UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 32, Page UDRF1
May 21, 1992
University of Delaware Research Foundation
Research foundation boosts stars, lets luminaries shine

     In 1937, two Du Pont Co. executives privately provided $1,000 to
a pair of University of Delaware researchers to study cattle diseases.
In the 55 years since that first grant, the private, non-profit
foundation that emerged from that partnership has gone on to support
more than 650 individual research projects at the University with
grants totaling over $6 million.
     Currently incorporated as the University of Delaware Research
Foundation (UDRF), the organization has expanded its scope to include
a vast sweep of scientific projects ranging from the isolation of a
root fungus useful as a natural fertilizer to the pinpointing of ice
age archaeological sites via satellite pictures.
     Most UDRF grants support the work of young faculty members
involved in promising new projects, but established researchers who
want to explore new fields also are funded. Block grants are awarded
to buy up-to-date scientific equipment and to establish research
centers and multi-disciplinary programs.
     In the past six years, from 1987 to 1992, UDRF has funded 106
proposals for a total of $1,786,600. "We do our best not to miss
rising young stars early in their careers," says Robert Varrin of the
Office of Research and Patents, who sits on the 15-member UDRF
research committee. The research committee is made up of scientists
from local industry, including Hercules, ICI and the Du Pont Co.
     "On the research committee, we try to include industry scientists
who can cover all the wide ranging disciplines at the University,"
says chairperson Barry L. Marrs, who is director of life sciences
research and development at Du Pont. "It's quite a challenge for us."
     UDRF has always received many more worthy proposals than the
organization can fund, Marrs says. In 1992, for example, 56 proposals
were received and 16 were funded. These awards totaled $328,600 and
included two block grants.
     Marrs says that two industry scientists are assigned to review
each proposal, which allows the committee room for "debate and
divergent points of view."
     Following a successful two-year fund-raising campaign that closed
in January, UDRF added $2,079,634 to its endowment and doubled its
membership. The $4.8 million endowment allows the foundation to award
up to $20,000 for a typical proposal, up from an earlier average of
$12,500.

THE EARLY YEARS

     The foundation's objective of helping the University attract and
support talented faculty members in the sciences and engineering dates
back to the election of Charles M.A. Stine, then director of research
at the Du Pont Co., to the Board of Trustees in 1937. Most of the
research on campus then was agricultural, and Stine encouraged his old
friend Harry Haskell, another Du Pont executive, to join him in
supporting a study of dairy cow diseases. Both men owned prize-winning
herds of dairy cattle.
     The first recipient was James Kakavas, professor emeritus of life
and health sciences, who took Haskell's initial contribution of
$1,000, hired his wife, Theresa, as an assistant for $750, bought
supplies and equipment for $250 and undertook research on mastitis, a
particularly troublesome disease of dairy cattle.
     Haskell awarded Kakavas $45,000 over the next three years to hire
assistants in both research and teaching, and by 1944, the researcher
had developed a method of injecting sulfanilimide homogenized in
mineral oil into the infected cow. The patent on this product, called
Salvatil, was the first at the University of Delaware.
     Haskell, Stine and a few friends incorporated as the Haskell
Research Associates, allowing the organization to use royalties from
the patent for further University research.
     As scientific research at the University expanded into new areas,
the group was reorganized. In 1949, it became the Haskell Research
Foundation. The foundation was chartered to support research in the
natural sciences, health sciences, physical sciences, chemistry,
mathematics, engineering and "and any other science that is recognized
as such by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington."
     Six years later, in 1955, the foundation was reorganized once
more and renamed the University of Delaware Research Foundation.

