Engineering research center to break ground in Bedford

A plan to bring a university-level research facility for engineering to the Lynchburg area — without the university — takes a major step forward this week in Bedford County.

The Center for Advanced Engineering and Research, a Region 2000 initiative, will break ground Friday on a research campus at New London Business and Technology Center on U.S. 460.

The facility, years in the planning, is funded through a $7.6 million grant from the Virginia Tobacco Commission and is targeted to open in about a year.

It is designed to create a “research university environment,” said CAER executive director Bob Bailey, where engineering educators and innovators at large and small businesses in the area can collaborate.

“That facility is going to provide a physical place that will be much more accommodating to the participants, where they can all meet and where research can be done,” said Jim Hicks, Areva vice president of business integration and chairman of the CAER board.

“It’s going to be a much better environment than having the work to be done either at the industrial location or the university location.”

The idea came from the region’s economic development planning about five years ago, Bailey said. That process made plain the fact that the Lynchburg area lacks a research university, and that high-tech companies need that to thrive, he said.

The activities of “knowledge creation” are what set a research university apart from other colleges, Bailey said. “You’re constantly pushing the barriers of what we already know, looking for some new thing,” he said. “New commercialized products come out of knowledge creation.”

Eric Hansen, president of Innovative Wireless Technologies in Forest, said that the “heavy technology research university” atmosphere is needed in the region. Although Liberty University and Sweet Briar College have engineering programs, those programs are still in early stages, Hansen said.

When the Region 2000 Partnership organized CAER, it worked to help companies with research needs find universities to perform the research. It also worked to get grants for projects.

Those partnerships already are yielding results in the region. CAER helped Liberty University’s School of Engineering get money to research new ways to disrupt improvised explosive devices.

“We have applied for a patent on the research, which is pending,” said Ron Sones, dean of LU’s School of Engineering. “We’re also working with a local company (Advanced Manufacturing Technology Inc.) to find follow-on funding to develop prototypes of the device that can then be used, resulting in production models” for the military.

Hansen said that CAER also is working on a smart grid project that would upgrade power grid technologies in several Central Virginia towns and cities. Innovative Wireless Technologies is placing a bid to participate in that project, he said.

Having a physical CAER facility will help small companies like Innovative Wireless Technologies, and will increase the Lynchburg area’s capacity for technology-based economic development, Hansen said. “When you bring something like that to the area, it will feed spin-offs and new companies and create a very strong economic catalyst,” he said.

Bailey said that most of the research CAER has coordinated takes place at Virginia Tech or the University of Virginia. Having the facility in Bedford County will bring the research closer to the companies that need it.

The center, designed by Wiley|Wilson, will be about 26,000 square feet, sitting on about eight acres. Its labs will be geared for research on energy and wireless technologies. The centerpiece will be a 3,000-square-foot open area that can simulate the control room of a next-generation nuclear reactor.

Bailey said the simulator will help test wireless control and security technology.

Hicks said that the simulator will be helpful for Areva. “It provides a simulator environment that we can use for training or for other educational purposes,” he said. “I think it could be tremendously important. It very likely will draw interested individuals from outside the state as well as those within the state.”

Bailey said the center will employ about five people, including himself, in administrative positions. Its 25 to 30 research positions will be filled by university faculty and students working on local projects.