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ROOP MAHAJAN: The purpose of the Institute
for Critical Technology and Applied Science
is to enhance the capacity and reputation of Virginia
Tech in high-impact, interdisciplinary research
for a sustainable future.
PAUL WINISTORFER: We need interdisciplinary approaches,
because the challenges are so great.
Not any one discipline is going to be
able to solve some of these really complex problems.
I'm able to do things here at Virginia Tech
that I couldn't do anywhere else.
Where ICTAS comes into play is catalyzing the ability for us
to work together and take it to the next level.
We have every talent that you can think of.
Pulling it all together into a very coherent,
terrific team takes a bit of work, something
that we've achieved with ICTAS.
But I would say that that is-- it's a major contribution
to Virginia Tech.
My research is on compounds in the atmosphere-- gases
and particles.
We take the same tools that we've used for traditional
pollutants, and we're now applying them to these emerging
or kind of things that we haven't really thought
of as pollutants before, but looking at them in the same way
and looking at how they're-- kind of the physics,
chemistry of those in the atmosphere.
So I share a laboratory with an environmental chemist
and a geoscientist.
And our students are working together on a day-to-day basis,
and talking, and generating ideas,
and troubleshooting together.
So it really comes from that intersection among the faculty,
among scientists, philosophers.
When you only bring engineers together,
they typically think along the same lines.
But when you bring engineers and humanists together,
then different perspectives come along.
ICTAS is so important, because it's
an open-ended research institute like no other on this campus.
ICTAS is looking into the long-term future.
They're supporting research that has promise in the years
ahead, sometimes decades away.
We need to have tolerance for risk.
We need to let people sometimes do unencumbered, untargeted
research, because we don't know where that discovery will
lead us to.
I think we have brought that culture to Virginia Tech.
Without ICTAS, a lot of new things, I think,
will not be able to happen.
As a basic scientist, risk-taking is the only way
in order to innovate.
So you have to go out and do totally new thing in order
to innovate.
One of the things that we've talked
about just a little bit-- but it's really developing--
is kelp polysaccharide, the stuff
that comes out of the ocean.
If we modify it just right, we can
use it to create what's called a bioartificial pancreas.
And that sounds very complicated,
but it's actually pretty simple.
It's meant to cure Type 1 diabetes.
Putting the cultures of science and engineering together,
you are looking for the creative spark.
You can't predict when that's going to happen.
What you can do is to create an environment
in which this spark is more likely than not to take place.
That's what you're looking.
And ICTAS is an agent for that.
It is, in every sense of the word, inventing the future.
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