BusinessTN

The SimCenter, the faculty/student research team at UT-Chattanooga, is known as a go-to operation. NASA turned to the SimCenter to learn why an Osprey aircraft crashed in the Arizona desert, killing 19 Marines. U.S. Xpress took its $40 million-a-month fuel bill to the SimCenter—which helped the local trucking company cut the bill by 8%. The Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy are among others who, since the center opened in 2002, have tapped its nationally unparalleled expertise in computational engineering—solving technological problems through computer simulation, saving resources and, possibly, lives.

Economic developers in Chattanooga hope the SimCenter will solve a different problem—luring high-paying jobs to a city that has lost its manufacturing base. When consultants suggested the SimCenter could draw new, knowledge-based industry downtown, "we all sort of blew it off," admits David Unruh, project director for nonprofit RiverCity Co. "None of us knew what the SimCenter was. We just knew it had something to do with a fuel cell." That most-publicized of the center's projects is its solid-oxide fuel cell, built by California's Bloom Energy. This year, Bloom will send a larger prototype capable of providing electricity for a mid-sized building while emitting hydrogen—which in turn could be used to power a vehicle or the fuel cell itself. Local manufacturers already are being courted as potential parts suppliers.

But when Unruh and his coworkers understood the SimCenter's more typical projects, he says, "our jaws dropped." Those projects' real-world applications—and senior faculty members' rock-star status in their respective fields—have raised the hopes of a city and a region. Unruh says the resulting knowledge-based economy could rival in impact that of an auto plant, as more private industries, like Huntsville, Ala.-based Radiance Technologies, move to Chattanooga to work with the SimCenter, hire its graduates and create manufacturing jobs. Congressman Zach Wamp has secured millions in federal funding for the center, which he considers a catalyst in the "new economy" of a regional "technopolis" from Oak Ridge to Huntsville and beyond.

In November, UTC announced the SimCenter's long-term goal of moving downtown and expanding fourfold. It has also designated itself the National Center for Computational Engineering—a name SimCenter professor Roger Briley says reflects its vision as well as that of Chattanooga-area philanthropists, who have donated $17 million to jump-start the process.

Briley says he and fellow faculty will continue to cheer—not initiate—any economic spin-off. "We don't make cold calls," he laughs. "We just answer the phone."