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Grainger gifts fund programs to explore promising new technologies
Sara
Chilton, Office of Development, College of Engineering
(217) 244-7673; chilton@illinois.edu
8/19/02
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Revolutionary research into the fundamentals
of electrical power and other promising areas of engineering will be
emerging from the laboratories of the University of Illinois College
of Engineering, thanks to three new major gifts from The Grainger Foundation
of Lake Forest, Ill.
One gift will establish and provide funding for the Grainger Program
in Emerging Technologies. The program is designed to increase awareness
among faculty and students of how new developments in engineering science
and technology can create commercially viable products and services.
The Grainger Program is unusual in that it will close the gap between
federal funding, which often focuses on new ideas without requiring
that their practical utility be demonstrated, and industrial support,
which typically targets only proven technologies. David E. Daniel, the
dean of the College of Engineering, said that the two-year Grainger
Program will fund up to 14 grants of $100,000 each. Each grant is subject
to a thorough screening process involving both faculty members and representatives
from engineering industries.
"We want to provide grants for risky but potentially high-impact
ideas," Daniel said. The program will provide grants for two kinds
of projects: early-stage, highly novel ideas that could have a major
impact on technology and business; and mature-stage, "development"
projects that will close the gap between a proven idea and a viable
product.
"Partnering with industry is very important," Daniel said.
"We are clear in our vision that these projects should have the
potential to have a high economic impact on the state of Illinois. We
don’t expect all of them to be successful, but we are definitely
looking for ideas that could achieve that kind of breakthrough."
Two additional Grainger gifts totaling $10 million have endowed the
Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics (CEME) and
a Grainger Director’s Chair, which will support the center’s
director. Established in 1999 with annual funding from the foundation,
the Grainger CEME is dedicated to research and development of innovative
electrical power systems and technologies. Its director, Professor Philip
T. Krein, will be the first holder of the Grainger Director’s Chair.
The Grainger CEME will also be making grants to promising new projects.
"We want to do some new and different things," Krein said.
"We want to live up to the charge we have been given (by The Grainger
Foundation), to discover and develop new electric power technologies."
The Grainger CEME will be focusing on a number of specific areas for
exploration. Of critical importance is electric motor design. "Electric
motors have been around for a hundred years without much change in design,"
Krein said. "But in the last couple of decades there have been
two fundamental changes in our technology: We have new and improved
materials, and we now have the ability to use direct electronic controls.
We need a much broader array of different types of motors, different
applications, different sizes, with a higher degree of efficiency. We
need to ask the question, How would we design an electric motor if we
were starting from scratch today?"
One promising area for exploration, Krein said, is the technology called
MEMS, or microelectromechanical systems. MEMS devices contain both circuitry
and moving parts on a tiny silicon chip. Their mechanical devices can
be used as sensors, like the collision sensors used in automobile air
bags. "At these small sizes, the mechanics change a lot,"
Krein said. "We need to explore the full context of the system,
think more broadly about energy sources themselves." MEMS-level
research also raises the need to develop three-dimensional visualization
techniques, now made possible by rapid increases in computational power.
"These are areas crying out for systems-level thinking," Krein
said. "We are setting up the interdisciplinary capabilities to
address such complex questions. Illinois is uniquely suited to put together
these kinds of interdisciplinary, cooperative teams." The Grainger
CEME has set up a collaborative network with researchers at the University
of California at Berkeley, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue,
Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Georgia Tech, as well as supporting projects
on the Illinois campus. "We will be taking significant research
risks, well beyond the conventional," Krein noted, adding, "the
mission of CEME is deliberately framed to encourage a broad range of
science and technological applications."
The Grainger Foundation was established by William W. Grainger, a 1919
electrical engineering graduate of the University of Illinois. Grainger
founded W.W. Grainger Inc. in 1927 as a mail-order business selling
electric motors. His eight-page catalog has grown to 4,000 pages, and
W.W. Grainger Inc. has become a national leader in the distribution
of maintenance, repair, and operating (MRO) supplies and components.
The Grainger Foundation also made possible the Grainger Engineering
Library Information Center, which opened in 1994, the Grainger Awards
Program, and the Grainger Lecture Series. The 1979 Grainger Chair in
Electrical Engineering was the first endowed academic position to be
established in the College of Engineering. It is currently held by Professor
Peter W. Sauer, also a researcher in electrical power systems and co-director
of the Advanced Power Applications Laboratory, also funded by The Grainger
Foundation.
"W.W. Grainger Inc. had its roots in the electrical power industry,"
Krein said. "Mr. Grainger knew that electrical energy is central
to the economy, to our nation’s growth. Of all the things that
have changed the world in the last 100 years, electrification has been
listed No. 1 in several surveys of experts. There’s every reason
to believe it will be just as central in the future."
