Chemistry professor Robert Maleczka hopes his six years of structuring scientific tinker toys will win him a slice of a $100 million pie.
Maleczka and colleague chemistry Professor Milton Smith are working toward making cheaper, more efficient drugs through the creation of new building blocks for chemicals used by pharmaceutical companies.
Their project is one of the remaining 179 in the running out of 505 submitted proposals to receive money from the 21st Century Jobs Fund. The fund is a 10-year, $1 billion program passed by the Michigan Legislature late last year to jump-start the state's economy by investing in basic research at universities and nonprofit institutions.
The Michigan Economic Development Corporation, or MEDC, oversees the program, which will turn existing or potential research into jobs for people in Michigan.
With help from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the MEDC narrowed the field of the original 505 applicants to those remaining in mid-July. In the next few months the process will be complete, finalizing the list of winners in the four technologies being considered for funding: life sciences, alternative energy, advanced automotive, manufacturing and materials, and homeland security and defense.
Maleczka's proposal falls under the life sciences category.
He said his project has just what the state ordered — the potential to provide about 50 jobs to chemists in Michigan. With a worldwide market, he said there is no question that the product could provide exactly "what the program wants" — jobs in Michigan and more customers outside the state.
But Maleczka and Smith have heavy competition ahead.
"When all is said and done, there will be more good projects than there will be available money to fund all of them," Mike Shore, spokesman for the MEDC, said.
The initial 505 applications were seeking $1.1 billion in research funds combined, Shore said — about $11 to every $1 actually being awarded. There is no limit for how much money each proposal can request or receive, Shore said, but the $100 million available could disappear fast.
"I think anybody who's going into the interview stage believes in the research they're proposing, and we certainly do," Maleczka said. "The simple numbers are that it will be very competitive, and most of us will go home disappointed, and I hope we're not one of them."
If their project is awarded funds, Maleczka said the next step is hiring chemists, bottling the product and collaborating with national and international pharmaceutical companies interested in producing or purchasing it.
Requirements for potential recipients include the project's science and technical merit, personnel expertise, commercialization potential and ability to generate money.
The top three research universities in the state — MSU, Wayne State University and the University of Michigan — lead the pack of institutions in the state that survived the first round. About 70 proposals were originally sent from MSU, and there are now 22 remaining.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science filtered the applicants and will determine the research teams that receive funding in the end. Amanda Hunt, project director at the Research Competitiveness Service through the association, said out of the four criteria, the association mainly focuses on each proposal's scientific merit.
"The most challenging thing is there are so many excellent proposals that it's hard to say no," Hunt said. "It's hard to mark them down once you meet them in person and listen to their really great ideas."
The final phase involves three weeks of interviews conducted by the association, along with technology and research experts. There is one association staff member and a panel of six technical experts for each interview. The experts are chosen based on their specific knowledge of each project's aim, and they include university researchers, new business owners and CEOs of major corporations.
"This is serious stuff," Shore said. "It's not a process that's open to political manipulation. If it were any more independent or impartial, it would have to be robots doing this."
