it’s a very little amount and the price of liquid nitrogen nowadays is less than drinking water. We have high-capacity wires so the power grid’s not going to burn when you have high demand. Because these wires are underground, they are not susceptible to hurricanes and other disasters like we witnessed with Sandy. This is one of the newest technologies in the world and we have all the patents.
We’re in the planning stage to put up this grid. We would need $35 million to do that, so we’re trying all the possible sources of fundraising for this project. People have a lot of questions on this and if we can create a demo project here and people come and see that it is indeed working, then I don’t think I need to convince [skeptics] that it works. These cables create a magnetic shield, so NASA is interested in developing this with us.
X: What are the biggest obstacles in making U of H a research/commercialization institution on par with other large Texas institutions and others across the country?
B: The main obstacle is that the investment community is not coming forward and taking risks. Attracting venture capital is a challenge for any university. The internal challenge is that a handful of faculty is developing the technology; how do you protect this technology from any possible or perceived conflict of interest? We haven’t really had the teaching/research culture clash. Our regents are 100 percent behind our mission. We have a policy that any time faculty brings in royalty income, they get 40 percent of that, so there is an incentive [to innovate.] This is the place to be.
