Iowa State awarded researchers $3.69 million in state funding to continue advances in the areas of biosciences, advanced manufacturing and information technology.

The Iowa Department of Economic Development has made efforts to improve technology in these three areas. As a part of this effort, $8.2 million was appropriated to the three Regents institutions by the Iowa Legislature to be used for research in these areas. Iowa State’s plans for research were approved by the Board of Regents on Sept. 28.

These research projects are expected to bring about new technologies that will be of interest to several industry partners who are working with the researchers and sponsoring their studies.

“A lot of [the research] is advanced research or applied research, which will lead to new processes or new devices which a company could take and build a new product, or actually start a new company,” said John Brighton, vice president for research and economic development.

Brighton said research and economic development is working on creating research centers with industry partners.

“In the area of information technology, we’re putting together a group of research centers and creating an institute where the faculty can work closely with industry partners to conduct research that will be both relevant and new,” Brighton said.

Part of the funding will be used to create an Information Science Technology Institute at the ISU Research Park.

This institute will help Iowa State to continue researching things such as visual reality technologies.

“The facility would expand on the program that we have already in the area of visual reality,” Brighton said. “The visual reality center is working on what they call a cave, which you can walk into and have the simulation of a region or field.”

This technology can be used to develop new materials, he said.

In addition, $1 million will be used by the new Nutrition and Wellness Research Center.

The center is working on several projects that are expected to lead to new patents, products and companies.

“It’s a series of five projects that will be looking at various aspects of improving food ingredients for health,” said Ruth MacDonald, interim director of the center and professor and chairwoman of food science and human nutrition.

One project will try to develop resistant starch, a corn starch that is hard to digest so that it can be absorbed by the body in the bloodstream.

“This will help to prevent diabetes and obesity, and it may have positive cardiovascular effects,” MacDonald said.

Another project will try to develop ways to prevent irritable bowel syndrome.

“That condition is of growing importance in health care because there are more people who are developing this condition and it affects lots of aspects of wellness and health. [Irritable bowel syndrome] leads colon-cancer risks, so we want to find ways to reduce that,” MacDonald said.

Brighton said these projects will require additional funding to continue to be productive.

“We hope to build on these proposals that were submitted to the state and then submit them to federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and others,” Brighton said. “This work will be continuing and expanding as time goes on.”