Jonathan Hurst, right, was recognized by Popular Mechanics magazine with one of ten Breakthrough Innovator awards for 2012.

An era of walking robots that can help people with physical disabilities, take on dangerous missions or aid in disaster response is about to begin. One of the leaders in this emerging field, Oregon State University engineer Jonathan Hurst, was recognized in October by Popular Mechanics with one of its “Breakthrough Innovator” awards of 2012.

The science in this field is rapidly expanding, said Hurst, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State, who received the award along with his colleague, Jessy Grizzle, at the University of Michigan. Ten awards were made to scientists and engineers around the nation.

The researchers have built two walking robots, MABEL and the next generation model, ATRIAS. In each case, the technology is based on a fundamental understanding of how animals walk and run, using minimal energy to accomplish a maximum of locomotion and sensory response.

Hurst said walking robots are about where the automotive industry was 150 years ago, full of promise, with a number of new inventions and about ready to take off.

“In the next 20 years you are going to see legged robots all over the place, doing all kinds of jobs,” Hurst said. “The sky is the limit.”

Beginning with funding from the National Science Foundation for MABEL, and continuing with $4.7 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Oregon State and Michigan experts worked from principles of animal locomotion. The mechanical system closely interacts with the software control system, such as fiberglass springs working together with computer control to create efficient and stable walking and running gaits.

“So far much of what we’ve done has been with computer simulations, as we spent the past three years designing and building ATRIAS,” Hurst said. “The simulations are working, and our robot was walking three days after it was built. Now we’re going to demonstrate the control ideas on the real machines.”

Robots that ultimately can walk and maneuver over uneven terrain have a range of possibilities, Hurst added. One would be helping to power prosthetic limbs for people, or use an exo-skeleton to assist people with muscular weakness. But there could also be applications in the military, in disaster response, or any type of dangerous situation.

For something that humans usually learn to do by the time they are a year old, walking is still a mystery to most scientists. The complexity of sensory and mechanical input from nerves, vision, muscles and tendons has challenged the most sophisticated concepts in robotics.

MABEL, however, is able to run a nine-minute mile and step off a ledge. ATRIAS is even lighter, faster, and has three-dimensional motion capabilities. Some of these advances have been possible, Hurst said, because the Oregon State and Michigan researchers took a step back to better understand the fundamental forces at work before even trying to build something.

Most robots today work in a very static or highly controlled environment, but humans live in a mobile, unpredictable world, and with further advances robots may soon be able to join it.

FUNDING
National Science Foundation
Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI)
Hewlett Packard
Corning

RESEARCH PARTNERS
Federal labs and agencies
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology

Universities
Oregon State University
University of Oregon
Eastern Oregon University
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Davis
Washington University
Rutgers
Clemson
Central Washington University

Business and Industry
Hewlett Packard
Corning
Intel
Boeing
Sigma-Aldrich
IBM
General Electric
Inpria
Amorphyx

“Your TV-picture screen in 1964 may be so thin that it can be hung like a painting on the wall or mounted like a vanity mirror in a table model.” Popular Mechanics, January 1954

Popular Mechanics’ prediction took considerably more than 10 years to come true, but today’s flat-panel screens have gone well beyond that early vision. Some of them are nearly as big as a living room wall. They bring us unimaginably sharp detail, from the spots on butterfly wings to the grimace on a linebacker’s face.

This technology — whether hooked up to your cable feed, DVD player, wi-fi or computer — is also becoming integral to daily life. It increasingly provides the platforms on which we shop, share photos, read books, keep up with friends, play games, manage finances and work. In 2011, the global flat-panel screen industry shipped more than $120 billion worth of products, enough to cover nearly 16,000 football fields.

Doug Keszler, center, works with graduate students Deok-Hie Park and Shawn Decker on a pulsed electron deposition chamber on the Oregon State campus. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

However, our love of flashy high-res has a dark side. Manufacturing the semiconductors behind these electronic systems produces waste, lots of it. “The electronics and solar industries build devices where the materials input is very high relative to what ends up in the product. There’s tremendous amounts of waste and very high energy input,” says Doug Keszler, Oregon State University chemist.

Keszler and a team of scientists and engineers at Oregon State and the University of Oregon are leading a national consortium bent on greening the flat-panel display industry. In their future, windows, mirrors, walls and counters could display messages and harvest solar energy. “We’re trying to turn this industry into a truly zero-waste proposition while improving performance,” says Keszler, a principal scientist in the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry (CSMC). “We’d like to do electronics the size of a wall. The question is: How do you do that efficiently without producing even more waste?”

Startups Provide Jobs

Scientists use a spectroscopic ellipsometer to analyze atomic structure in thin films. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

The CSMC has already produced significant results: a metal-insulator-metal diode (a kind of electronic switch) that outperforms the fastest silicon-based semiconductors; water-based manufacturing techniques that reduce waste and improve productivity; high-resolution fabrication processes that forge thinner electronic components. With research roots going back more than a decade at OSU and UO, the center has spun off two startup companies, generated more than a dozen U.S. patents and developed an educational partnership to inspire more Oregon high school students to attend college. It also helps graduates to create their own careers. In cooperation with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, CSMC students join business leaders in the chemical and electronics industries to identify commercial opportunities stemming from research.

“About two-thirds of all Ph.D. graduates in the physical sciences now find their first job in a startup company,” says Keszler. “There is very little education to prepare students for that career path. We train them to recognize market value in their research, so they can work effectively with entrepreneurs and business development people.”

Two startups have already hired the center’s graduates. Amorphyx (www.amorphyx.com) is commercializing a new electronics manufacturing process that limits the production of unwanted industrial byproducts. Moreover, it trims a six-part process to two steps, offering the possibility of tripling production capacity in an existing facility.

