Grant fuels UAlbany research
DAVID ORENSTEIN Business writer
495 Words
3970 Characters
06/04/98
Times Union (Albany, NY)
THREE STAR
E1
(Copyright 1998)
Albany State funds will help create energy technology institute
The University at Albany hopes to turn a $500,000 grant from the
state Assembly into a $3 million research center that will research
and develop fuel cells.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, announced the
grant Wednesday at a news conference at the university's Center for
Environmental Science and Technology Management. The grant comes
from the Assembly's share of state Urban Development Corp. funds.
The $500,000 will be used as seed money to establish an
Institute for Fuel Cell Science and Technology. Fuel cells convert
fossil fuels to electricity through clean, quiet chemical reactions
instead of combustion, advocates say. Commercially viable cells are
expected to reach the automotive, household and utility markets in
substantial volume in the next few years.
Alain Kaloyeros, director of UAlbany's Center for Advanced Thin
Film Technology, said the school expects to raise an additional
$2.5 million from private companies to fill out the institute's
budget. The institute will be part of the center.
Silver praised the center as one of the best of the state's 13
centers for advanced technology.
"So I'll make you this promise," Silver said, "You keep
expanding, building partnerships with New York state's businesses,
keep spurring high-tech job creation here in the Capital Region and
around the state, and we'llkeep writing the checks."
Kaloyeros said the center has already been working with several
area companies on fuel-cell and related projects. The companies are
fuel-cell maker Plug Power LLC, superconductivity and refrigeration
* company Intermagnetics General Corp. and environmental monitoring
equipment maker Rupprecht and Patashnick Inc.
The center will include researchers and facilities at U.S. Army
Benet Labs at Watervliet Arsenal and Brookhaven National Laboratory
and State University at Stony Brook, both in Suffolk County.
Several speakers at Wednesday's news conference said the
production of commercial-grade fuel cells and related technologies
has the potential to boost the area's economy.
Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce President Wally
Altes attached several caveats to a projection he said he received
from the Center for Advanced Thin Films Technology staff.
"There has been a projection that 1,000 high-tech jobs may be a
distinct possibility," he said, adding later, "Potential is the
operative word."
Altes characterized the economic development potential of a
thriving area fuel-cell industry as enormous.
Fuel-cell development efforts already directly employ about 107
people in the region. Plug Power has 100 workers, and Dais Corp.,
based in Malta, employs seven.
* Intermagnetics, which develops technologies that can make power
transmission and storage, and Rupprecht and Patashnick, which
develops microelectronic environmental sensors, expect toderive
benefits from the institute as it develops related technologies.
* Both companies are expanding. Intermagnetics is renovating a
building in Schenectady for a new plant, and Rupprecht and
Patashnick recently hired about 30 workers as it begins to work
with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on a nationwide
environmental quality monitoring network.
Harvey Patashnick said the company will announce more details
Monday of the network and its impact on the employees.
I0607 * End of document.
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