Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104120498
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Virginia Tech geology professor G.A. Bollinger, meanwhile, is figuring out how to tell if the Soviet Union explodes a nuclear bomb.
The research of both professors - and more than 50 other professors at Tech, plus a host of graduate students - is funded by the Department of Defense.
In engineering, in geology, in math, in chemistry and in other departments, Tech is doing DOD research to the tune of an estimated $10 million total. Exact figures are unavailable because some DOD dollars pass through other sources first before coming to Tech, said Ernest Stout, Tech's associate provost for research.
But Stout said DOD funding is probably the largest single source of sponsored research money at the university.
Tech's own budget includes more than $25 million for research as well, mainly for agricultural experiment stations, Stout said.
In these days of lean state budgets, DOD money funds graduate assistantships, helps pay faculty salaries and provides a bonanza of computers and sophisticated technical equipment.
It is - in the eyes of most of those who work on the projects, at least - a good thing.
"Just on this one project, we probably support on the order of 25 graduate students," said Fuller, the submarine researcher.
"Without it," said John Burns, a mathematics professor who has done DOD research for years, "Virginia Tech wouldn't be one of the top universities in the country."
It may go without saying that DOD-funded research has its critics.
Richard Waters, a Tech English instructor, is one of them.
"Americans need to realize their work in the defense industry kills people," Waters said.
DOD research also is training students to work on military projects when they leave the university, Waters noted. And using defense money to fuel research sends a message to students that the military is acceptable on a college campus.
If Tech accepts DOD money, Waters said, it should also require that students who work on defense research projects take a course in ethics.
Even in the engineering department - where the bulk of DOD research is done, and where the pressure to do research is intense - there are professors who prefer to avoid DOD.
"I wouldn't say nobody should do it," said Dennis Jaasma, a mechanical-engineering professor who prefers doing research that is "inherently good." Jaasma is currently studying emissions from wood-burning stoves.
"You can argue that defense is necessary, but you can't argue that it is inherently good," Jaasma said. "I'd just as soon stay out of it, myself."
Others, such as Fuller, work on DOD projects with some soul-searching.
"It's something I think about a lot," said Fuller, who overseas $1 million worth of research grants at Tech - some $700,000 of which are funded by DOD. "The good thing is they [DOD] are willing to fund very fundamental research."
Fuller said there are some DOD projects he would not work on.
But the fact is, say Fuller and others, outside money is increasingly important to Tech.
Walter O'Brien, associate dean for research and graduate studies in the college of engineering, said research is part of that college's threefold mission, along with teaching and publishing.
"The research component cannot be done without outside funding," O'Brien said.
And though research money cannot replace state funding - after all, O'Brien noted, research grants pay for professors to work outside of the classroom, not in it - in some ways research can cushion the impact of state budget cuts.
Besides, O'Brien said, engineers are at their best when working on a specific problem. Doing outside research leads them to technology's cutting edge.
Research money also funds the majority of the college's graduate students, said O'Brien. "We would have less than 50 percent of the graduate students we have right now without research."
He said the engineering department's best researchers are its best teachers as well, based on student surveys.
DOD is not the only source of research money at Tech. Tech's total research budget for fiscal 1990 is $120 million, said Stout, the associate provost for research.
That figure includes money from private industry, the National Science Foundation, local governments, Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, the Virginia Tech Foundation, various state agencies and other sources.
Still, DOD's $10 million or so "is a significant amount of money," Stout said. He said the DOD money is "about average for a research university with major engineering programs."
Tech is ranked 295th in a DOD list of its 500 top contractors. The University of Virginia is 349th.
Stout also said DOD research money at Tech has been declining recently as a percentage of total research. And he noted Tech's DOD work is small in any case compared to some universities.
Johns Hopkins University, for one, gets $400 million from DOD for its applied physics laboratory, which evaluates military and missile systems.
"We have a responsibility to help maintain the defense in the United States," said Helen Worth, public information for the laboratory.
She said DOD money funds graduate assistantships and programs in physics, math, engineering and astronomy at Johns Hopkins. "I think we're a good complement, them [the DOD] to us and us to them," she said.
Stout said Tech leaves any ethical arguments about particular Defense projects to the faculty.
"I don't think the university should have a position. The arguments should and do take place at the faculty level," he said. "If an opportunity fits with a faculty member's ongoing research and professional interest. . . . I'm happy."
But Stout also insisted DOD "is not the tail that's wagging the dog."
For one thing, Stout said, all findings from Tech's Defense research are publishable. "We don't produce classified documents. It's basically Tech policy, because we're an educational institution," he said.
For another, any patents that stem from DOD research belong to the university.
With Fuller's project, that could mean big bucks.
Fuller, an Australian-born engineer with shoulder-length blonde hair, is studying ways of neutralizing sound from submarines.
Submarines can be pinpointed by the noise they make, Fuller said. The ocean floor is littered with microphones, through which a Soviet or U.S. listener can find an enemy sub.
The system is so effective, Fuller said, that a listener even can tell what kind of submarine it is he hears easing out of the Mediterranean Sea.
What Fuller is working on is a computer-run system that will analyze sounds on a submarine, then act immediately to cancel them out.
Instead of simply muting the sub's noise with damping materials - which Fuller said can still allow low-level sound through - the system will use vibrators attached to the submarine, which will issue out-of-phase sound waves to cancel sub noises out.
The idea of canceling sound dates back to the 1930s, and already is used to control noise in some factories, Fuller said. But the possibility of a system that could react quickly enough to erase random noises on a submarine came only with the computer chip.
Should the Tech research lead others to take an interest in sound control - the airline industry, for instance - the potential for Tech to reap profits from its patent is large, Fuller said. The noise control technology might also be used in automobiles, he said.
Fuller and others noted DOD research often leads to technological advances that have little to do with defense.
Over in the geology department, meanwhile, G.A. Bollinger is monitoring Appalachian earthquakes for the DOD.
The idea, Bollinger said, is to learn to distinguish natural tremors from underground nuclear explosions in a portion of the Soviet Union where the terrain is similar. Bollinger compares the rumble of small earthquakes to the shudder of dynamite blasts at Kentucky coal mines, trying to learn to tell the difference on a seismograph.
"We think we've found some differences that would be diagnostic," he said.
Other DOD research topics at Tech include space structures, computer software and aircraft.
by CNB