In collaboration with another spinoff, Inpria (www.inpria.com), the center has broken a barrier in high-resolution circuitry, going below the 20-nanometer scale and enabling computer chips to accommodate more functions at higher speeds.

New materials and water-based manufacturing process may be key to reducing waste in the semiconductor industry, says Doug Keszler. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

These achievements reflect gains reported by Oregon State engineer John Wager, physicist Janet Tate, graduate student Randy Hoffman and other researchers as early as 2003. They noted that transparent thin-film transistors made of zinc oxide could lead to new kinds of liquid-crystal displays, the dominant type of flat-panel screen. In 2006, HP licensed the technology and has been developing applications in collaboration with OSU.

At UO in 2003, researchers in Darren Johnson’s chemistry lab discovered a solution-based process for making nanoclusters, leading to the possibility that new semiconductors could be made without hazardous chemicals. Jason Gatlin, the UO graduate student who discovered the process, instigated a new UO-OSU collaboration when he shared his findings at a conference sponsored by the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute.

“We’re pushing the boundaries of science and seeing things no one has ever seen before,” says Keszler. “There’s a lot of joy in the intellectual exchanges in such a diverse group.”

To attract more young scientists to their journey, CSMC students will begin working with Hermiston High School teacher Lisa Frye and her chemistry classes this fall. They will provide support, advanced instruction and resources to inspire high-school students to consider careers in science.

“What we’re after over the next 10 years,” says Keszler, “is to put the (industrial) ecosystem together that allows you to print electronics on flexible glass. They will be high performance, durable, and include applications such as solar collectors.”

We’ve come a long way from the futuristic idea of hanging TV screens like paintings on the walls of our homes.

Mark Whitham

Mark Whitham’s know-how is a sought-after commodity for small canners hoping to kick-start or upgrade their facilities. Coos Bay entrepreneur Mike Babcock isn’t the only one singing Whitham’s praises. Here’s what others are saying.

Fish to Soup

“When Mark came to the area, I sort of enlisted him to help with our processing records and update our cook times and scheduling,” says fisherman Mark Kujala, who runs his family’s cannery, Oregon Ocean Seafoods, in Warrenton. The family has canned salmon, tuna, and sturgeon under their brand, Skipanon, for nearly two decades. With Whitham’s input, Kujala soon will be releasing a new line of soups — old family recipes he’s keeping hush-hush for now. Whitham is also helping the company develop its own line of pouch-packed fish. “He’s very accessible,” says Kujala. “When I have questions in the middle of the day, I can call him up. Sometimes he’s out on the road, and he’ll pull over and take the time to listen and bounce off ideas.”

100 Diners

“Having Mark available has just been such an asset,” says Stan Eggas, owner of the Berry Patch Restaurant in Westport. “He has helped us come up with recipes and to start a processing and canning facility, which I frankly knew nothing about. It was just amazing.” Starting out as a tiny stand selling homemade jams, the business expanded to a restaurant that holds 100 diners. He also has been working with Whitham to develop a line of all-natural soups for high-end grocery stores. Eggas says Whitham helped him refine his recipes — chowders of salmon and razor clams, soups of tomato and chanterelle — to minimize preservatives and sodium and develop his canning process. “That OSU and Sea Grant have made this program and Mark available is really outstanding.”

Traditional Tribal Edibles

Jobs are sorely needed by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. “The unemployment rate on the reservation is really bad,” says Warm Springs elder Ron Supah. “The tribes need to seek opportunities to develop work for our tribal members.” Supah hopes to do that with a facility on the tribe’s reservation that will use retort pouches to preserve traditional foods such as elk, venison, berries and roots. Supah says the tribe is also considering packaging its sought-after Chinook salmon for sale in stores off the reservation.

Supah says the decision to use retort packaging came after he and other Warm Springs members visited Whitham at his Astoria lab. “We were pretty impressed by what we saw there,” remembers Supah. So far, Whitham has helped the tribe apply for a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant that will fund a feasibility study for the proposed facility.

Mike Babcock left a thriving lumber mill and set himself a new challenge: create a seafood business. (Photo: Pat Kight)

Still, in this one-time boomtown of lumber mills and commercial fishing, the entrepreneurial spirit lives. One man, Mike Babcock, is helping to kick-start Coos Bay’s renewal with an unlikely innovation: packing fish in pouches instead cans. Besides being flat and lightweight for cheaper, easier shipping, the laminated plastic-and-metal foil pouches are superior to cans in the No. 1 consumer yardstick: taste.

“Most store-bought tuna is twice cooked,” explains Babcock’s fish-packing guru, Mark Whitham, a food scientist with Oregon Sea Grant. “That means they cook all the nutrients and flavor out. Mike Babcock’s product is cooked only once, and it retains all the good fats, juices, and nutrients, and it tastes much better.”

It all began in 2010 when Babcock, a successful-but-restless sawmill owner, was looking for a new challenge. He heard about the packing pouches — called retortable or “retort” pouches in the industry — from coastal residents who had worked with Whitham on other projects. “I wonder if pouches would work for albacore?” he thought. To find out, he tracked down the food scientist, and together they investigated the pouch potential for Coos Bay. Within the year, Babcock had launched Oregon Seafoods.

The other "Bay Area." (Photo: Pat Kight)

Since October 2011 when he started shipping sustainably caught tuna and salmon under his label, Sea Fare Pacific, Babcock’s products have landed on the shelves of all eight Market of Choice grocery stores, as well as those of Portland’s trendy New Seasons Market for health-conscious shoppers. He also has created a line of smoked salmon for outdoor recreation giant REI, and his four flavors — sea salt, salt-free, smoked and jalapeno — have made their way to several other states.

