National Science Foundation cash has had ripple effect across the state. Fun with $cience- A Montana University System program has been successful in garnering millions in grant money for furthering scientific research, business and education.

The smell of french fry grease soaks the air in Paul Miller’s small manufacturing plant on Missoula’s West Side.

There, giant vats of the thick golden liquid drip slowly through filters and are transformed into biodiesel fuel, which runs two University of Montana commuter buses and serves as inspiration for other inventions.

By BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/articles/2004/08/29/news/top/news01.txt

Although the distinctive aroma survives the mysterious oil-to-fuel process, it’s also a pungent reminder of success for campus faculty and staff involved with a prestigious UM grant program that gave the fledgling company its start.

Sustainable Systems Inc., Miller’s bio-based startup, is just one of many thriving beneficiaries of the university’s effort to stimulate science, technology and the economy.

This month, UM scientists, in collaboration with Montana State University, were awarded

$13.5 million more to keep the program operating.

Officially, it’s called the National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. But more often, it goes by an acronym nearly as chunky as Miller’s used grease: NFS EPSCoR http://www.umt.edu/epscor/ .

Landing the three-year grant is unprecedented, said Gay Allison, assistant director of the program. It’s a lot of money, she acknowledged, but it’s also the same amount UM was awarded four years ago in the last round of funding – and that just doesn’t happen.

"The bigger the money, the harder the competition," said program director Chuck Thompson, who administers the grant through UM’s Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences. "And the competition is now very deep for this money."

Thompson said he’s thrilled UM prevailed in its quest for funding. But he’s more thrilled about what it means for Montana students and the potential impact it could make on the state’s future.

Although EPSCoR grants are not new to Montana – since the early 1980s they have helped state universities and colleges on a much smaller scale – it wasn’t until 2001 that state scientists hit the funding jackpot.

Since 2001, the Montana EPSCoR program has funded the work of 964 high school, graduate and doctoral students, dozens of research collaborations, seminar speakers and visiting scholars at UM and MSU, and provided seed money for more than 25 startup businesses.

EPSCoR has funded broader-based educational programs such as "Science Is Cool," which airs every Saturday on KUFM, and a Missoula summer lecture series called "Science Within Society."

And the program has helped launch some of the state’s most impressive education centers, such as UM’s Center for Environmental Health Sciences, an international leader in asbestos-related research.

By Sara Young’s estimation, the funding has profoundly affected more than 200 of Montana’s American Indian residents by funding summer research projects, laboratory apprenticeships, lab equipment and, in some cases, helped with housing costs for science students.

It also saved a science student recruiting curriculum, the Montana Apprenticeship Program, from folding and allowed it to operate as it pursued more secure funding.

"It’s a really good thing for Montana," said Young, director of American Indian Research Opportunities at MSU and its Tribal College Outreach coordinator.

"Over the past four years, this program has touched the lives of so many people who normally would have lacked the opportunities to pursue higher education, and it has helped keep them in that pipeline," she said. "For us, it kept our program going so we could better prepare our students for science curriculums such as nursing."

Now that Montana has again landed EPSCoR money, Young hopes some of it can be used to help fund additional science faculty at state tribal colleges, which struggle to offer a wide range of science courses with only one or two instructors.

"Those teachers usually teach six classes a semester, while running small grants and research projects," Young said. "It’s a huge teaching load and demand. If we can bolster those teachers and offer more science, we feel this is going to have a very large impact on our students."

News that EPSCoR will continue has been greeted with relief throughout Montana.

In Sunburst, it’s been influential in igniting a love for science, problem-solving and academic exploration in high school students, said Larry Fauque, a science teacher at North Toole County High School.

"In a rural community like ours, it’s not easy for kids to get jobs – there aren’t a lot of opportunities – and some of this EPSCoR money goes toward reimbursing the students for the time they commit to science projects and research," Fauque said.

It’s not handout money, he said. Students must first develop a solid science project, set goals, objectives and a work plan, and write a formal EPSCoR grant proposal – then, like professional scientists, they wait and see if it’s deemed worthy of funds.

From beginning to end, students must incorporate a wide range of academic skills to get the funding, but the work is worth the effort. It means landing $1,500.

