Contact Us

Toll-free (877) 251-6520
(515) 294-3045
iprtinfo@iastate.edu

Institute for Physical
Research and Technology

Iowa State University
2156 Gilman Hall
Ames, IA 50011-3110

Points of Pride

• IPRT has worked on over 2,300 technical assistance and research projects with Iowa companies since 1998.
  
  

Research

• IPRT centers and IPRT Company Assistance were awarded more than 600 research grants in the past five years.
  
  
• More than one-fourth of the R&D 100 Awards — called the “Oscars of applied science” — won by Iowa State University have involved IPRT and its centers.
  
  
• The Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, the leading meeting for this area of research, is sponsored and organized by IPRT’s Center for Nondestructive Evaluation each year.
  
  

• IPRT’s Center of Nondestructive Evaluation is the second oldest of the 50 Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers supported by the National Science Foundation.
  
  
• IPRT’s Virtual Reality Applications Center is home to over $23 million of ongoing contract research for industry and government agencies. The research supports more than 35 faculty and 200 undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students.
  
  
• “C6,” the world’s most advanced computer-driven virtual reality facility, is a part of IPRT’s Virtual Reality Applications Center. The four walls, ceiling and floor of the system provide a display area of 100 million pixels spread across 600 square feet.  The system is driven by a 48-node, 96-channel workstation cluster — the largest of its kind in the world.
  
  

• IPRT’s Microelectronics Research Center does path-breaking research on developing new thin film solar cell materials and devices. The group focuses on photovoltaic devices and on photonic structures to enhance solar-to-electric conversion efficiencies.

Company Assistance

• Iowa companies generate a yearly average of $13.9 million in sales, cost savings and investments and create or retain 34 jobs thanks to IPRT Company Assistance.
  
  
• IPRT Company Assistance worked with 625 organizations in 173 Iowa cities and towns in 88 of Iowa’s 99 counties from 2004 to 2008.
  
  
• IPRT has assisted in the development of more than 27 new high-tech businesses in Iowa since 1997.

Education

• Approximately one-third of IPRT’s employees are Iowa State University students.
  
  
• IPRT’s Science Bound program has offered college scholarships to 200 program graduates to pursue degrees in agricultural, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The program was replicated at Purdue University, Indiana, in 2002, and expanded to Marshalltown, Iowa, in 2004 and Denison, Iowa, in 2007. Since its founding in 1990, Science Bound program has impacted more than 600 Iowa ethnic minority middle and high school students and their families
  
  
• A cooperative effort between IPRT’s Center for Nondestructive Evaluation and Iowa State University’s College of Engineering resulted in the first nondestructive evaluation academic minor program in the country.
  
  
• The Virtual Reality Applications Center’s graduate program in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is an established leader in the study of the relationship between humans and computers.  It includes over 80 graduate students and 69 faculty members across all colleges.  The research component of the HCI program builds on interdisciplinary work at VRAC, an IPRT center.
  

People of Note

• George Kraus, IPRT Director, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Kraus has been a fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a recipient of a DuPont Young Faculty Award, a 3M Young Faculty Award, and a Frasch Award. He was the first director of IPRT's Center for Catalysis and is assistant director of the Bio-related Initiatives of the Ames Laboratory. He is also a University Professor in chemistry at Iowa State.
  
  
• R. Bruce Thompson, director of IPRT's Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, is an international leader in NDE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Thompson is also the Director of the the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory's Applied NDE Program and a Distinguished Professor in materials science and engineering and aerospace engineering at Iowa State.
  
  

• Donald Thompson, scientific advisor to the IPRT director, is a retired scientist with the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation. He is an international leader in NDE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Nondestructive Evaluation from the Society of Optical Engineers. Thompson is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of aerospace engineering at Iowa State.
  
  
• Robert Brown, director of IPRT's Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies, is the Iowa Farm Bureau Director of Biorenewables Programs at Iowa State. He is also the Bergles Professor in Thermal Science and a professor in mechanical engineering, chemical and biological engineering, and agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State.
  
  
• James Oliver, director of IPRT's Virtual Reality Applications Center, is also director of Iowa State's CyberInnovation Institute, formed in 2007 to bring together interdisciplinary research teams and industrial partners. He is also chair of Iowa State's graduate program in human computer interaction, or HCI. From 1993 to 1997, Oliver was the associate director for the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology, the predecessor organization to VRAC. Honors include the Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International, and the Young Engineering Faculty Research Award from ISU. Oliver is also a professor in mechanical engineering at Iowa State.
  
  
• Victor Lin, director of IPRT's Center for Catalysis, received the Outstanding Technology Development Award from the U.S. Federal Laboratory Consortium; the LAS Award for Early Achievement in Research Creativity from Iowa State; the National Science Foundation CAREER Award; and the John C. Miller Award for Most Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. .In addition, Lin founded Catilin Inc. in 2007 to commercialize catalysts aimed at making biodiesel production cheaper, faster and less toxic. Lin is also director of the Chemical and Biological Sciences Program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and a professor of chemistry at Iowa State.
  
  
• Vik Dalal, director of IPRT’s Microelectronics Research Center, is a Fellow of the Institute of
  Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He was elected “for contributions to thin film photovoltaic energy conversion materials and devices.” Only 0.5 percent of members can be elected fellows. Dalal is Whitney Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and associate chair of the electrical and computer engineering department at Iowa State University.