MSU scientist gets $2 million for ‘clean room’ research lab

David Dickensheets wants to build a microscope so tiny it could be threaded into patients’ bodies to tell doctors instantly and without biopsies whether diseases like cancer are present.

By GAIL SCHONTZLER, Chronicle Staff Writer

The job of building and perfecting such miniature microscopes will become easier, thanks to a $2 million approved last week by Congress.

The money will be used at Montana State University to build a "clean room" — a lab with air filters so fine even tiny dust particles are removed.

"We believed that if we can diagnose cancer, there would be a big market," Dickensheets said Monday in his office in Cobleigh Hall.

Not only will the clean room benefit research by Dickensheets, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, it will also be available to scientists in physics, chemistry and other fields, to graduate and undergraduate students and to high-tech companies.

"We would really benefit from that," said Gregg Switzer, vice president of product development for AdvR Inc., http://www.advr-inc.com/ said of a clean room.

The 4-year-old Bozeman company makes something called "optical wave guides" used in defense, medicine and atmospheric sensing.

Right now, AdvR’s staffers and Dickensheets’ graduate students must travel to Cornell University in New York or Stanford or the University of California at Santa Barbara to use clean room equipment.

It costs his company $40,000 a year or more, Switzer said. When MSU’s clean room is built in the next two years, they’ll be able to just go down the street to build and test equipment, Switzer said. That means getting products to market faster.

Dickensheets, who earned a Ph.D. from Stanford, has been trying to get a clean room for five years. It’s somewhat like being an auto mechanic who’s been working under a tree and finally is going to get a garage to work in, he said.

The $2 million is part of more than $20 million earmarked this year by Congress for projects at MSU, said Tom McCoy, MSU vice president for research. That’s at least $4 million more than last year — thanks in large part to Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and his rising seniority, McCoy said.

MSU’s money was included in the huge, nearly $400 billion appropriations bill that will pay most of the federal government’s bills this year.

Grants that are "earmarked" for senators’ hometown projects, instead of being won through competition, are often criticized as pork.

But Dickensheets said competitive grants from the National Science Foundation and similar agencies generally won’t pay for "bricks and mortar" projects like building a clean room. And MSU, facing state budget cuts, can’t afford it.

Another benefit, Dickensheets said, is that students who use the clean room will learn skills that will help their futures as well as high-tech companies in Montana.

It seemed like a great birthday present when Congress OK’d the money right after he turned 40, Dickensheets said. But now, he said, "the real work starts."

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2003/02/19/news/cleanroombzbigs.txt