GUIDING PHILOSOPHY

     During the period from 1987-1992, approximately one-third of the
proposals funded were from the life sciences, one-fifth from
engineering and the remainder from other sciences. According to Marrs,
proposals from social scientists also may be funded if the professor
is using "hard science" methodology.
     The guiding philosophy of UDRF is that its funding should help
young faculty members initiate research projects that may later be
supported by outside agencies. A 1983-84 survey of past UDRF grant
recipients indicated that one group had received awards between 1976
and 1981 totaling $213,000. Additional, outside funding for these
projects by late 1983 exceeded $2.4 million-indicating that every
dollar of UDRF seed money yielded more than $11 in additional research
funds. Researchers who received UDRF grants confirm that UDRF's
initial support helped generate outside funding for important
University research projects.
     Andrew Zydney, associate professor of chemical engineering,
received his UDRF grant within a year of his arrival at the
University. Zydney is interested in developing a bio-artificial
pancreas-a promising step toward making a normal life possible for
diabetics. He says he believes that if a diabetic's blood could flow
by a collection of beta cells protected by a semi-permeable synthetic
membrane, the cells would produce insulin while being protected from
the auto-immune processes of the body that destroyed the diabetic's
original pancreas.
     "I was able to accomplish enough during that first year that I
received a grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, which was
renewed the next year," Zydney says. Currently, he is collaborating
with a group at the University of Puerto Rico that is using Zydney's
theoretical and modeling expertise to conduct clinical trials of an
artificial pancreas in monkeys. In addition, his work sparked interest
in using the device for medicines other than insulin.
     "Cells that have been bio-engineered for the production of
pharmaceuticals can be grown on the membrane and collected by this
device," he says. His research in this area attracted additional
funding from the Du Pont Co. and the state under the Delaware Research
Partnership, which provides state-industry matching support of select
research projects.
     In 1986, Robin Morgan, a molecular biologist in the College of
Agricultural Sciences, received a UDRF grant for her work on a virus
that causes cancerous tumors-known as Marek's disease-in chickens.
Morgan wanted to locate specific genes in the Marek's disease virus
that provoke an immune response so a genetically engineered vaccine
can be created. "My results from the UDRF grant were important for
firming up other funding from industry," Morgan says.
     With funding from Intervet International and the state under the
Delaware Research Partnership, she and graduate students were able to
identify genes related to the disease and evaluate their potential for
vaccine development.
     David Kirchman, associate professor of marine studies, received a
grant in 1987 to examine a type of mutation in chitin-degrading
bacteria. He says his UDRF grant provided precious supplies for
experiments, and his preliminary results enabled him to write more
competitive proposals to the National Science Foundation (NSF), the
Office of Naval Research, Sea Grant and the Department of Energy. To
date, Kirchman has received grants totaling nearly $1.5 million and he
says, "Although small compared to the grants that I now have, the UDRF
money, dollar for dollar, had a tremendous impact on my research
career here at Delaware."
     "My UDRF grants meant more than a financial difference, they
meant an intellectual difference to me," says Mark Sharnoff, professor
of physics and astronomy. Although already a well-established
researcher, Sharnoff received UDRF grants in 1974 and 1978. "UDRF
support allowed me to give new ideas a start," he explains. Sharnoff
ultimately received funding from NSF and the Multiple Sclerosis
Foundation to continue his research and he was granted a patent for a
process partially developed under UDRF grants.
     Another physics professor, James Mehl, says that a 1981 UDRF
grant made it possible for him to change his research focus from
low-temperature physics to metrology, the science of precision
measurement. Mehl's work, in collaboration with the National Bureau of
Standards, has been recognized as improving the accuracy of the gas
constant fivefold by measuring the velocity of sound in argon. "UDRF
is a marvelous resource for the University," Mehl says, "not only for
new researchers but also because it helps established researchers to
switch directions."
     When Mary J. Wirth, professor of chemistry and biochemistry,
decided to undertake a new area of research in 1988, a UDRF grant
provided her research group with new equipment to study how molecules
orient and rotate when they interact with surfaces. "Our surface
science program has been successful since these beginnings," Wirth
says.
     Hers was the first group to publish a study of detailed
picosecond orientational motions of adsorbed molecules, and their
research has expanded into two new areas. The Department of Energy is
supporting her study of chromatographic surfaces, which are used for
separations of complex mixtures in the chemical and pharmaceutical
industries, and a NSF grant supports the design of new types of
surfaces, which will help to understand the principles of molecular
behavior at interfaces. "These studies will enable intelligent design
of better chemical and biological sensors," Wirth says. "UDRF seed
money is widely valuable for fostering new, original research
programs."