From Freezer to Pouch

Just blocks from Coos Bay’s historic harbor, Babcock’s Oregon Seafoods plant is no bigger than a medium-sized classroom, but it’s packed to the gills with canning machinery. It’s cold inside. Workers wear hats and jackets under large, turquoise-colored aprons, latex gloves and hairnets as they pack fish for Sea Fare Pacific and several other brands.

“Of course, we would like to have more space,” says the 50-year-old businessman, a hairnet snugged over his red ball cap. “But we can do a lot with a small footprint.”

From the deep-freeze at Oregon Seafoods, workers carry salmon and albacore to the filleting room, where they slice up the fish and plop the chunks, red and raw, into small plastic cups. Two machines imported from Japan stand ready to package the fish into pouches. As the machine spins, another worker transfers chunks from the cups into 8-ounce pouches, which look like UPS envelopes, only silver.

The technical know-how behind Oregon Seafood’s processing, as well as the four specialty flavors developed for Sea Fare Pacific, came from Whitham. It was he who steered Babcock through his transition from mill owner to seafood processor. A soft-spoken, laid-back 57-year-old, Whitham is an unlikely revolutionary. Yet from his food lab at OSU Extension in Astoria, the Sea Grant scientist has been in the vanguard of Oregon’s canning coup.

If there’s such a thing as a food-preservation geek, Whitham is it. And if there’s one thing he “geeks out” about, it’s the flexible, lightweight retort pouches.

Oregon Seafoods workers load individual portions of cleaned and flavored albacore into pouches for sealing and cooking (Photo: Pat Kight)

“Retort pouches aren’t new,” says Whitham. “They’ve been around about 50 years, and, from what I’ve seen, they are really big in Europe and Asia. In general, they tend to be ahead of us as far as packaging is concerned.”

Coos Bay is just starting to catch up. The pouches’ advantages are many: lightweight and compact, they take less energy to ship than conventional steel cans. For the consumer or commercial chef, there’s no can to recycle. And their flat shape makes cooking more uniform. Again, it all comes down to flavor in the end.

Whitham’s larger mission — adding value to the region’s natural seafood bounty — underpins his 30-year career working with small producers up and down the coast. “Here in Oregon, seafood has really been a stand-alone product, and there’s just tremendous opportunity for adding value,” he says. With the right price point, package and recipe, processed fish can command double, triple, or even quadruple what it sells for raw. That in turn injects money and jobs into the community.

Injecting jobs and money into Coos Bay is exactly what Babcock is doing. A self-described “pedal-to-the-metal, get-it-done” type, the entrepreneur’s steely blue eyes are now focused on fine-tuning the process that took elbow grease and determination, along with Whitham’s expertise, to get moving. In Coos County where unemployment hovers around 10.5 percent — above average for both Oregon and the nation — the eight new jobs Babcock has created are a welcome boost.

From Cannery to Shopping Cart

On the cannery’s floor, the Japanese packing machines suck the air out of each pouch and seal it. Then comes the cooking. The oven — six feet around and15 feet tall with a massive metal door — looks more like a missile silo turned on its side than something from a commercial kitchen. It can hold a lot of product — more than 2,500 eight-ounce pouches, or nearly 475 pounds of fish. The pouches cook for 75 minutes at 240 degrees. Then they’re flash cooled to retain flavor.

In the cannery’s entryway, boxes full of packed tuna, ready to be shipped, testify that things are moving smoothly. But plenty of stumbling blocks stood in the way, Babcock attests. Whitham helped the entrepreneur persevere. “Whenever I have a problem,” he says, “I call him up and he’s there.”

Babcock isn’t sure why he left his successful business to start a new one in a field in which he had little experience. When urged to pin down a reason, he cites boredom. “The day-to-day operation of the sawmill was fine,” he recalls. “But we had been building the mill for a number of years, and once we got it built and we got to the monotonous day-to-day stuff, the challenge wasn’t there.”

The cannery lets him do what he loves best: build a business. These days, his schedule is full of food tradeshows. At first, he was skeptical about pitching his fish at the crowded tradeshow scene. But his first show was a total success, generating hundreds of sales leads.

That tradeshow, incidentally, was in San Francisco — the other “bay area.” Driving home, Babcock was elated — so elated, in fact, he just couldn’t wait to make another sale. So he stopped at a small health-food store in Eureka, California, and won yet another customer.

“Everywhere I go, people who try our product, they just fall all over it, they just love the quality, like they never tasted fish like this before,” he says. For that, and for the jobs he created in Coos Bay, Babcock credits Mark Whitham and Oregon Sea Grant. “This product has Mark’s name all over it. I want to keep this relationship going.”

______________________

Editor’s note: In March 2013, Oregon Seafoods announced that with help from Mark Whitham, the company launched a new line of soups and sauces (Seafood Bisque, Smoked Salmon Chowder, three albacore curries and a West Coast Ciopinno). Improved labeling also noted sustainability qualities such as Dolphin Safe and Line Caught. The company’s products are in more than 500 retail outlets.

Xihou Yin, president, AGAE Technologies (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

AGAE Technologies

Surfactants enhance cleaning, dispersion and emulsification in paints, household cleaners and other products. However, many are known to be toxic. Based on research in the Oregon State College of Pharmacy, AGAE Technologies has developed a biological method for producing surfactants that are environmentally benign and biodegradable. Based on licensed OSU technology, the new product is known as a “rhamnolipid” and is produced by a strain of the common bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Scott Gilbert, left, chief technology officer, and Todd Miller, president of Microflow CVO (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Microflow CVO

The problem seems simple: mix two liquids with consistently uniform results. Manufacturers usually perform this step in vats where batches of liquids are stirred and then processed. Through research in OSU’s Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, Microflow CVO has developed stainless-steel micromixers that achieve high-quality mixtures by pushing liquids through channels slightly larger than a human hair. The dime-sized devices can be scaled and adapted to manufacturing needs in the pharmaceutical, petrochemical and personal-care product industries.

