Clemson's ICAR fuses higher ed, private industry

GREENVILLE — Compared to Clemson University's new high-tech automotive research campus in Greenville, other university research parks are in the horse-and-buggy days, Clemson officials say.

This fall, Clemson's new academic building, the 90,000-square-foot Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center, will open on the 250-acre International Center for Automotive Research campus off Interstate 85 in Greenville. It's the third building on the campus — the others are research and development centers for German automaker BMW and the Timken Co., which manufactures automotive bearings — and it's the place where graduate engineering students will work hand-in-hand with private industry to design the vehicles of the future.

Not your average class building

Clemson designed the new $25 million automotive engineering building with cars in mind, said Thomas Kurfess, director of the Campbell Graduate Engineering Center and a mechanical engineering professor. If he wanted to, he could drive his car through the building's giant doors and park outside his office, he said.

Kurfess and the rest of Clemson's automotive engineering faculty and graduate students will move to the new campus when the academic building opens in August.

The building may not be finished by then, officials say, but it will be far enough along to house the academic program.

The facility isn't designed for training engineers who will simply work in the manufacturing industry, Kurfess said, but for training engineering researchers who will lead the automotive engineering industry.

The building will be equipped with high-tech devices such as a dynamo-meter, which is like a big treadmill for cars, Kurfess said. A researcher can drive a car into the building and onto the device which simulates different road conditions. For instance, he said, the researcher could isolate under which conditions a car makes a rattling noise and then eliminate the rattle.

Other devices will shake cars to simulate how they withstand motion on the road and place them in different temperature and humidity conditions.

"We're building and testing the real thing," Kurfess said, "not a scale model."

And, the academic program will be working directly with companies in the automotive industry, he said.

The campus eventually will be made up of five "technology neighborhoods" with Clemson, BMW and Timken making up the bulk of the first one.

Neighborhoods will include open park-like areas, restaurants and other common areas, said Robert Geolas, ICAR's executive director. The campus will be designed so academicians and industry professionals bump into each other, talk and share ideas.

To critics, mostly in academia, who say programs like ICAR smudge the line between higher education and private industry and create conflicts of interest, Geolas said, "If the line blurs a little bit, maybe it should blur a little bit."

Academics more than books

It's that blurring that drew doctoral student John Limroth to ICAR.

Limroth, 36, is one of five students accepted and enrolled in Clemson's new doctoral program in automotive engineering. He'll move to the new Greenville campus when it opens in August.

Limroth, who earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering at Texas A&M University, was working at an Austin, Texas, company that provided tools to the auto industry when he learned about ICAR and Clemson's new doctoral program.

He had previously considered returning to school, but he wanted a program of study that was practical, "that focused on the industry rather than on an academic discipline."

Many doctoral programs, he said, focus on making students professors, not leaders in industry. But ICAR is different.

He liked that the industry had input in the school's curriculum and that the program wasn't tied to the three big U.S. auto companies. He might want to work overseas someday, he said, and the program at Clemson likely will open that door for him.

He's still trying to decide on the research topic for his dissertation, but he'll try to match one of his own interests with those of a company in the auto industry such as BMW, Michelin or Timken.

Kurfess said he hopes that a few more doctoral students will begin in the fall along with about 10 students seeking master's degrees. Eventually, he said, he thinks the program will grow to 50 to 60 students working on master's degrees and 40 to 50 working toward doctoral degrees.

Economic development

So far, Geolas said, about $200 million has been invested in the campus. A bit less than half has come from private industry. That includes more than $50 million from BMW. The company received a state tax credit and invested the money in ICAR, he said.

Geolas, who came to ICAR three years ago from a research campus at North Carolina State University, said ICAR is a good investment because it will promote economic development statewide. Not only is it likely to promote growth in the automotive industry but it could draw other industries to the state as well, he said.

Chris Przirembel, Clemson's vice president for research and economic development, said ICAR already is beginning to pay off. On the campus alone, 300 engineers will work at the BMW research center and 200 will work at Timken. He knows of seven to 10 automotive-related companies that are seriously considering a move to South Carolina, at least in part, because of the impact of ICAR.

And ICAR's effect will ripple to the Lowcountry, Przirembel said. In support of ICAR and other economic development efforts, the state General Assembly recently has passed four pieces of legislation that likely will entice new business to the state. The legislation will support new building and lure high-profile professors to the state's research universities, support start-up and spin-off companies and raise venture capital through tax credits for start-up companies, he said.

Przirembel said Clemson took a huge risk when it launched ICAR in 2002. "It was an idea, but no money and no land." But now, "the riskiest time is past," he said.

State government officials have said that aeronautics companies noted the state's support of ICAR when they decided to locate in the Lowcountry, he said.

David Ginn, president of the Charleston Regional Development Alliance, a group that represents three county governments and 160 businesses in the Charleston area, said he thinks ICAR will be good for statewide economic development.

"We don't see ICAR as a competition between Charleston and the Upstate," he said. "Instead, it's a unique state asset."