"Often when kids do challenging research projects, they need funding for equipment and the money allows us to compensate them for their time, which makes them more responsible and motivated," Fauque said. "Without EPSCoR funding, for some kids it would be difficult to pursue an interest or project.

"It’s really an incentive."

Many of the students have had their projects culminate with top honors at state and international student science competitions. The projects cover diverse topics, from weed control research to the study of biorhythms in fruit flies, which, Fauque said, isn’t as weird as it sounds.

The study of fruit flies could help soldiers or swing-shift workers better adjust to odd schedules that don’t follow the behavioral norm of working by day, sleeping by night.

Several star-quality science students have been nurtured in Sunburst, including MSU’s Maggie Fairhurst and Sonya Iverson, thanks in part, to EPSCoR funding, Fauque said.

Although not all of the students may go into science careers, the experience with EPSCoR has greatly influenced their studies.

"We call our research program ‘Life Skills,’ " Fauque said, "because that’s the emphasis we put on it."

Montana was awarded the most recent mammoth grant because of its demonstrated success with the last one, and because the proposal clearly identified an esprit de corps – a palpable spirit of cooperation between the state’s flagship universities, said Sherry Farwell, the national director of NFS EPSCoR in Washington, D.C.

Furthermore, the Montana proposal was outstanding.

"We only fund proposals of the highest quality as judged by experts in the science community – and these proposals go through a rigorous process," Farwell said.

"The goal of EPSCoR is to build partnerships, and Montana showed great strength on that issue," he said. "The University of Montana and Montana State University showed great collaboration on this, and showed they could administrate the funding without going to war over it."

That the universities conduct a joint interactive course, in which student and faculty at both campuses are connected by television remote, is but one example, Farwell said.

The specific goals for the recent award include:

n Enhancing and developing a Center of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, with a concurrent doctorate program at UM.

n Retooling MSU’s Engineering Research program to focus on basic science.

n Create a Center for Bioinspired Nanomaterials at MSU.

n Enhance the neuroscience research groups at UM and build a new intercampus doctorate program.

Another highlight will be the development of a new UM program called the Integrated Science Learning Exploritorium, said Vernon Grund, dean of the School of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences.

"This program will be in the pharmacy building addition, and will cater to K-12 students," Grund said. "It will be as the name implies, an interactive experience and show-and-tell to get young people interested in science.

"It will be a place where the greater public community will be invited and encouraged to come and learn."

EPSCoR funding will continue to support a broad range of scientific training programs for middle schools, undergraduate and graduate students, and for science faculty across the state.

It will also help attract more talented faculty, which is critical to the success of the entire agenda, Thompson said.

As the cycle goes, good faculty attracts more good faculty, and talented faculty attract more grant funding from other sources, which creates a balloon effect for the state’s economic and academic development.

That’s called leveraging, Thompson said – making wise investments in people who help bring more money and benefits into the state.

And that is a critical component of how the EPSCoR grant is being administered because $4.5 million of the funding comes from matching state funds, specifically, the Montana Board of Research and Commercialization Technology.

"We appreciate and understand there is limited money to go around in this state, and through leveraging this money we get more bang for our buck," Thompson said. "Indirectly, the state gets an even greater investment or result for their money."

"I’m going to make it stretch," he said. "And when we can’t make it stretch, we will make sure it is strongly invested in our kids."

The payoff, he said, will be self-evident. Research and development companies, such as Miller’s, will thrive and become an anchor in the state’s economic landscape. Blue-chip companies will look to Montana for a talented work pool and as a place to do business.

And Montana’s ranchers and farmers, "scientists who do science everyday," as Thompson calls them, will be able to diversify their work by participating in product development, such as growing the specialized crops Miller needs for a lubricant product in the works.

"Sometimes science is just math, and sometimes it’s more," Thompson said.

Perhaps, as he suggested, with the help of EPSCoR, a new state motto will be born: Big Science Country.

For Allison, the assistant director of the program, Montana is well on its way.

"This funding is the rock that hit the Montana pond," she said. "It’s rippling out across the state now."

Reporter Betsy Cohen can be reached at 523-5253 or at [email protected]