Applied Exergy
Renewable energy sources tend to be intermittent: They produce power when the sun shines or the wind blows. Based on research in the OSU College of Engineering and the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, Applied Exergy is developing methods for storing energy as “low-grade heat,” temperatures from 40 to 80 degrees Centigrade. The technology has multiple applications: energy recovery from steam plumes, integration with carbon capture systems and energy storage for use during peak demand.

The company opened its doors in May 2011 and today employs five people. AGAE licensed the patented technology from OSU and has conducted its own research on cost-effective, high-yield processes for manufacturing a compound known as a rhamnolipid biosurfactant.

Xihou Yin, Oregon State University College of Pharmacy (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Surfactants, also known as “surface active agents,” are commonly used in personal and household products, paints and manufacturing processes to enhance cleaning, wetting, dispersion and emulsification. Synthesized by the newly discovered NY3 strain of the common bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, AGAE Technologies’ rhamnolipid biosurfactants “are nontoxic, environmentally benign and completely biodegradable,” said company CEO Harrison Parks.

Biosurfactants are a novel group of microbial compounds, which are made by living cells. “The increasing use of biosurfactants is being driven by technology breakthroughs, environmental awareness and tightening of regulations regarding chemical surfactants,” Parks added.

101 Active Licenses

AGAE is one of the latest companies to commercialize OSU research. In 2011, the university increased licensing revenues by 63 percent with 101 “active” technology licenses from mass spectrometry to mold and yeast inhibitors. “We are taking steps to help accelerate innovation through our partnerships with start ups like AGAE, as well as with established companies,” said Ron Adams, OSU executive associate vice president for research. “AGAE’s rapid move to sales is an example of the results of our effort.”

Xihou Yin, president and founder of AGAE Technologies and senior research faculty member in the OSU College of Pharmacy, has received customer inquiries from North America and Europe. “We are now able to meet their demand with laboratory research-grade rhamnolipids, and we are developing commercial-grade products of various purity specifications for pharmaceuticals, environmental bioremediation, personal care and several other application segments.”

Rhamnolipids contain L-rhamnose and β-hydroxyl fatty acids, with amphiphilic properties (both hydrophilic and hydrophobic). Based on Yin’s research, AGAE Technologies is now producing a product known as R-95 (HPLC/MS-grade) rhamnolipids, allowing the company to become the only known supplier of pure rhamnolipid compounds to the world market.

Cutting Costs

“Rhamnolipids were discovered about 60 years ago,” Yin said. “The real bottleneck to replacing synthetic chemicals with biosurfactants like rhamnolipids is the high cost of production. We are applying the latest genome sequencing technologies to strain improvement for NY3 and creating a nonpathogenic, high-yield rhamnolipid producer. Using renewable low-cost sources of ingredients, we are optimistic about further increasing the yields, reducing costs by scaling up production and promoting the global applications of these very eco-friendly biosurfactant molecules.”

Parks noted that the company already has a list of potential customers interested in applying the compounds to their products. “The industry expanse is quite broad, from pharmaceutical and cosmetics-grade customers to biopesticide, soil enhancement, bioremediation and oil spill/tank cleaning companies,” he added. “And it is international. All of our customers are asking AGAE for evaluation quantities and are interested in exploring our potential to become a strategic supplier.”

In addition to Parks, who has over 25 years of international technology sales and marketing experience, AGAE also has hired Martha Cone to oversee technical operations and to manage customer technical engagement.

Such networks would offer continuous, real-time health diagnosis, experts say, to reduce the onset of degenerative diseases, save lives and cut health care costs. The ideal monitoring device would be small, worn on the body, low cost, and perhaps draw its energy from something as minor as body heat. But it would be able to transmit vast amounts of health information in real time and help to prevent or treat disease.

Illustration by Teresa Hall

Sounds great in theory, but it’s not easy. If it were, the X Prize Foundation wouldn’t be trying to develop a Tricorder X Prize — inspired by the remarkable instrument of Star Trek fame — that would give $10 million to whomever can create a mobile wireless sensor and give billions of people around the world better access to low-cost, reliable medical monitoring and diagnostics.

“This type of sensing would scale down to the size of a bandage that you could wear around you,” says Chiang, an expert in wireless medical electronics and assistant professor in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

“The sensor might provide and transmit data on heart health, bone density, blood pressure or insulin status. Ideally, you could not only monitor health issues but also help prevent problems before they happen. Maybe detect arrhythmias, for instance, and anticipate heart attacks. Or, monitor the indoor location of an elderly person or the early onset of cognitive decline. Finally, it needs to be non-invasive and able to provide huge amounts of data while consuming little energy.”

Several startup companies such as Corventis and iRhythm have already entered the cardiac monitoring market.

In the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, Chiang and his team reported that one of the key obstacles is the energy required to run the device. A type of technology called “ultrawideband” might have that capability if the receiver getting the data were within a “line of sight” and signals were not interrupted by passing through a human body. But even non-line of sight transmission might be possible using ultrawideband if lower transmission rates were required, they found. Collaborating on the research was Huaping Liu, an associate professor in EECS, and clinical researchers at the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology at the Oregon Health & Science University.

Patrick Chiang (Photo courtesy of the College of Engineering)

“The challenges are quite complex, but the potential benefit is huge and of increasing importance with an aging population,” Chiang says. “This is definitely possible. I could see some of the first systems being commercialized within the next three years.”

