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Michigan State University’s $550-Million Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Could Prove a ‘Big Bang’ for Business

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Over half a century has passed since Michigan State’s visionary leader John Hannah began transforming the pioneering land-grant agricultural college into a multidisciplinary public-research university with a world-renowned reputation for excellence.

Hannah’s groundbreaking work, which eventually established Michigan State as the country’s eighth-largest university, cemented the institution as a major player in the transformation of Michigan’s economy under the leadership of another visionary president, Lou Anna K. Simon.

It also set the stage for attracting one of the most advanced nuclear and astrophysics research facilities in the world. Following an exhaustive competition with the prestigious Argonne National Laboratory, run by the University of Chicago, last December the U.S. Department of Energy named Michigan State as the site for the $550-million Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a next-generation nuclear-science facility. In addition, following construction, the DOE is expected to provide up to $1 billion ($50 million annually for 20 years) or longer to advance scientific discoveries.

The facility, which is expected to be running by 2017, will build upon the success of MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, which submitted the proposal to the DOE. The buried, 300- to 400-meters-long, high-intensity accelerator will enable scientists from around the world to produce a far greater number of rare isotopes in the further study of nuclear structure and astrophysics — a science that has led to breakthroughs in medicine (including better cancer treatments), materials research, national security, and physics.

According to a study that was completed by the Anderson Economic Group during the FRIB proposal process, the project will generate $1 billion in economic activity over the initial decade, create several hundred permanent jobs, and result in state tax revenue of $187 million over a 20-year period.

“This is one of the biggest economic-development gains in Michigan in at least a decade,” says Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group in East Lansing, who once served as Michigan deputy budget director under Gov. John Engler. “It’s more like the beginning of a small industry than it is the location of one plant, because the FRIB will bring a tremendous amount of dollars into mid-Michigan for at least two decades and will likely spin off new technologies and companies that will want to locate near MSU.”

The story of how MSU landed the FRIB against long odds is an example of how a university, backed by a solid plan, can succeed in securing millions of dollars for a region. Seven years ago, then MSU President Peter McPherson convened a statewide advisory committee composed of influential business and community leaders to help prepare a bid for what was then a $1-billion Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA). However, because of federal budget constraints, by 2006 the project was shelved. It was later modified to half the cost and renamed the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.

David Hollister, president and CEO of the Lansing-based Prima Civitas Foundation, a nonprofit collaborative dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and business development in mid-Michigan, was co-chair of the original advisory committee. He later served on MSU’s FRIB advisory committee.

“Many people gave MSU no chance for the original RIA project because many assumed the DOE would just give it to the Argonne National Laboratory, pursuant to their procedures,” Hollister says. “The advisory committee and the Michigan delegation simply wanted to ensure that there would be a fair competition because, in the end, we knew it came down to the science.”

Finally, in May of 2008, the DOE gave MSU and Argonne two months to submit proposals for the FRIB, subject to a merit-review process conducted by a panel of world-renowned experts. In October, MSU representatives, including President Lou Anna K. Simon and Dr. Konrad Gelbke, director of MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, gave presentations in Washington, D.C., over a two-day period, followed by an onsite visit a week later by the review panel. Gelbke says that with many of their people logging long hours — and just two months to complete the proposal — “it was organized chaos.”

One advantage for Michigan State was that Gelbke and the school had the vision for an $18-million upgrade to the NSCL facility, which is expected to be fully operational by next summer.

With the new development, Gelbke says theirs will be the first lab in the world with the capability to produce isotopes “at high energy in-flight, and then stopping them and reaccelerating them with precision to lower energies, which is important to the study of the processes inside of stars.” That technology, he says, will allow a smooth transition into the FRIB.

On Dec. 11, representatives from Argonne and Michigan State were invited back to Washington for a closed-door meeting to learn the results of the competition.

Gelbke was thrilled when DOE officials told him MSU had won. “I was speechless,” he says. “It had been a very intense competition against an extremely competent group.”

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