What does success beyond expectations look like?
For Marcus Daly, it looked like a huge hill of copper ore.
For Dr. Jack Skinner, Montana Technological University's mechanical engineering department head, and a research team under his direction operating in the school's high-tech laboratory a few feet from Daly's statue, it looks a whole lot like the past few whirlwind days.
Since members of the team published journal articles about their breakthrough — a portable method of "spraying on" bandages that deliver healing drugs to a wound in a revolutionary way — the Tech team has been featured globally, not just in dry scholarly texts but in mainstream media as well.
As was the case for Copper King Daly, the Montana Tech team's triumph did not come overnight — and it does come with a lot more work attached.
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The new technology comes in a research sector that is filled with promise, utility — and the potential for big money. Wound-care technology, according to Transparency Market Research, could be a $35 billion market in five years.
For Jessica Andriolo, a postdoctoral biomedical researcher at Montana Tech, the announcement of the new technology and the attention it is receiving has to be particularly sweet.
She has been working on the project for several years, while she got her interdisciplinary PhD in bioengineering from the University of Montana and afterward.
Other team members are graduate students Lane Huston and Emily Kooistra-Manning. Both are due to get their masters this spring. Both have published papers on this project.
Together, the team has developed a portable device that uses a technology called electrospinning.
Electrospinning uses electric force to produce what Skinner calls "artificial spiderwebs," tiny polymer fibers smaller than a hair.
Enter Andriolo's biomedical expertise. "We can mix antibiotics into the polymer before we turn it into fibers," she says.
Additionally, the nano-scale fibers provide a key factor in delivering medicine to wounds — surface area.
As the fibers encounter temperature change, she explains, they melt and release the drugs directly to the wound.
The research has been funded partly by the Combat Capability Development Command Army Research Lab and by the Slater Research Trust.
The application for the Army is obvious, but the team members believe potential uses in civilian life are equally promising.
Doctors and first responders could make good use of the technology, particularly in rural areas where a hospital is a good distance away.
The team has applied for a provisional patent to protect their intellectual property. Now comes the challenge of taking the technology to market.
Skinner sees that as an opportunity for the team, for Montana Tech, and for Butte.
"If this had been developed someplace like Livermore or UC Davis or Berkeley, the startups, the venture capital, all of that infrastructure" is there, he said. "We want technology developers here in Butte," and there's no reason, he added, that the marketing of this technology can't be done from here.
And Skinner perceives the more success Tech scientists have in the lab, the more businesses to take new technology to market here in Butte will evolve.
For the researchers, the project has yet another benefit, besides the economic development potential: The attention they're receiving is bound to bring good job opportunities their way.
For Skinner, it's validation of his students' work, and a ton of work he's put into the materials technology lab — which is basically his design — and the mechanical engineering program.
He received his bachelor's at Tech. After getting his masters in mechanical engineering at Washington State University, he earned a doctorate in the same field from UC-Davis.
After working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, where he was a principal member of the technical staff, he returned to Butte and to Tech, accepting a position in 2012 as assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He's back here because he loves it, and his roots are here. His great-grandparents came to Butte in the mercantile business, selling goods to the miners. His uncle was chief chemist at the Anaconda Company, and also taught at Montana Tech.
"Research takes time and money," he said, "but the results we can get here, solving broad, deep problems, can be meaningful for Butte's development."