Chemistry professor wins UVa’s top prize for innovation

Brooks Pate, a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Virginia, has won the university’s top prize for faculty entrepreneurship. The university’s Licensing and Ventures Group, which helps faculty members turn their research findings into products that can be developed for the commercial market, has given Pate its annual Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year Award.

Pate’s work on molecular rotational spectroscopy led to the invention of an instrument that dramatically reduces the time and effort needed to perform complex chemical analysis.

Molecular rotational spectrometers — now marketed by the Charlottesville-based company BrightSpec — use electromagnetic pulses to detect the rotational frequency of molecules. This allows users to determine the chemical makeup of a sample that could be made up of hundreds of substances relatively quickly and cheaply.

It’s highly useful to scientists in a wide variety of fields, said Michael Straightiff, executive director of the Licensing and Ventures Group.

“Brooks’ innovation is really going to enable the use of a technology that was viewed as cost-prohibitive to be opened up to new use,” Straightiff said. “It’s having the impact we seek as an institution.”

Scientists can use this tool to conduct analysis “in challenging environments,” Pate, 52, said. For example, astronomers studying star- and planet-forming regions can, using this technology, map out the molecular compositions of bodies thousands of light years away.

Researchers studying chemical reactions in the body sometimes take samples that include hundreds of different substances; molecular rotational spectroscopy makes this process faster and easier, Pate said. Pharmaceutical companies also have taken an interest, looking at how molecule shape variations in their drugs might affect patients.

“The driver behind this technology was trying to solve some fundamental problems in chemistry, how molecules react and change into new molecules,” he said.

Analyzing the molecular makeup of a substance based on movement always has been possible, but only recently has technology made it practical. Advances in semiconductor technology made it possible to build spectrometers capable of performing this analysis in a fraction of the time it used to take; Pate estimates he has reduced it by a factor of 10,000.

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