POST FALLSGary Makis scientific research center here is a lot like that ubiquitous ad campaign of a few years ago: The center doesnt make computer chips, it makes them more compact, less-power hungry, and more radiation-tolerant.


Makis group, the Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research, or CAMBR, mostly designs computer chips for sophisticated, government-funded projects. Some of its computer chips, for example, already are used in NASA satellites.


Eventually, however, some of those innovations could be put to more prosaic uses, such as powering wristwatches or compressing data in point-and-shoot digital cameras.


Whether that happens, the Inland Northwest will be a beneficiary of the centers work, says Doug McQueen, director of the University of Idaho Research Park, in Post Falls, where CAMBR is a tenant.


Whatever they do, whatever influence they have, is going to be here, McQueen says. It will allow us to be on that cutting edge.


Maki and his 15-person CAMBR team moved to the U of I Research Park last summer. It was a homecoming for most of the team; Maki founded the center at the University of Idahos Moscow campus in the mid-1980s, then moved it to the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, N.M., a decade ago.


He was attracted back to the Pacific Northwest by expressions of support from the state of Idaho and the university, he says. Plus, Its much nicer living here, too, he says.


Much of CAMBRs work in the past has been on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, which runs the countrys space program, Maki says.


Typically NASA comes to us and asks us to design chips they cant buy anywhere else, he says.


CAMBR, for example, has designed computer chips for the agency that are resistant to radiation from the sun or even from a nuclear blast, he says.


Its also working on a chip for NASA that runs on dramatically less power than computer chips currently used in satellites and the rockets that propel them, says William Smith, a research engineer at CAMBR.


Reducing the power necessary to run a satellites electronic components has a domino effect on the project, reducing its weight and its overall cost, says John Oberright, a senior systems engineer reached at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md.


This is a big deal, he says. The numbers are quite spectacular.


NASA will include the chip on a test flight in 2004, which itself is a high honor, Oberright says.


Its hard to get a spot on one of these flights, he says. We had probably 75 good ideas, and we had to pick 10 or 15 out of there to actually fly, and Dr. Makis chip was selected.


CAMBR Research Engineer Jack Venbrux says the ultra-low-power chip is an enabling technology. It enables new processing capabilities in space.


Theoretically, the commercial applications for such technology are vast, says Eric Cameron, another research engineer at CAMBR. Basically, the ultra-low-power chip could be applied to anything you want to run for a long time on a battery, he says.


CAMBR, however, hasnt explored many commercialization avenues yet for the technology because it hasnt had time, Maki says.


He was to meet this week with representatives of Agilent Technologies Inc.s Liberty Lake plant to begin those discussions, he says.


Venbrux is working on another advancement, a chip that compresses data to a greater degree than commercial computer chips do. Again, the technology was developed for NASA so that its satellites could take more high-resolution digital pictures from space, but it could be equally applicable to consumer-model cameras, Venbrux says.


Maki and his team expect that some of the technologies CAMBR is developing ultimately will be commercialized, but its unlikely that CAMBRs staff will be leading that charge, he says.


The research center spun off several companies while in New Mexico, he says. In such cases, it looked for outside managers and engineers to license the technology and to direct the commercialization, and it also will do that now that its moved back to Idaho. The licensing provides CAMBR, which is sponsored in part by the University of Idaho, with some of its funding, though most of its money comes from grants, including those from NASA.


The company takes on a focus of its own, Maki says, allowing CAMBR to stay in the research world.


Even though CAMBR has been back in the Inland Northwest for just a few months, Maki says he believes that returning was a good move for the center.


In New Mexico, CAMBR competed for federal and state research dollars with the two big national laboratories thereSandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratoryas well as with other organizations allied with the University of New Mexico, he says.


In Idaho, both the state and the University of Idaho have made clear CAMBRs importance to their economic-development goals, Maki says.


Up here were not competing politically, and we have the support of the University of Idaho, giving us the backing we need, he says. Its been a huge difference.