NEWS OF THE WEEK
BASF BEEFS UP U.S. ACADEMIC TIES
From left are Michael Malone, UMass Amherst’s vice chancellor for research and engagement; Christian Fischer, president of BASF’s advanced materials and systems research; Richard McCullough, Harvard’s vice provost for research; and Mary C. Boyce, head of MIT’s mechanical engineering department.
RESEARCH FUNDING: German
firm to back R&D, create new postdoc positions
TEPPING UP its research ties in the U.S., the
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German chemical giant BASF has established an advanced materials R&D initiative with three Massachusetts universities. The collaboration is one of several broad alliances to be formed in recent years between leading chemical companies and U.S. academic institutions. Called the North American Center for Research on Advanced Materials, the initiative joins BASF with Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. It builds on a 2007 research pact between BASF and Harvard devoted to the study of biofilms and chemical formulations for drugs, foods, and cosmetics. The new five-year venture will create about 20 postdoc positions at the
FINGERPRINTING A DISTANT PLANET SPACE CHEMISTRY: Sharp spectral lines reveal origins of an exoplanet’s solar system An artist’s rendering of the gas giant planet HR 8799c orbiting its sun. DUNLAP INSTITUTE
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F THE THOUSANDS of known planets outside
our solar system, most have been discovered by looking at the gravitational wobbles they generate in their parent stars or at the faint dimming of starlight as the planets pass in front of those stars. Since 2008, a few such exoplanets have been detected directly, but chemical species in their atmospheres have only been broadly characterized. Astronomers now have obtained the sharpest, most sensitive spectrum yet of the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet and unambiguously identified water and carbon monoxide as part of its makeup (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1232003). The work not only breaks new ground in the study of the chemistry of distant planets, but also hints at how the solar system where this particular planet is located was formed. Astronomy postdoc Quinn M. Konopacky at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute; Christian Marois WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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three schools. A major goal is development of products, including nanostructured polymers and bioinspired materials, for the auto, construction, and energy industries. BASF isn’t disclosing the size of its investment; it committed $20 million to the earlier research pact with Harvard. R&D initiatives linking U.S. schools and chemical companies are on the rise. In 2011, Dow Chemical agreed to spend $250 million over 10 years to support chemical research at 11 major universities. Last fall, Eastman Chemical said it would spend $10 million at North Carolina State University over six years to support scientific research. Just as chemical companies are turning to academia as a source of science, universities are seeking new sources of research funding. At UMass Amherst the partnership with BASF is part of a new innovation institute charged with connecting the school and private business. In its first year the institute generated $14.3 million in industry research awards, and it is targeting $30 million in industry-supported research within five years. James D. Capistran, executive director of the UMass institute, says the partnerships help commercialize research that otherwise would languish in university labs. Part of his job, Capistran adds, is to make sure the partnerships are good for UMass faculty and their students. “If it can’t benefit them, then we don’t do it,” he says. “We don’t want to become an industry development lab.”—MICHAEL MCCOY
at the National Research Council of Canada in Victoria, British Columbia; and their colleagues used Hawaii’s Keck Observatory to study the planet HR 8799c. It is one of four planets orbiting a bright young star 130 lightyears from Earth. They are all gas giants, like Jupiter, but several times larger. The ratio of carbon to oxygen in the atmosphere fit with that predicted by one popular model for solar system formation—the core accretion model, where cooling ice and dust form the cores of planets. “The astonishing result of this paper is that the authors have used the chemical signatures of CO and H2O to get a first estimate of the place and method of formation of one of these planets,” says Wesley A. Traub, chief scientist of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Exoplanet Exploration Program. Coincidentally, a group led by astronomer Ben R. Oppenheimer of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City reports obtaining simultaneous spectra from all four planets of the HR 8799 system in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal. Their spectral observations, using the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, suggest the planets’ atmospheres may also contain compounds such as ammonia and acetylene. The two reports are “a sure sign that we are making progress on the chemical composition of these strange new worlds,” Traub says.—ELIZABETH WILSON
MARCH 18, 2013