Chiang’s collaborators on projects to develop non-invasive wireless monitoring devices include colleagues at OSU’s Center for Healthy Aging Research, the Linus Pauling Institute and OHSU in Portland. Chiang also collaborates with researchers at Tsinghua and Fudan universities in China.

_______________

Rachel Robertson contributed to this story.

Online: learn more about Patrick Chiang’s research.

Illustration by Heather Miller

Chain saws, baseball bats, truck bodies, jet engine parts and bridges. All from America’s industrial heartland, right? Or made in China? Wrong. Companies that produce these and other metal products — from kitchen knives and laboratory incubators to steel fabrication stock — employ thousands of Oregonians. One of the tools in their toolbox is a research partnership with Oregon State and Portland State universities.

Thanks to a program known as the Oregon Metals Initiative (OMI), companies from ATI Wah Chang in Albany to Precision Castparts Corporation in Portland have access to faculty and student talent to solve problems and explore product improvements. Engineers and students have teamed up to answer practical questions that production line workers and managers face daily in their drive to stay ahead of the competition.

“We are an industrial engine for the state,” says John Parmigiani, OSU mechanical engineer and representative to the 10-member OMI Board of Directors. “Historically, there’s been an emphasis on metallurgy, developing alloys for specific applications. But the OMI allows for much broader investigations, and we’ve expanded the research to other areas.”

According to OMI annual reports, among those topics are optimal job tracking systems, safer chain saws, improved pruning blades for home gardeners and the use of high-strength composite materials to reduce vehicle weight. Other projects have focused on self-cleaning chemical processing tanks, more efficient metal grinding operations and new materials for electronic systems. Some projects have resulted in patents for companies, internships for students and full-time jobs for graduates.

In all cases, teams of business employees and university researchers match wits and skills in improving operations and developing products.

Participating companies have included

• In Hillsboro, DeMarini Sports (athletic equipment, include aluminum bats)
• In Portland, Blount Manufacturing (chainsaws); and Daimler Trucks North America; ESCO Corporation of Portland (precision components for aerospace, energy and turbocharger markets)
• In Gresham, The Boeing Company (aircraft parts)
• In McMinnville, Cascade Steel (specialty products made from recycled scrap metal)
• In Oregon City, Benchmade (knives)
• In Cornelius, Sheldon Manufacturing (laboratory ovens and incubators) and Advanced Surfaces and Processes (extended wear surfaces for durability)
• In Corvallis, Hewlett Packard (electronics products including printers and computers)
• In Albany, ATI Wah Chang (specialty metal products for chemical processing, energy and other markets)
• In Reedsport, American Bridge Manufacturing (bridges and other civil infrastructure)

The State Legislature created the program in 1990. Projects are financed by state funds and matching dollars from businesses.

According to a 1998 survey of the state’s metals industry, Oregon hosted more than 1,700 metals manufacturing companies accounting for more than 55,000 jobs. These five recent projects are among those that are helping to shape the Oregon economy.

Company: Daimler Trucks North America, Portland

Project: Effective composites to replace metals
Goal: Reduce vehicle weight to create more fuel-efficient trucks and tractors

Company: Sheldon Manufacturing, Cornelius
Project: Humidity and Temperature Control of Thermal Chambers
Goal: Add features to an incubator and vacuum oven

Company: Hewlett Packard, Corvallis
Project: Materials for high-performance actuator applications
Goal: Develop thin-film piezoelectric material (exerts a force by changing shape in response to an electric current)

Company: Benchmade, Oregon City
Project: Blade steel alloy formation
Goal: Determine how different metal alloys perform in cutting experiments

Company: Blount Manufacturing, Portland
Project: Self-contained cutting-fluid system for concrete- and metal-cutting chain saws
Goal: Increase saw portability by designing an internal bar lubrication and cooling system

OSU researchers Leslie Burns, Brigitte Cluver and Hsiou-Lien Chen watch Newton go through his paces in the OSU design laboratory. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

The OSU Design Network

The network brings together professionals across the industry for informal gatherings and annual events in Portland, like last year’s Recycled Fashion Show — the longest-running fashion show of designs made from recycled materials in the country.

OSU’s Apparel Research Center

The center offers fabric-testing services to small firms and start-ups. At the Textile and Apparel Performance Testing Lab, clients can get measurements on a full array of variables in fabric and clothing construction (yarn count, weight, thickness), aesthetics (wrinkle recovery, drape, stiffness), durability (tear strength, abrasion resistance) and comfort (thermal properties, moisture management).

This fall, the center is expanding into Portland, where it will host a series of research-based workshops for design professionals at the university’s Food Innovation Center on N.W. Naito Parkway. Topics on the agenda include sizing and fabric grading, sourcing and sustainable textiles and materials.

Design Forum/PDX

This partnership among the Portland Development Commission, the City of Portland and the Oregon University System, along with private-sector businesses, is compiling the West Coast’s first materials resource library available to design professionals. OSU’s Leslie Burns serves on the forum’s board of directors.

OSU nanotechnology researchers are leveraging the power of molecular-scale processes to create new products. (Illustration: Santiago Uceda)

“Made in Oregon” means more than lumber, hazelnuts and pears. At the annual Willamette Innovators Night (WiN) on Nov. 10, established manufacturers from Oregon Iron Works to startups such as Trillium FiberFuels and the AirShip Technologies Group will discuss how research and industry partnerships are changing the state’s economic landscape.

“WiN provides a seedbed for ideas and partnerships that create new businesses and help existing businesses remain competitive,” says Mark Van Patten, chair of the WiN planning team and director of the Oregon State University Business Solutions Group.

