Lowell Looks to Brighter Future

By Donna Goodison, Boston Herald

Just as its famous mills are a symbol of the Industrial Revolution, Lowell officials hope the state-of-the-art UMass Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center -- set to open in fall 2012 -- will put the struggling city back on the map and at the forefront of the coming revolution in high-tech manufacturing.

"We're looking forward to this center being able to expand the breadth of the university's ability to do research that spins off new companies, as well as the depth and sophistication of their ability to do that in certain fields," said Adam Baacke, Lowell's assistant city manager for planning and development. "We definitely think that it bodes well for the city."

The center is a building that will "serve big ideas," according to University of Massachusetts at Lowell's Chancellor Marty Meehan.

"We believe the next industrial revolution will be fueled by the work that goes on at the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center," he said.

The university last month raised the final steel beam on the four-story, 84,000-square-foot, $70 mil-lion center, which will house clean-room space, wet labs, engineering labs and plastics processing facilities for research and development in the fields of plastics engineering, nanotechnology, electro-optics and biomedicine.

Last September, UMass- Lowell was designated as a National Science Foundation Center for High-Rate Nanomanufacturing - one of four in the country - in collaboration with Northeastern University and the University of New Hampshire. The result has been more than $25 million in funding, according to Meehan. In partnership with the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, the center will focus on helping companies safely manufacture nano products.

"That's part of the reason why we really need a new cutting-edge research building that will house numerous labs for both bio- and nano-manufacturing research," Meehan said. "Nano products are likely to fuel the next economic boom. Existing products can be made more useful, cost-effective and durable through the use of nano elements."

The first floor of the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center will serve as the new home for a national plastics museum, tying in with the school's internationally known plastics engineering program, according to Meehan.

Two-story bay rooms, meanwhile, will accommodate oversized equipment such as extruders and injection molding machines, and the center's clean rooms will be equipped to filter air at a very high level for sensitive research equipment including biochemical sensors to measure toxins.

The new facility will help UMass-Lowell attract additional researchers and further collaborate with industry, academic and government partners. University researchers already are working with 30 businesses and institutes in Massachusetts, and Meehan expects that to expand to 50 or 60.

"We expect to draw researchers from around the world to collaborate with faculty and students at the center, as well as work hand in hand with industry," Meehan said. "The opportunity for business to have access to this kind of research building will be key to us developing our partners."

The university is borrowing $25 million to build the center, which also will be financed with $35 million in state funding, and $10 million in federal and private money.

UMass-Lowell is talking to companies interested in naming rights for the building, its labs and lobby.

"This building is going to create revenue by bringing in more research, roughly 300 jobs and partnerships established with companies that will rent space and work with us," Meehan said.

A number of companies already have recently moved to the city in part because of their ability to partner with the university, tapping its graduate students as employees, its technical facilities and research expertise, according to Baacke.

"We fully anticipate that this new facility will broaden our ability to do that and businesses' ability to do that," he said.