MTA currently operates five hybrid mini buses on routes in Flint and throughout Genesee County with fuel efficiency improvements of 15 to 25 percent over similar diesel powered buses.

Kettering is also working with Michigan State University on the development of more efficient powertrain designs for hybrid buses, a project funded by the 21st Century Jobs Fund. The objective is to provide an overall improvement of up to 40 percent over a standard diesel-powered vehicles. The partnership's goal is to field the first production vehicles utilizing advanced hybrid electric technology in fiscal 2009.

There are also plans are to bring hydrogen fuel cell technologies to MTA buses within three years. To accomplish that, MTA and Kettering are exploring the design and purchase of a hydrogen generation plant. If successful, Flint's MTA could cut its $3.5 million fuel budget each year to $2 million annually.

MSU Chemistry Professor Marcos Dantus Ph.D. has been developing lasers capable of everything from monitoring diseases to enhancing metabolic studies of drug interactions. In 2003, Professor Dantus commercialized his research with his start-up, Biophotonic Solutions, Inc. The company focuses on the research and development of laser-based methods for detection and imaging in biotechnology market. The Smart Laser technology uses rapid pulses that allow researchers to manipulate molecules in fractions of a second and will give health care professionals the ability to analyze all the molecules in our bodies, arming doctors, chemists and drug makers with more precise information. “We have much greater success in protein sequencing, and we can reduce the time scale for analysis from days to a few minutes,” said Professor Dantus.

Biophotonic Solutions plans to add a new dimension to its business using mass spectrometry approaches and employing ultrashort femtosecond laser-pulses. The ultimate goal is to develop a commercial model of a service-based for-profit laboratory in mid-Michigan, with unique capabilities, to meet the analytical needs in the growing fields of biomolecule study at the state and national levels. The prospect of these new technologies and the high tech jobs they would created earned Dantus and his team $1.4 million through the state’s 21st Century Jobs Fund for further research, development and production of laser technology. “It’s expensive to develop commercial systems with all the functioning components,” said Professor Dantus. “It is important for the state to capitalize on these type of developments that are occurring in our universities.”

For more information about Kettering's Center for Fuel Cell Systems & Powertrain Integration program visit http://fuelcells.kettering.edu/index.html.

For more information about BioPhotonic Solutions Inc., visit http://www.biophotonicsolutions.com.