CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Officials at West Virginia University and Marshall University believe they can entice the nation's brightest researchers to bring their big ideas to the Mountain State. 

In March, state legislators approved the $50 million West Virginia Research Trust Fund - also known as "Bucks for Brains" - that Gov. Joe Manchin had proposed in his State of the State address.

WVU will receive $35 million, and Marshall will receive $15 million. Over the next five years, each school must match those state funds with private and corporate donations. The money is invested in an endowment, and only the interest will be spent to invest in research with faculty hires and new equipment. 

University officials say they have been raising the private funds and will soon be able to tap into the state's matching dollars.

"The pieces are just now coming into place," said Paul Hill, vice chancellor of research at the state's Higher Education Policy Commission.

Legislators modeled the program after one started in 1997 in Kentucky. Since then, Kentucky has invested more than $400 million in Bucks for Brains.

WVU plans to focus its research on four areas: energy and environmental sciences; nanotechnology and material science; biotech and biomedical sciences; and biometrics, said Curt Peterson, vice president for research and economic development at WVU. 

The point is to focus on research that will boost the state economy - ideas that can be commercialized through patents and licenses, Peterson said.

"Think of all of the different ways  technology is changing, and how much that is affecting our lives," Peterson said. "How did all of this happen? It didn't happen because some industry decided to just form itself. It happened because a researcher in a laboratory decided to investigate. Now we have cell phones, we have GPS units, we have high-definition TVs."

Marshall President Stephen Kopp compared what's happening in today's economy to the Industrial Revolution. 

"What we are dealing with today is a commerce driven by the commercialization of ideas," Kopp said. "Those ideas turned into Google."

Marshall will focus on its Marshall Institute for Interdisciplinary Research. School leaders say MIIR will create 1,100 jobs over the next decade. 

Last month, Marshall hired its first lead scientist and director of MIIR: Eric Kmiec, a University of Delaware biology professor and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute's director of applied genomics. Kmiec is scheduled to start at Marshall in January.

Kmiec, a pioneer in gene repair, will relocate his lab equipment to MIIR. Between six and 10 of his lab members will also move to Marshall, he said.

"This is a critical factor in deciding to go," Kmiec said. "Because I don't think you can be successful without the commitment of the [university] president and the state."

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Officials at West Virginia University and Marshall University believe they can entice the nation's brightest researchers to bring their big ideas to the Mountain State. 

In March, state legislators approved the $50 million West Virginia Research Trust Fund - also known as "Bucks for Brains" - that Gov. Joe Manchin had proposed in his State of the State address.

WVU will receive $35 million, and Marshall will receive $15 million. Over the next five years, each school must match those state funds with private and corporate donations. The money is invested in an endowment, and only the interest will be spent to invest in research with faculty hires and new equipment. 

University officials say they have been raising the private funds and will soon be able to tap into the state's matching dollars.

"The pieces are just now coming into place," said Paul Hill, vice chancellor of research at the state's Higher Education Policy Commission.

Legislators modeled the program after one started in 1997 in Kentucky. Since then, Kentucky has invested more than $400 million in Bucks for Brains.

WVU plans to focus its research on four areas: energy and environmental sciences; nanotechnology and material science; biotech and biomedical sciences; and biometrics, said Curt Peterson, vice president for research and economic development at WVU. 

The point is to focus on research that will boost the state economy - ideas that can be commercialized through patents and licenses, Peterson said.

"Think of all of the different ways  technology is changing, and how much that is affecting our lives," Peterson said. "How did all of this happen? It didn't happen because some industry decided to just form itself. It happened because a researcher in a laboratory decided to investigate. Now we have cell phones, we have GPS units, we have high-definition TVs."

Marshall President Stephen Kopp compared what's happening in today's economy to the Industrial Revolution. 

"What we are dealing with today is a commerce driven by the commercialization of ideas," Kopp said. "Those ideas turned into Google."

Marshall will focus on its Marshall Institute for Interdisciplinary Research. School leaders say MIIR will create 1,100 jobs over the next decade. 

Last month, Marshall hired its first lead scientist and director of MIIR: Eric Kmiec, a University of Delaware biology professor and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute's director of applied genomics. Kmiec is scheduled to start at Marshall in January.

Kmiec, a pioneer in gene repair, will relocate his lab equipment to MIIR. Between six and 10 of his lab members will also move to Marshall, he said.

"This is a critical factor in deciding to go," Kmiec said. "Because I don't think you can be successful without the commitment of the [university] president and the state."

Kmiec will be charged with recruiting other top researchers, and said he has already gotten inquiries from other scientists. 

School officials say investing in research is a costly and long-term endeavor. When universities don't have enough resources for research, they too often divert money from other programs, Kopp said.

"What ends up happening is the undergraduate education suffers," he said, pointing to effects such as larger class sizes.

And it will take years.

"The timeframe we're talking about is a matter of decades," Kopp said. 

If West Virginia follows Kentucky's path, short-term benefits could include increased annual giving and more faculty hires, said John Hayek, interim vice president for finance at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. 

"It's by far one of the most successful aspects of post-secondary reform in Kentucky," Hayek said. "It's allowed all of our universities to increase their endowments."

According to a report by the education council, combined annual giving at the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville increased from $87.7 million in 1997 to $128.6 million in 2006. And the number of endowed professorships increased fivefold.

Even with Kentucky's stark budget cuts this year, legislators allocated $60 million to the program for the next two years, Hayek said.

So far, potential donors have been enthusiastic about West Virginia's program, both WVU and Marshall officials said.

"There is very keen interest in this model because it's more businesslike," Kopp said. "It's not, 'I'm going to give you money, you're going to spend it and it's going to be gone.'"

Hill of the Higher Education Policy Commission points out the prosperity of places that long ago committed to research and technology: Silicon Valley in California, the Research Triangle in North Carolina and Route 128 in Boston.

He and others say West Virginia can still become an important player in the research world.

"It's never too late to start. Science and technology are so vast, and changing so rapidly that ... if we can identify an area that no one else has pursued in detail, then we can create a component of that here," Hill said. "We're never going to compete on the same level as Stanford and MIT. But we can participate."

Reach Alison Knezevich at alis...@wvgazette.com or 348-1240.