Photo by Kyle Green / The Roanoke Times

The Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute secured a $250,000 grant last week to help recruit a scientist who specializes in heart regenerative medicine.

The grant, was among several from the Center for Innovative Technology that came to organizations in our region. Among the other grants awarded were:

• $50,000 to Tech researchers with the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science
• $148,998 to Tech researchers working to reduce the manufacturing cost of a Photovoltaic Inverter, which converts solar energy into a usable power source.
• $50,000 to Blacksburg-based Synthonics Inc.

The Research Institute grant can be used as to set up the laboratory space for a senior investigator.

Currently the institute is in the middle of negotiations to bring in a group of scientists who specialize in regenerative medicine and wound healing, said Michael Friedlander, executive director of the institute.

All total the Center for Innovative Technology awarded $3.6 million to 22 Virginia organizations.

Here are some more details about the other two Virginia Tech grants, as told to me by the recipients.

From Tom Campbell:

“This CIT award [for $50,000] will fund development toward commercialization of a new subclass of nanomaterials: square quantum dots. We have discovered a new chemical synthesis process for square quantum dots; the CIT funds will be key to moving this process toward commercialization. Potential application areas for square quantum dots include optical encoding, high-resolution cellular imaging, cancer tumor targeting, photovoltaic devices, light emitting devices, and photodedector devices. The inventors, Drs. Thomas A. Campbell and Olga S. Ivanova, are with the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) of Virginia Tech.”

From Jih-Sheng (Jason) Lai:

“The main purpose of this CIT [$148,998 grant] project is to commercialize the solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters developed under the Virginia Tech Future Energy Electronics Center’s (FEEC) current $3.2M DOE-funded high penetration PV project, which will produce ultrahigh efficiency inverters and cost-effective PV system architecture. Today’s PV inverter costs about one dollar per watt, and the efficiency is typically around 95%. Our goal is to reduce the PV inverter cost to 10 cents per watt, and to increase the inverter efficiency to higher than 99% for production-ready PV inverter products. The project will bring together the rich resources of various departments within Virginia Tech to create viable energy-related products and bring them to production. The ultimate goal is to create high-tech jobs through Virginia Tech’s PV inverter technology. A pre-production facility will be set up to bring in further investment for job creation.”

[correction: This entry was corrected to properly attribute the quotes from the two Virginia Tech researchers.]