The ice research lab at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire is concentrating on cold hard cash.
"In this country we pay ten billion dollars a year for electricity to grow ice. Our technology cuts that number in half," Dartmouth Engineering Professor Victor Petrenko said.
Yes, the man said billions of dollars and he ought to know. Victor Petrenko is considered the pre-eminent ice expert in the world and his lab is a place where they are not only studying the singularly peculiar aspects of frozen water but how to take what they learn and turn it into money ? real money. They have a history of that at Dartmouth.
"Ice is a semi-conductor and an amazing and unusual material. We don't understand it well yet," Petrenko said.
"A (Dartmouth founded) company recently grew to 60 people and was sold to Merck for $400 million," Thayer School of Engineering Dean Joe Helble said.
What Petrenko and his troops ? a mixture of other professors, undergrad, and grad students ? have come up with over the years has lead to patented technology and a new company, Ice Engineering LLC. The company is selling new inventions that improve ice makers, skis, and windshields -- and a new way to de-ice planes in flight.
Much of what goes on in the lab deals with the conductivity of ice and the ability to affect its molecular structure with energy pulses. Wouldn't you love to have a pair of boots that with the flip of a switch, wouldn't slip?
While whatever is discovered on campus belongs to the school, there is a formula by which the professor and his group license it back, pay the university a fee and keep a chunk for themselves. Last year Dartmouth collected nearly $900,000 in these fees.
"Even if it never left the lab, it would be worth it just for the research, but if you can take it and develop it to help society, and on top of that you can make money...you have a win-win-win situation," Ice Researcher John Chen said.
"You can have a million ideas, but if they go nowhere, then you really haven't learned the process of how to be successful," Dean of Faculty Carol Folt said.
Mike Hegedus, NBC News
