North Carolina A&T: economic impact through research: scientists and students are developing the next generation of products and processes in advanced materials, biotechnology and other fields.

• Position: The Business of Innovation

The Piedmont Triad's business leadership recognizes that the region's higher education assets are among its greatest economic strengths. Each of the Triad's 11 four-year institutions plays a unique role. North Carolina A&T State University's role is to generate new technologies and the engineers, scientists and specialists who make them work to create economic value and jobs. The university focuses on its historic strengths--agriculture and engineering. But today's greatest opportunities lie not within traditional disciplines but in the emerging areas between them and where they overlap. Nanotechnology, bioengineering and computational science are examples of rapidly developing areas where Aggie engineers and scientists are creating knowledge.

A&T is truly a technology engine among the Triad's research universities. The university manages a portfolio of more than 200 research projects funded at a total of $337 million. Among them is one of the National Science Foundation's extremely competitive Engineering Research Center awards. In this project, A&T leads an international consortium of research institutions with the goal of revolutionizing metallic biomaterials used to create biocompatible and biodegradable smart structures for craniofacial, orthopedic and cardiovascular applications.

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A&T's level of sponsored research funding has put the university among the top three in the UNC system for five consecutive years. The 2009 total of more than $57 million represents a 26% increase over 2008. Stimulus funding to date totals $2.9 million. Aggie research has generated 19 patents; 28 more applications are pending. A&T researchers have generated four spinoff companies and technologies that expand what's possible today in advanced materials, biotechnology and public health, among other fields. Significant innovations include:

A process for eliminating peanut allergens

A&T researchers have discovered an economical and safe process to significantly reduce or completely inactivate allergens in peanuts, peanut flour and other peanut products. The process, which is in clinical testing, uses common food-industry processing equipment, and it results in products that maintain their taste, appearance and acceptability.

North Carolina is one of the nation's leading peanut producers. The process could have a beneficial impact on the state's peanut farmers and on elementary school classrooms and cafeterias everywhere.

A fiber-optic...