"Technology Award Goes to Two Women For First Time"
Knoxville News-Sentinel
October 11, 2002
by Larisa Brass
For the first time, two women became recipients of the University of Tennessee's B. Otto and Kathleen Wheeley Award for excellence in technology transfer.
Mary Helen McCay and Kimberly Kelly-Wintenberg received the award, which the Wheeleys endowed with $100,000 in 1990. The women were the sixth and seventh recipients of the honor, last bestowed in 1999, and the first women to receive the award, which carries a $7,500 cash prize.
The recipients were publicly recognized at a luncheon Thursday at the UT Faculty Club. Local entrepreneur Mike Crabtree, president and chief executive officer of IdleAire Technologies, was the featured speaker.
Kelly-Wintenberg, a former UT faculty member, helped found and now serves as president and CEO of Knoxville-based Atmospheric Glow Technologies. The firm is developing an invention by the last Wheeley award recipient, J. Reece Roth, that uses plasma technology to decontaminate everything from medical instruments to military equipment.
The technology has gotten special interest in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the company is exploring applications for air and site decontamination. The company also won an R&D 100 award from R&D magazine this year for the innovation and received a proclamation Thursday from Knox County Executive Mike Ragsdale for the honor.
McCay, a professor of engineering science and mechanics who's married to UT Vice President for Research and Information Technology Dwayne McCay, received the award for the commercialization of her work with laser coatings to create strong, durable surfaces. McCay heads the UT Space Institute's Center for Laser Applications.
The technology has been licensed to Holland, a national trucking firm that's using the laser-applied coating on a new version of laser hitches to replace traditional lubrication and increase the life of the hitch.
"It takes exceptional energy and insight to bring these innovations out of the lab and into the marketplace," said Billie Collier, interim associate vice president for research at UT, who moderated the event.
"It's the ultimate end to a lot of our research," she said after the event. The award, originally intended to be an annual event, took place due to incoming UT President John Shumaker's emphasis on technology transfer and commercialization, she said.
"We were determined to do this because of the president's interest," she said. Many inside and outside the university have voiced concern over the lack of commercialization activity and the lack of resources directed to technology transfer.
Otto Wheeley, a UT graduate and local venture capitalist who was an executive with Koppers Industries, alluded to that concern in his remarks at the luncheon.
After congratulating the recipients, he said that while a technology-based society is broadly accepted, creating that acceptance at a local level can be difficult.
"The change is something that we all have to adjust to, but sometimes we find resistance to change," he said. "I don't want to offend anyone in the room, but unfortunately too many schools today focus too much on filling the brain with knowledge and facts."
Wheeley said a personal mentor once told him, "Unless you learn how to use those facts, it doesn't amount to much.' I thank you ladies for setting an example, because it will pay off."