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Battelle Institute Finds Home
The State Journal
South Charleston, WV – All it took was a visit to sell West Virginia to one of the nation's largest nonprofit research companies.
Battelle Memorial Institute recently opened its first office in West Virginia. The five-person office at Dow's South Charleston Technology Park will conduct its own research and work with companies already in the region to promote and push research.
"We will also work with Dow, DuPont, Bayer and Monsanto to support the research they are doing, as well as help small businesses in the region with their research needs," said Martin Toomajian, Battelle's vice president and manager for chemical and environmental technologies. "There are a lot of unique facilities at the park, and we want to access those. We think we have an opportunity to do something really unique here."
Toomajian said the facility in South Charleston with its high-tech but underused laboratories, as well as equipment available at the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing, helped woo the institute here during the researchers' first visit. So did the facility's proximity to universities and the plethora of recently retired scientists who conducted research for the valley's chemical companies.
"What ultimately made up their mind was the human capital in the area," said John Maher, executive director of the Chemical Alliance Zone.
So what would scientists with Battelle research here? They have many options, said Toomajian. He and John Ontiveros, a manager with Battelle's Eastern Science and Technology Center, said the company's researchers in the past have worked on aerospace research and advanced ways to clean up environmental problems, such as dirty mine water, and developed technology to scan and image the brain.
With energy prices increasing, Toomajian said, a lot of technologies that once were considered too expensive to develop, such as coal liquefaction, now are within the realm of being cost effective. And with West Virginia's longstanding role as a major energy provider for the nation, doing that sort of research in South Charleston makes sense.
And if early research goes well, the Kanawha Valley office quickly could grow out of its five-person operation. Toomajian said he envisions the Kanawha Valley growing, just as the Eastern Science and Technology Center in Aberdeen, Md., grew. That complex started with a handful of employees in 2003 and now employs several hundred researchers.
"Aberdeen has been a huge success for us, and we hope this office will have a similar level of success," Toomajian said.
The Columbus-based institute is a nonprofit corporation. Although it specializes in developing new technology and getting it into the market, its goal isn't to just make profits for shareholders. Instead, the corporation reinvests any profits into new research, new technology and the communities where its employees live and work.
"Twenty percent of our profits are given to charities," said Toomajian. "We are very focused on math and science education. We've given a lot of money to advanced math education from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. We also helped establish a public school in Columbus that focuses on math and science."
Battelle was formed 75 years ago through the estate of Gordon Battelle, who could not find money to help support his research when he was a young scientist. He remembered that frustration later in his life and set aside money to help future scientists. His mother, Annie Norton Battelle, altered her will after her son's death so her money would support the foundation, too.
Now the Battelle Memorial Institute has a $3 billion budget and more than 19,000 employees in more than 100 offices worldwide. Its researchers developed the copying process that led to the formation of Xerox in 1959. Researchers with Battelle also worked to develop cruise control in cars, food for astronauts, compact discs and no-melt chocolate bars.
Battelle has close ties with the U.S. Department of Energy. The institute has partnered with several universities to run national laboratories, including the Brookhaven National Laboratory, which it runs with Stony Brook University in New York, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which it runs with the University of Tennessee.
Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, said Battelle's familiarity with taking new technology to the market will help institutions such as Marshall University and West Virginia University, which are actively trying to take ideas and products developed in the classroom to the marketplace.
"This really is a chance for the universities to line up with a world-class leader in research," he said.
McCabe said in the end that Battelle's decision to open an office in the Kanawha Valley shows the region and state are moving in the right direction.
"Here is a case where a significant world-class research company whose state purpose is to work with small businesses and large corporations see us with our labs, the Robert C. Byrd Institute and our people as a home run for them," he said. "We have what they need."
--Article reprinted with approval from The State Journal--
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