Roger Brown

Less than six years after coming to town, a computational engineering program at UTC already is helping Chattanooga determine its place in a major Southern technology corridor.

The SimCenter, which relocated to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga from Mississippi State University in 2002, is preparing to move again, expand and potentially anchor a high-tech campus in Chattanooga.

Supporters of the SimCenter recently elevated the UTC program to the National Center for Computational Engineering and pledged more than $16 million in private donations toward its expansion. Ultimately, they hope their investment will spark the development of more than $100 million of business, research and training facilities to Chattanooga.

“What we’re talking about here is something like the Silicon Valley three decades ago and the revolution that ultimately came in information technology,” UTC Chancellor Roger Brown said. “This coming revolution in computer simulation and modeling is just taking off in a few places in the United States, and we can be one of those places.”

Midway between NASA’s rocket engine complex in Huntsville, Ala., and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Chattanooga is the elbow of the Tennessee Valley Technology Corridor that U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., helped establish in 1995.

Rep. Wamp said the expansion of the SimCenter into a national center and related research campus could help Chattanooga define its place in the corridor. Project backers are looking at high-visibility sites downtown, including the former U.S. Pipe & Foundry site in the Southside, to locate the SimCenter and the businesses that the center could help spawn.

“This could be the beginning of a tremendous investment in higher education at UTC,” said Rep. Wamp, a 50-year-old native of East Ridge. “It could put the school’s engineering program on the map, and it could lead to tremendous investments in new technologies in Chattanooga.”

Dr. Harry McDonald, holder of UTC’s chair of excellence in computational engineering, said high-speed computer simulation has become a new frontier to supplement physical and life sciences. With as much computer capacity available for each project as nearly any United States university, the UTC computational program is able to simulate experiments and test designs before a product gets off the drawing board.

“We achieved everything we thought we would coming here very quickly,” said Dr. McDonald, who joined the SimCenter in Chattanooga after previously heading NASA’s Ames Research Center in the heart of the Silicon Valley in California.

The center has landed millions of dollars in contracts with agencies and businesses ranging from defense contractors to trucking companies. Already, two defense contractors — Applied Hydro Acoustics Research Inc. and Radiance Technologies — have opened offices in Chattanooga to be near the SimCenter.

Within the next couple of years, UTC and community leaders want to expand the SimCenter to boost staff, enrollment and spinoff businesses more than fourfold.

“By declaring that the SimCenter is going to be the National Center for Computational Engineering, which we did last November, we have put our stake in the ground and seized a tremendous opportunity to help UTC and our community be a leader in a major new technology,” said Paul Brock, president of the RiverCity Co., which helped coordinate the private fundraising support for an expanded center.

Private assistance

Like the redevelopment of Chattanooga’s riverfront over the past two decades, much of the impetus for the SimCenter growth is coming from the city’s foundations and philanthropists.

UTC landed the computational engineering center in 2002, thanks to a $25 million gift to UTC by Coca-Cola bottling magnate John T. “Jack” Lupton. The SimCenter expansion now is being propelled by $5 million in pledged grants each from the Lyndhurst, Benwood and UC foundations, along with other gifts from the Maclellan Foundation and private individuals.

The money was raised in a year based only upon a concept of what an expanded SimCenter could mean for downtown Chattanooga and its university.

Sarah Morgan, program officer for the Lyndhurst Foundation, said local foundations wanted to raise enough money to get the attention of the University of Tennessee and leading researchers around the country.

“Putting all the pieces together is complex, and we certainly wish the state was in better economic health at this point as we try to move forward,” she said. “But this is a tremendous chance to build upon the residential, cultural and recreational improvements we’ve already made downtown and use a great resource we already have in Chattanooga.”

The UC Foundation, which provided $2.2 million in 2002 to upgrade a former TVA office on M.L. King Boulevard into the current SimCenter site, has pledged its biggest single program grant ever to support the relocation and expansion of the SimCenter. Chattanooga accountant Jerry Adams, chairman of the UC Foundation board, said directors voted unanimously to match comparable gifts from the Lyndhurst and Benwood foundations.

“Computational engineering is a field of international importance, and we just see this as a wonderful opportunity, not only for UTC, but for all of Chattanooga,” Mr. Adams said.

The University of Tennessee also has agreed to support the SimCenter as part of its mission of being a leader in computational sciences. The Chattanooga campus is only 100 miles from one of the biggest computers in the world at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In fact, the SimCenter has a high-speed data link to Oak Ridge.

Officials at UT, which helps operate the Oak Ridge facilities in a partnership with the Battelle Corp., agreed in January 2004 to add a doctoral program at the UTC SimCenter and last year endorsed the National Center for Computational Engineering at UTC.

“The more we can distribute the success in our science and technology and get that into society and make a visible mark here in our state, that is as good as anything in the world,” UT President John Petersen said during a ceremony last fall to launch the National Center for Computational Engineering.

State and university funding will be key to paying for a new SimCenter complex, which officials estimate could cost more than $50 million to build and equip. Rep. Wamp hopes such a center will be part of a new technology park that would bring other research and business investments to Chattanooga.

Although aligned with UTC, the complex also could qualify for funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Rep. Wamp said.

With both U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Rep. Wamp in key positions on their respective chambers’ appropriation committees, “the table is set for a strong local, state and federal partnership,” Rep. Wamp said.

“I believe that the federal government should partner and be a part of the capital investment necessary to get this center constructed,” he said. “The state has to be the point as a university project, but I would hope there is a federal role through DOE.”

Dr. Raymond Lee Orbach, DOE’s undersecretary for science, has supported the Chattanooga project publicly even though the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory also is a leading lab for computer simulation.

“They don’t see this as taking from Oak Ridge,” Rep. Wamp said. “They see this as adding to their expertise and (giving) them a great way to partner in the technology corridor.”

The next steps

Dr. Brown said the university is working with RiverCity Co. and others to assess the building and computer needs for an expanded SimCenter.

Later this spring, the UTC chancellor said he expects to hire a project director for the SimCenter expansion and National Center for Computational Engineering to help guide fundraising, building design reviews and siting questions.

“We think that two years from today is about the life of the current building and the current site,” he added. “We have about that much time to identify another place and to get ready to move.”

Backers of the SimCenter expansion hope to raise even more private gifts but likely will need to garner both state and federal financial support for a national center. A study conducted last year by consultant Nancy Bingham, a former NASA official, concluded that with proper backing the UTC center should become the National Center for Computational Engineering.

A key question still to be answered is where to locate an expanded SimCenter. Dr. Brown said it likely will move off the UTC campus, either downtown or to the Southside.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is vacating more than 600,000 square feet of office space downtown next year to relocate its headquarters to a new corporate campus atop Cameron Hill. Angelou Economics, a consulting firm hired by RiverCity, has urged the city to try to lure technology businesses into the vacated offices.

Another possible site for an expanded SimCenter could be the former Wheland Foundry and U.S. Pipe & Foundry site off South Broad Street. The brownfield site could be cleared, cleaned up and converted to a major technology campus, Rep. Wamp said.

“As we’re tearing down some of that old manufacturing and rebuilding our city, I think it shows a lot of promise that we might turn a brownfield site into this gem of the future that says everything about what Chattanooga has become,” he said. “We’ve done that very well from the TVA complex to the river. But let’s make sure from the TVA complex to the mountain that we finish what we have started.”