Presentations begin at 1:45 p.m. in the LaSells Stewart Center, and a business and research expo will open in the CH2M-HILL Alumni Center at 4:30 p.m. The public is welcome. A schedule is available at http://bit.ly/w090rx.

Chandra Brown, vice president of Oregon Iron Works/United Streetcar, will explore the importance of manufacturing to the U.S. economy and describe the company’s evolution from a streetcar maker to a wave energy pioneer. Brown serves on the Oregon Innovation Council and Oregon Small Business Development Commission as well as the U.S. Manufacturing Council.

Michael Baker, managing partner in The Baker Group and CEO of Applied Exergy and HD Plus, developer of a home kidney dialysis system based on OSU research, will discuss opportunities for technology development in biomedical devices, energy and other industry sectors.

At a breakout session on prototyping, Scott Schroeder of Mega Tech of Oregon and Ben Berry of the Airship Technologies Group will focus on product development. Located in Corvallis, Mega Tech specializes in contract engineering services. Airship Technologies of Lake Oswego is developing a futuristic personal transporter that flies through the air and zips down the highway.

Other sessions will offer new developments in biofuels, product marketing and family business. Participants will have the opportunity to connect directly with elected representatives through chat.gov.

WiN is the Willamette Valley’s largest gathering of businesses, researchers, inventors and policymakers focused on creative collaboration for economic growth. In addition to presentations and industry sessions, the event will feature displays from more than 50 business and research groups, recognition of recent OSU patent awardees, announcement of the Linus Pauling Innovator of the Year Award and the popular Ignite! Corvallis, a series of rapid-fire presentations on creative ideas.

Held in collaboration with the Software Association of Oregon, WiN is sponsored by businesses and research organizations including Hewlett Packard, Oregon State University, Silverman Studios, Samaritan Health Services, the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, Peak Internet, Proworks Corp., Coelo Company of Design and the Madison Avenue Collective and other regional businesses and associations.

Steve Strauss, OSU Distinguished Professor and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

EXZACT™ provides a versatile and comprehensive toolkit for targeted genome modification, according to the company, and has already been licensed for use in research elsewhere on algae, maize and other plants.

As part of the agreement, Strauss and his team will make modifications to essential genes for flowering and reproduction. Dow AgroSciences is providing its technology as well as access to intellectual property, to validated, high-quality compounds known as zinc-finger reagents and to scientific expertise.

“Tree biotechnology is an exciting new field for agriculture and represents an important opportunity for both traditional industries like lumber and paper and newly emerging bioenergy companies,” says Kay Kuenker, Vice President for New Business at Dow AgroSciences.

————————-

The Society of American Foresters honored Steve Strauss in 2011 with the Barrington-Moore Memorial Award.

Abi Farsoni, right, and his graduate student, Abdulsalam Alhawsawi, discuss gamma and beta radiation waves visible on a computer screen. On the desk is the detector developed by Farsoni and colleague David Hamby. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Now, detection technology has taken a notable leap forward. A newly patented invention from Oregon State University uses “phoswich” technology (short for “phosphor sandwich spectrometer”) to detect both beta particles and gamma rays simultaneously. Texas-based firm Ludlum Measurements has signed a contract with OSU’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics to produce two of the detectors for engineering giant CH2M Hill to use in its Hanford cleanup project in Washington, where the U.S. government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to remove radioactive soil. Ludlum also has expressed interest in licensing the detector for commercial production and sale.

Eventually, the detector may find applications in nuclear energy and medicine, according to David Hamby and Abi Farsoni, professors in nuclear engineering, who developed the device with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

A Corvallis-based spinoff called Avicenna Instruments soon will begin production of the device’s electronic components. The fledgling company sees a ready market for the new technology in universities and laboratories, which currently make do with outdated analog equipment. “Detection systems that use digital spectrometers are more reliable, efficient and intelligent,” says Farsoni.

Besides being an important advance on earlier technologies that measured only one type of radiation at a time, the device can be linked to a PC via a simple USB port, the researcher says.

Hot Lines

To demonstrate, he fires up his computer and points to a bright red line pulsating across the screen. The line, which resembles the reading on a heart monitor, indicates background radiation, the levels that occur naturally in the environment. Then, picking up a nickel-sized capsule from the table, he holds it close to the detector. The red line reacts immediately. “See how the waves are going faster and faster?” he says. “This is a gamma source. It emits only gamma rays.” Then, holding up a second capsule to the device, he says, “This is a beta source. See how the shape of the beta pulses is totally different from the gamma pulses?

“With this new system,” the researcher explains, “there’s very little ‘cross talk,’ or interference, between the two types of radiation. It’s very easy to separate the pulses.”

Another plus: Test results can be processed at warp speed. The device, which runs on a small battery, takes a sample every five nanoseconds, giving users 1,000 samples in five microseconds, according to Farsoni. These mega-fast results can then go global instantly on the Internet.

“Now I can email pulses to my friends in India or Europe,” Farsoni says.

Adds Hamby: “This system will be able to provide accurate results in 15 minutes that previously might have taken half a day. That saves steps, time and money.”

Using MATLAB (a technical computing language and interactive environment for algorithm development, data visualization, data analysis, and numeric computation), users can quickly and easily change algorithms in the coding to customize the device for specific detection needs.

“You can reprogram it any time you want,” says Farsoni.

______________________

See Resources for Industry for more stories about OSU research with commercial potential.

Brian Wall, Office of Commercialization and Corporate Development

With a research enterprise of more than $275 million and a history of successful partnerships with industry, Oregon State University helps companies from discovery through commercialization to solve complex research issues and develop innovative new technologies. OSU research is driven by the university’s commitment to sustain healthy ecosystems, a healthy economy and healthy people.

