When it comes to the Great Lakes IT Report's annual Fall Tech Tour of university technologies, Detroit-area schools sometimes complain that they get short shrift.
So we decided to kick off Fall Tech Tour 2009 with a local stop at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield.
But unlike other Tech Tour stops, this wasn't just me in some labs. Nope, this was one of our monthly Last Thursdays Unwired At Lawrence Technological University (LTU@LTU, get it?) networking meetings, so the school got to show off its job creating research in front of a crowd of around 70 people.
First up was Donald Carpenter, director of the Great Lakes Stormwater Management Education Center and professor of civil engineering.
Carpenter showed and demonstrated green construction techniques, including stormwater plans that minimize environmental impact by mimicking pre-development hydrology. Included are permeable pavements, green roofs, rain gardens and swales, and cisterns and water storage tanks to capture rainwater and use it for tasks like plant watering and toilet flushing.
He showed porous concrete that's essentially regular concrete minus sand, and green roofs that help with heating and cooling costs.
Cost is a key obstacle to more green development, he said. "The economic growth aspect of this is that using these techniques can save you money," Carpenter said. "The biggest misconception is that it's more expensive to do this. In reality it's cheaper."
Then Kenneth Gadd, director of Lawrence Tech's Osborn Entrepreneurship and Microenterprise Initiative, talked about the school's effort to train entrepreneurs in Detroit's Osborn neighborhood, an economically struggling area bounded by Van Dyke, Gratiot, Eight Mile Road and Six Mile Road.
"It's extremely distressed," Gadd said of Osborn. "It has one of the highest unemployment rates in the city, the highest rate of children who live in poverty, one of the highest rates of population returning from incarceration."
Working with the Skillman Foundation, the Knight Foundation, Comerica Bank and Matrix Human Services, Lawrence Tech is offering 10 week entrepreneurial training courses to dozens of neighborhood residents. So far 35 new businesses have been started, ranging from computer repair to catering.
Shannon Timmons, research assistant professor in the Department of Natural Sciences, then spoke of her work in "sweet medicine" -- an effort to develop new drugs based on carbohydrates.
Timmons noted that 56 percent of new drug compounds originate in natural sources. She's personally working on variants on the anticoagulant drug Warfarin. One compound in particular, Warfarin with an attached carbohydrate, has been found in early testing to have strong tumor-killing properties.
Timmons said that not a lot of Big Pharma companies work with carbohydrates "because they are structurally complex and challenging." What generally happens is that new compounds are produced in university research, spun off to small companies for development, then licensed or sold to big companies.
Next up was Robert Fletcher, director of Lawrence Tech alterantive energy projgrams, who showed off Lawrence Tech's award-winning Element One Racing Vehicle, powered by hydrogen and air through an 8-watt fuel cell.
The go kart has a high tech chassis that weights just 24 pound an a shin that checked in at 26 pounds. The vehicle uses a three-phase AC induction motor, taking power from the fuel cell for cruising and an array of capacitors for quick acceleration.
"People ask us how fast it will go and we don't know, we've never tested it on a straightaway" We do know that on a race course with a short straightaway it will easily go 35 or 40 mph."
Fletcher also showed off the H2bot and H2.2bot, fully autonomous robots
H2bot, to build a fully autonomous robot. turn it on, give it something to do and walk away, robot can find its path and not get lost or bump into things. has full onboard energy management.
It guides itself with onboard GPS, a compass with elevation capabilities, realtime video camea vision and LIDAR near detection.
Fletcher said he's assuming Detroit will grow as a robotics center, based on the U.S. Army's Tank-Automotive Research, Development,and Engineering Center's decision to move its national robotics development center to Warren.
Last up was Mark Brucki, executive director of economic development and government relations at Lawrence Tech.
Bruchi spoke of the groundbreaking work done in the Lawwrence Tech Center for Advanced Materials Research.
He said the northbound bridge on Bridge Street into an industrial park in Southfield has been constructed with Lawrence Tech's carbon fiber reinforced polymer reinforcement systems in the United States -- and that in less than a decade, thre are noticeaable differences between the two.
"We want to usher in a new era in bridges," Brucki said. He also said Lawrence tech would seek federal funding for more such work under the stimulus bill.
A photo gallery of the event is at this link.
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