Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Center for Power Electronic Systems lab manager Bob Martin says the Virginia Tech lab is a likely candidate to benefit from the focus on energy research in the federal economic stimulus package.

Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Student Doug Sterk (left) and lab manager Bob Martin discuss sustainable energy sources while standing near solar panels on the roof of Whittemore Hall on the Virginia Tech campus on Thursday.

Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Martin, a lab manager at the Center for Power Electronic Systems, holds a light-emitting diode fixture while talking about sustainable energy research in Whittemore Hall on the Virginia Tech campus on Thursday. Energy efficiency is a main area of research in the laboratory.

BLACKSBURG -- Researchers, by nature, are not an impetuous lot. Scientific progress is the result of countless hours of trials and research, testing and re-testing.

Those who fund the research are typically just as cautious. The process by which organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health decide to award billions of dollars in research funding can take up to a year.

So how will the federal government get the stimulus package's $21.5 billion in research and development funding out the door fast enough to help jump-start the economy? And how long will it take research universities to benefit from it?

Roderick Hall, associate vice president for research at Virginia Tech, said he's hopeful that awards will begin to be announced in the next two to three months.

"I'm beginning to get a real sense of urgency from the agencies. I think they're getting a lot of pressure from the administration to do this faster," he said. "I don't think the government's got a year right now."

Federal agencies are expected to get new funds in the hands of researchers quickly by dipping into their pool of existing proposals deemed worthy of funding -- projects Hall refers to as "beaker-ready."

Tech received about $200 million in external research funding in the 2007-08 fiscal year after submitting more than $1 billion in research proposals. Researchers hope the stimulus money will retroactively ease the stiff competition among project proposals.

Donald Leo, associate dean for research and graduate studies at Tech, said he has heard that the new funds could allow the NSF to increase funding rates from 20 percent to 30 percent of proposals. An NSF spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment on the stimulus.

Hall said Tech's research focus should put the university in a good position to take advantage of the money. The university has various energy-related initiatives -- from switchgrass biofuels to fuel cells to carbon sequestration.

Tech has also expanded infrastructure over the past several years to do health-related research, which can be an advantage in applying for some of the $10.4 billion in stimulus funding that the NIH has received.

The Center for Power Electronic Systems at Tech is a likely candidate to benefit from the focus on energy research in the stimulus. On Thursday, Bob Martin, lab manager at the center, explained how solar panels and a wind turbine on the roof of Tech's Whittemore Hall are being used to help power the building.

It's part of the Sustainable Building Initiative, a research project on power conversion and renewable energy sponsored by the NSF, Tech's College of Engineering, Blacksburg-based VPT Energy Systems and a CPES industry consortium. The project includes research on plug-in hybrid vehicles and remote communication to control energy usage.

Ten years of NSF funding for CPES that began when the center was launched in 1998 has run out, forcing it to cut back on staff and the number of graduate students. CPES co-director Dushan Boroyevich said the Sustainable Building Initiative could make good use of additional money.

"At this point we do not have major funding and we're looking for other opportunities," he said.

The federal stimulus package dedicates $18 billion to research proposals. That leaves $3.5 billion for new equipment and capital projects.

Tech is building a research center in Northern Virginia that could benefit from that money, said Jim Bohland, executive director of Tech's National Capital Region.

The project was estimated to cost $100 million, but Bohland said construction costs are coming in well below budget. Funding for the project has already been financed by the Virginia Tech Foundation, but the stimulus could support information technology infrastructure for the 144,000-square-foot building in the Arlington County neighborhood of Ballston.

"It's safe to say we're talking with a lot of people," Bohland said, "both on the hill and within the agencies."

Federally funded academic research and development expenditures have been increasing at a rate lower than inflation since 2005. The stimulus will change that trend, but Bohland said he is more interested in what next year's federal budget has in store. A continuing commitment to the work is more important than one-time funding, he said.

On-campus research institutes at Tech, such as the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, also have equipment and construction needs that could benefit from the stimulus.

VBI Chief Operating Officer Laurie Coble said a second next-generation genome-sequencing machine could lower costs for researchers, give them greater access to data and allow them to publish more research.

"There's a really nice ripple effect from improving the infrastructure," she said.

Bohland said research grants have a ripple effect, too. They hire research assistants, fund graduate student positions and purchase equipment. The result of the work, ideally, is new products and new skills in the labor force.

"Look at the companies started in the dot-com and biotech period; they really came from graduate students," Bohland said. "They become the entrepreneurs. Us old fuddy-duddies, we just stay around and support them."