Charlotte Institute will spur growth.

• Position: Special Advertising Section: Regional Focus - Charlotte Institute of Technology Innovation

UNC Charlotte leaders know they'll never have the largest research-and-technology park in the state. But Chancellor James Woodward says size won't determine the success of the Charlotte Institute of Technology Innovation, under development on the school's campus. Instead, the number of patents, spinoffs and jobs will.

The institute is designed to turn intellectual property created by UNC Charlotte professors into money- and job-generating spin-offs. "This is the most important initiative out of this university in the last 20 years," Woodward says.

The idea for the 100-acre campus grew out of a 1998 study commissioned by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce to determine how to keep the region's economy growing. The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. then did a follow-up feasibility study. "They said not only is it feasible, but you darn well ought to do it," says Harry Leamy, the institute's chief scientist and associate executive director. UNC Charlotte established the Institute in December 2000.

The concept is similar to N.C. State University's Centennial Campus. But while the Centennial Campus covers more than 1,000 acres, the institute will be confined to 100. No matter, Woodward says, because it will concentrate on three research disciplines: Metrology, the study of precision measuring and manufacturing; optoelectronics and optical communications, in which information is transmitted via light; and information technology, with a concentration on data privacy and security in e-commerce. "When you're an emerging institution like UNC Charlotte, you have to pick the areas you compete in," Woodward says. "We don't have as many of those as a well-developed research institution like N.C. State, but the ones we compete in, we're as good as anybody."

That's been true for a while. For now, the university's C.C. Cameron Applied Research Center, built in 1990, is the institute's headquarters. The center annually conducts more than $5 million in research funded by outside sources. Five high-tech companies already have been spun out of the center, including Digital Optics, which manufactures photonic microchips, and Waveguide Solutions, which designs and makes light-wave circuits. Both will allow information to travel at much higher speeds than coaxial cable.

The number of spinoffs should skyrocket once the institute is operating. Construction has begun on one building, the $35 million Science and Technology Building, and should be done by early 2004. Two...