It's tough to visit a huge school like Michigan State University in just one day.

With a sponsored research budget approaching $400 million, there are literally hundreds of really interesting projects for a reporter like me, on the Great Lakes IT Report Fall Tech Tour 2008, to look at.

Well, I want to thank Russ "Green And" White, MSU media communications manager, and his wife Lynda, communications manager for the MSU College of Engineering, for the agenda they put together for my visit Thursday -- it was wide ranging and uniformly fascinating.

My day began with a visit with J. Ian Gray, vice president for research and graduate studies. A 31-year MSU veteran he's been in his current post since 2004.

Gray said his major job is to boost MSU's sponsored research, specifically the level of federal research support. He said tech transfer frequently measures its effectiveness in invention disclosures and patents, when a better yardstick might be jobs.

Gray said MSU is in a unique position in terms of its research, as a land grant institution with more of an undergrduate focus than many similar-sized schools. But overall, Gray said there's a growing recognition of the importance of research on campus. He said MSU is concentrating on hiring research-intensive faculty and has added professional commercial assessment staff at its technology transfer operation, renamed MSU Technologies.

Gray spoke frankly of earlier MSU tech transfer shortcomings, such as a failure to plan for the falloff of licensing revenue after the blockbuster prostate cancer drug cisplatin came off patent and faced generic competition. He also said MSU needs to do a better job of developing ties with venture capitalists and local economic development agencies, and needs to do more to training students to consider entrepreneurship as a career path. "I think we're on target," he said.

Then Russ and I hopped into the Tech Tour Mobile for a visit to one of the coolest computer laboratories I have ever seen -- the Laboratory of Excellence for Realtime Computing and Multiscale Modeling of civil and environmental engineering professor Shu-Guang Li.

"This is all about water," Li said amid walls full of display units costing as much as $150,000. "We deal with water in lakes, streams and underground."

Essentially, Li and his research team are investigating better ways to analyze contaminant transport in complex groundwater systems. Li has computer-modeled all of Michigan's groundwater, using information from the state's 1.6 million wells and proprietary software (called Interactive Ground Water, or IGW) to pull together scattered databases and provide a predictive model of how groundwater behaves.

"The application of this tool goes far beyond analyzing wellhead protection areas," Li said. "We are only scratching the surface."

Li's group also designs cleanup systems for groundwater contamination, using the computer model to determine where to put remediation pump-out wells.

Li said he eventually wants to put the data he's generating on the Internet so the general public can use it to protect groundwater resources.

For pictures of the lab, check out  www.egr.msu.edu/~lishug/real-time%20visualization%20lab.htm.

Then it was across a parking lot on the southern edge of Mcihigan State's campus to the brand-new Energy and Automotive Research Center, the home for much of MSU's energy research.

I visited with Leo Kempel, associate dean for research and a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Kempel described how MSU is moving much of its biotechnology-based energy research to the former Michigan Biotechnology Institute, which MSU's Research Foundation now owns. And much of the rest of energy research is in the new, $20 million, 30,000-square-foot building.

MSU has hired 14 new faculty in the College of Engineering over the past year or so, which has brought the faculty to about 175. Among them: researchers working on power grids that work more smoothly with renewable energy inputs like wnd and solar, and researchers working on capturing the waste heat from cars' exhaust and engines and converting that into electricity that can run the car's systems.

Kempel also noted that research spending in the College of Engineering is up 29 percent over the past two years to $35 mlilion annually.

My next visit was with University Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Mechanics Larry Drzal, whose research has turned common graphite -- the stuff pencil lead is made out of -- into a supermaterial that promises to make a wide variety of products better.

Drzal's graphite sheets, called nano-graphite platelets, are essentially unrolled carbon nanotubes. But unlike nanotubes, which are manufactured in a highly technical chemical process so that they cost $100 a gram, Drzal's platelets are made in a much simpler largely mechanical process that results in a final cost of $10 a pound.

The resulting material is highly electrically and thermally conductive. It's also a moisture barrier and makes materials stiffer.

The material's properties give it wide applications in electronics. You can also add it to a polymer and make it into an electromagnetic shield, or add it to carbon fiber materials stronger. They can also improve the performance of fuel cells, capacitors, batteries and hydrogen storage components.

Drzal and some of his researchers have created a spinoff company to make the product. It's called XG Sciences, www.xgsciences.com. More on the company at http://news.msu.edu/story/5617.

I then hit the Whites up for lunch at the terrific food court at MSU's International Center (really good Lebanese at one of the counters) before wrapping up the day with Mike Poterala, who leads MSU’s Office of Intellectual Property, which is now called MSU Technologies. 

Poterala -- with the university since 1998 and formerly an intellectual property lawyer in the university counsel's office -- gave me an overview of tech transfer at MSU. Most interesting: the university is now working through not only current technology disclosures, but also another 600 possibly commercializable technologies that had literally been left in the university's files.

MSU Technologies now has five "technology managers" that screen faculty research for its commercial potential. Poterala said the big change since the establishment of MSU Technologies is a much more careful and thorough screening of faculty invention disclosures forcommercial potential.

More at www.technologies.msu.edu.

All in all, a terrific day on MSU's campus, which has never looked better.

Today, the Tech Tour wraps up at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.