The OSU research community through the years has valued collaboration and an entrepreneurial spirit. Leadership plans to reinforce its support of innovative organizational structures that enable a diverse portfolio of both individual and team-based research. It includes a healthy spectrum of fundamental and applied research. Undergraduate and graduate education will continue to develop leaders and sustain a work force that meets current and anticipated employment needs.

OSU’s Vice President for Research Rick Spinrad is working with a team to develop a comprehensive Research Agenda. Defining the university’s research values and principles, thrusts, and implementation plans, the plan demonstrates that support of commercialization and corporate development are increasingly integral to the future contributions of the state’s land grant institution.

The diverse OSU research portfolio has grown dramatically – for instance, OSU industrial research agreements have risen by 57% over the past three years. In addition, OSU start-ups are fueling the Oregon economy. In the past five years, eight start-up companies were created, based on licensed OSU intellectual property. These eight start-ups have attracted more than $95 million in investment capital and created more than 180 new jobs in the state. An additional six start-up companies are sponsoring OSU research projects using OSU facilities or equipment, employing current OSU students or in other ways benefiting from OSU resources. Nine additional companies are currently emerging from the use of OSU intellectual property.

With increasing innovations and commercial opportunities, the Research Office has been transforming operations to keep pace. OSU’s former Office of Technology Transfer is now the Office for Commercialization and Corporate Development (OCCD), directed by Brian Wall. Focusing on connecting entrepreneurs, investors and existing companies to OSU’s capabilities, and helping transform research into applications that impact the world, the OCCD is the bridge between researchers and commercial entities, from Oregon-based start-ups to large international companies.

The newest member of the OCCD team, Dan Whitaker, a “serial entrepreneur” with experience in 16 start-up companies, is working throughout OSU to guide new business creation and corporate development. The result will be a substantial increase in start-up activity and connections with existing companies.

Safer, greener wood products are on the horizon thanks to a novel research partnership funded by the National Science Foundation. Backed by a five-year NSF grant, Oregon State University and Virginia Tech will collaborate with a veritable who’s-who of private wood-products companies to design a new generation of environmentally friendly wood-based composite materials. Weyerhauser, Jeld-Wen and six other leading companies are kicking in $30,000 each.

With matching funds from Oregon BEST (Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies), the new Industry/University Cooperative Research Center will have total support of $2.2 million to investigate new generations of adhesives, plywood and other materials for building homes, offices, schools and other spaces where people live and work.

“OSU and Virginia Tech are both international leaders in wood science and technology,” notes Fred Kamke, a wood sciences professor who will direct the new center at OSU. “This major new initiative will build on those strengths. Composite products allow for more efficient, sophisticated and competitive uses of wood, and they’re the future of the wood products industry.”

Microtechnology research by Goran Jovanovic, Oregon State University professor of chemical engineering, has contributed to new health-care and energy products.

Venture capital firms, too, have been bullish on OSU-originated firms. Home Dialysis Plus and Azuray Technologies, for example, received investments of $55 million during the first half of 2010 alone.

Since 1982, Oregon State has spun out 23 companies. Four or five more startups are in the pipeline for the coming year, says Brian Wall, director of OSU’s office of technology transfer.

“We’re at a point where we’re analyzing the technology to be sure it doesn’t need significant R&D investment,” Wall told Business Journal Web editor Suzanne Stevens. “Then we’ll help make introductions to potential investors and CEOs.”

Neil Shay directs the Oregon Wine Research Institute at Oregon State University (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

“Neil understands how to connect research and business in large-scale projects that are results-oriented,” says Sonny Ramaswamy, dean of OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

Adds Oregon wine pioneer and industry leader David Adelsheim: “He’s also a passionate wine consumer. Having made his own wine, grown his own grapes, worked informally at a winery and toured wine regions of France makes him quite rare in academia.”

Fred Kamke is site director for a new wood composites research center at Oregon State University.

Engineers like to break things. In my years reporting on university research, I’ve seen them bend reinforced wood beams as wide as my front door until they shatter. They’ll pummel stud walls repeatedly until the nails cry uncle. Bunker-sized concrete bridge beams will crack from one end to the other as they are stressed with the pounding that a real bridge might see over 100 years. It’s more than just the joy of destruction. How and when things break yields information that manufacturers use to build better structures. So it’s no surprise that the companies that make the things we live in, ride over and depend on support research that tells them just how far their products will take us.

Last July, eight of these companies (Arclin; Ashland, Inc.; JELD-WEN; Hexion Specialty Chemical, Inc.; Henkel; Weyerhaeuser Co.; Georgia Pacific Chemicals; and Willamette Valley Co., mostly international wood products manufacturers) had signed on and ponied up to support a new Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, a partnership between Oregon State University and Virginia Tech. The National Science Foundation set the stage with a $2.2 million five-year grant to the Wood-Based Composites Center, which is led by Virginia Tech. Fred Kamke, site director at OSU and professor of wood science (holder of the JELD-WEN Chair in Wood-Based Composites Science), describes the emphasis as “pre-competitive.” Companies want information that will move the whole industry forward. Stress testing is still on the agenda, but the emphasis for the past decade has been on the small details, the molecular bonding between wood, adhesives and synthetic materials such as carbon fiber and reinforced polymers. Businesses succeed by leveraging advances in basic science. “Wood products are now a global, intensely competitive industry, and we believe that advanced research will help keep the U.S. at the forefront of that industry,” Kamke told OSU news writer Dave Stauth in July. “This will help both existing and new companies stay competitive while they create innovative new products and jobs.” Just as important for the companies, he adds, is work force development. By providing graduate students with the resources to specialize in these areas, businesses are creating their future talent pool. Kamke has been a leader in this field for more than a decade. Before coming to OSU, he led Virginia Tech’s Wood-Based Composites Center. Among his accomplishments at OSU: a more efficient and effective way to increase resilience and strength in weak woods, a process known as viscoelastic thermal compression, or VTC. The vision for the new center includes collaboration with two other leaders in the field: the University of Maine’s Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center and the Forestry Sciences Centre at the University of British Columbia.

