The Washington Technology Center, a state-supported organization that brings universities and private companies together for research projects, has awarded three grants, totaling nearly $400,000, for research involving Spokane companies.


Two of the grants are for biotech research. In one, Avista Utilities has teamed up with Washington State University to develop an augmented milk pasteurization process using pulsed electric fields to obtain a higher-quality and longer-lasting product. In the other, Spokane biotech manufacturer GenPrime Inc. is teaming with Eastern Washington University to develop a rapid hand-held test that would alert dairy farmers to contaminated milk and other dairy products much earlier in the production process than currently can be done.


The third grant is in the area of computerization, and is a collaboration between young Spokane electronics company Flat Spin Media and WSU-Spokane. The project will combine WSU software with a notebook-sized, touch-screen input device that initially will be used to assess mental-health patients.


The three grants were among 10 that were awarded last month by the WTC, together totaling nearly $1.3 million.


In the biggest Spokane award, Avista Utilities and the WSU Department of Biological Systems Engineering, in Pullman, received $200,000 to study the pulsed-electric-field pasteurization process for milk and produce an industrial-scale prototype for testing. Avista will throw in another $175,000 toward the two-year project, says Robert Gray, an engineer in Avista Utilities technology-systems group. WSU professor Gustavo V. Barbosa-Canovas will head the research, and Inland Northwest Dairies LLC, of Spokane, will test the device.


The other two grants were sought with the assistance of Joanna Ellington, WSU-Spokanes director of biomedical development, who is charged with helping researchers at area colleges identify technologies with commercial potential.


In one, the first WTC grant to be awarded for research at WSU-Spokane, WSU researcher Michael Hendryx will be working with Spokanes Flat Spin Media on a project to test a bundled package of WSU software and Flat Spins notebook-sized, touch-screen input device. The software was developed by WSU-Spokanes Washington Institute for Mental Illness Research & Training, and is intended to help in the assessment of mental-health patients. The intent is to be able to hand to such a patient the electronic notebook, with which they will answer questions by touching places on its screen.


Ellington says researchers believe that method of information gathering will yield a more accurate picture, because the patients will feel more at ease answering questions on a screen than telling a health-care worker answers verbally when questions are sensitive, such as those concerning thoughts of suicide.


Craig Sorenson, of Flat Spin says he hopes the project, which received about $66,000 in WTC funding, will lead to later use of the device and other versions of the software in other areas of health care. However, even the mental health market is large, with more than 5,000 clinics in operation in the U.S. and total mental-health spending estimated at $36 billion a year, Ellington says. Flat Spin hopes eventually to license WSUs software for use with its device.


In the other grant sought by Ellington but having a biotech focus like the Avista Utilities one, GenPrime will use a $121,000 grant in conjunction with EWUs Department of Biology to develop a rapid contamination test for raw milk. GenPrime has developed other test kits for determining the extent of microorganisms in cheese making and beer brewing. This new kit would enable dairy farmers to determine quickly whether milk is contaminated, saving time and money in the production process.


The Seattle-based WTC awards more than $2 million a year in grants for research done by Washington universities in collaboration with private businesses. In addition to its December awards, the organization awarded about $1.1 million in grants to fund 11 proposals last spring. The projects must be in the areas of advanced materials and manufacturing, computer systems, biotechnology and biomedical devices, or microelectronics.