BLOCK GRANTS

     Larger sums of UDRF money in the form of block grants have funded
the purchase of new scientific equipment and helped establish new
research centers at the University. Both the internationally known
Center for Composite Materials and the Center for Catalytic Science
and Technology received crucial early support from UDRF.
     A two-year, $45,000 block grant to the Center for Archaeological
Research allowed anthropologist Jay Custer to follow up on an
individual UDRF research project in which he used LANDSAT satellite
photos to locate prehistoric archaeological sites on the Delmarva
Peninsula. The center, which now employs about 130 full- and part-time
employees, uses equipment bought with UDRF funds in finding blood
residues on prehistoric tools-a key to understanding lifeways of early
hunting populations.
     "No other archaeological group does what we do," Custer says,
noting that the center conducts research on sites in Pennsylvania,
Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia for the Federal Highway
Administration and the National Park Service, as well as in Delaware
for the state Historical Preservation Office.
     The University's Center for Climatic Research received a $55,000
UDRF block grant 10 years ago to buy highly sensitive meteorological
equipment. Since then, the center has brought in over $3 million in
outside funding from such groups as NSF, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Environmental Protection
Agency. Six faculty members and more than 30 graduate students are now
doing research at the center, which has earned a national reputation
for excellence.
     One of the first grants received by the University's Institute of
Energy Conversion was a $60,100 UDRF block grant in 1973. "That grant
allowed us to assemble our first research line on cadmium-sulfide
solar cells," recalls Karl Boer, professor of engineering and original
director of the institute. "Without that grant we would not have been
able to attract a later $350,000 NSF grant."
     Now a leading solar cell research center, the institute has
received more than $30 million in outside funds. Seventy percent of
these funds are from federal sources, with industrial sources making
up another 20 percent and miscellaneous smaller grants and support
under Delaware Research Partnership providing the balance.
     A 1969 planning grant from UDRF actually led to the creation of
an entirely new college at the University. The College of Marine
Studies, established in 1970, became a federally funded Sea Grant
College in 1976. Today, it manages more than $7.5 million in sponsored
research.
     State-of-the art equipment is essential to keep University
researchers current in their respective fields.
     Three physics professors, for example, used a UDRF block grant to
buy an electron microscope. They are studying the microstructure of
high-temperature superconductors, thin metallic films and certain
ceramics.
     The purchase of molecular graphics equipment with UDRF funds lets
University chemists and biochemists analyze the shapes of certain
molecules and predict how they might interact or "dock" with other
molecules. "This machine allows us to view the molecules in 3-D and
manipulate them in real time," explains chemist James Damewood. "A lot
of chemistry is determined by the shape of these molecules."

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

     The outside funding generated by UDRF grants is but one measure
of the foundation's accomplishments. Scores of books, papers, patents
and copyrights on computer software have also grown out of the
contributions of this private, non-profit organization, as have
several projects that have had a positive impact on the state's
economic development. At least five patents granted to University
professors over the last 10 years can be attributed directly to
UDRF-sponsored research. One of these, a wave-driven pump used for
desalinization of sea water, has been widely publicized and holds
great promise for use in developing countries. A computer program to
identify bacteria through fatty acid profiles also has been adopted by
industry.
     By encouraging faculty research efforts, UDRF also has improved
instruction by involving more undergraduate and graduate students in
current research. Kirchman noted in a report to UDRF that six graduate
students had worked on projects in his lab that were launched with his
grant. In addition, six undergraduates completed summer projects or
senior honors theses.
     Although much of the research sponsored by UDRF is national or
international in scope, the organization over the years has also
focused attention on solutions to local scientific problems. Projects
of this type range from studies of insecticide resistance in mushroom
flies to research on red tide cysts in Delaware coastal waters and the
dietary habits of fishes in Delaware estuaries.
     "As a former academic, I know how important research is to the
life of a university," says Mark L. Pearson, president of UDRF and
executive director of Du Pont/Merck Pharmaceutical Co."UDRF provides
seed money to help young faculty get their research programs off the
ground, and on the basis of these promising results, they then can
seek state or federal funding.
     "A fund of this type can also be important in attracting bright
young faculty to the University."
     Whether supporting projects aimed at curing human disease,
creating new materials or stabilizing the world's food supply, UDRF
grants are an investment in the ideas of the future.
     -Cornelia Weil