Both companies have licensed Oregon State University technologies and are benefitting from OSU’s University Venture Development Fund (UVDF). Launched by the Oregon Legislature in 2007 to stimulate research commercialization, the UVDF gives Oregon residents a 60 percent state tax credit for their gifts.

Inpria, one of the startups, has developed a new way to create thin films for displays and other large-area electronics using low-cost printing processes. OSU professors Douglas Keszler and John Wager are among the company’s co-founders.

According to Andrew Grenville, Inpria co-founder and president, UVDF money helped the company leverage funding to explore new markets for its landmark LCD display technology.
Life Microsystems is capitalizing on research by two scientists in OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute. Carole Jubert developed a low-cost method for isolating pure chlorophyll from Oregon spinach. George Bailey has shown that chlorophyll can bind with toxins in the body, reducing DNA damage and potentially preventing disease.

Life Microsystems has isolated a more stable crystalline form of ultra-pure chlorophyll, which typically sells for more than $100 per milligram due to its susceptibility to degradation.

Scott Gustafson, a veterinarian and CEO of Life Microsystems, is partnering with OSU professor John Mata to isolate and concentrate other beneficial compounds from Oregon agricultural products, such as black raspberries.

For more information about spinoff companies, see these OSU news releases:

From Printed Electronics to Chlorophyll from Oregon Spinach, OSU Venture Fund Powers Startups, July 20, 2009

Tax Incentive Program Funds Six Oregon State Research Projects, August 19, 2008

To support the University Venture Development Fund at OSU, see this Web site.

Rancher Doc Hatfield (left) grills up a sampling of range-grazed, hormone-free beef for grocery store customers, a personal touch that helps to set Country Natural Beef apart from factory-farm meat and to build trust among consumers. (Photo courtesy of Country Natural Beef)

The search for sustainability is creating some strange bedfellows.

Take, for instance, Country Natural Beef. In the Oregon-based meat co-op, cattle ranchers — known for their fierce independence — have forged surprisingly strong alliances with other ranchers across the West. Even more improbably, these no-nonsense traditionalists are collaborating with progressive health-food aficionados, animal-rights advocates and environmental activists.

The unlikely partnering of 120 ranch families with the likes of national retailer Whole Foods Market (the co-op’s biggest customer), Northwest restaurant chain Burgerville (whose slogan is “fresh, local, sustainable”) and renowned animal-compassion expert Temple Grandin (a scientist at Colorado State University) represents a growing business trend, according to Oregon State University business professor Zhaohui Wu.

“Country Natural Beef is an example of a trust-based model where relationships are driven by shared values,” say Wu, who specializes in sustainable business practices and supply-chain management. Notions like “trust” and “values” may sound a bit warm and fuzzy to the ears of a financier. But a growing body of research suggests they can effectively cut transaction costs and boost profits. Basing business dealings on close and “voice-based” relationships (that is, talking things over) rather than on written contracts is the alternative to the typical American “arms-length” transaction in a fragmented supply chain, says Wu.

In the mainstream beef market, business is determined by producer costs, but prices soar and sink erratically as commodity traders bet against future supply and demand. In contrast, Wu explains, consumer values provide stability for the natural-foods niche. This highly discerning customer base demands strict synchronicity with the shoppers’ philosophical beliefs: holistic rangeland management, stress-free cows, connectedness to the land, fair labor practices and additive-free meat traceable to its source. They’re willing to pay a premium for a product that reflects their deeply held beliefs.

Trust and collaboration among producers also make for more nimble decision-making, essential in a rapidly changing marketplace. Co-op members control beef supply cooperatively and negotiate stable pricing with buyers. The volatility and unpredictability that can devastate independent ranchers is minimized. Wu even has a term for cooperation among competitors: “co-opetition.” He is the lead author on this topic in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Operations Management.

Wu and Professor Mellie Pullman of Portland State University studied 30 member ranches of the beef co-op’s network, traveling to some of the range’s most remote reaches, from Frenchglen to Hell’s Canyon. They interviewed people at every link in the supply chain, from pasture to feedlot to slaughterhouse. They talked to the co-op’s customers, as well, including New Seasons grocery stores and Bon Appetit Management Co.

They learned that sustainability practices flow like an unstoppable flood inside a values-based business model. Pressure from the co-op’s customers in 2008 pushed distributor Fulton Provision company (owned by food-services giant Sysco) to undergo a third-party audit of waste management, worker conditions, water and energy conservation and transportation by the Food Alliance. The result: Fulton now runs its trucks on biodiesel, recycles packaging materials, salvages wood pallets, re-circulates water and uses more energy-efficient machines.

Values-based approaches can be the salvation for struggling mid-sized and family-owned operations, argues Wu. In the late 1980s when Country Natural Beef was launched as Oregon Country Beef, family ranches were endangered. “Many small ranchers were in dire straits under a combination of factors: mounting pressures from dieticians to eat less red meat, a popular perception of the abuse of public land by over-grazing, rising interest rates and wildly fluctuating commodity beef prices,” the professors assert in their case study.

In the two decades since the co-op formed, it has “evolved into a key player in the natural beef industry,” the researchers say. Country Natural Beef has the power to sustain not only the landowners but also the land for generations to come.