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HWI to Manage Experimental Station at Argonne National Laboratory

Hauptman-Woodward will in January 2010 begin a new venture when it assumes management of an experimental station at the Argonne National Laboratory Synchrotron Advanced Photon Source (APS) located outside Chicago, Illinois.

“This opportunity promises both to bring in useful amounts of revenue and to create visibility and collaborative potential in the world of big pharma. HWI is contracting to manage a major facility owned jointly by nine large pharmaceutical firms located at Argonne,” HWI CEO Dr. Ed Lattman said. “The management process will provide many opportunities to interest one or more of these firms in HWI technology (such as the high throughput crystallization laboratory) or drug target research.”

Along with crystallographers around the world, HWI scientists use large, centralized facilities called synchrotrons, which generate intense x-ray beams. Generically, synchrotrons contain a large central ring around which high-energy electrons circulate, spinning off x-rays. Spaced around the wall of the ring are apertures through which x-rays are harnessed for experiments. Just outside each aperture is an experimental station containing expensive and sophisticated equipment enabling the experiments to be conducted.

"The IMCA-CAT contract is testimony to both the scientific credentials of our faculty and the depth of the management team at HWI,” Jim Biltekoff, HWI Board Chairman, said. “We look upon this as a growth opportunity for our people and a vehicle to showcase our capabilities to a wider audience."

The financial model for synchrotrons is a hybrid. The government (in the U.S. usually the Department of Energy) pays for the ring, while experimental teams pay for the individual experimental stations. Teams may be university consortia or other non-profits, governmental agencies, or industrial partnerships. To compensate for the subsidy contributed by the government, each experimental team has to give 25 percent of the time on its station to so-called general users, people with grants who need access to the intense X-rays and specialized equipment.

Each of these experimental stations is a significant small business, with an average of ten employees and a budget in excess of $1 million annually. HWI will manage the experimental station at Argonne known as IMCA-CAT.

What is IMCA and what will HWI’s role be?
The Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association (IMCA) is a consortium of (currently) nine firms forming a Collaborative Access Team (CAT) that has constructed, owns, and operates an experimental station, sector 17, at the Argonne APS. The principal role of the manager – HWI - is to serve as the employer of the sector staff. Other roles include representing IMCA to the APS, monitoring performance and safety, and interfacing between the needs of the companies and the staff. The project will primarily be run by Lattman, HWI Executive Vice President Dr. Walter Pangborn and HWI Research Scientist Dr. Eddie Snell with support from HWI’s finance and human resources teams
under the direction of Chief Financial Officer Lisa Foti. “There are many opportunities for collaborating with one or more of the firms, or with IMCA-CAT as a whole, in the development and/or use of tools developed at HWI and this is an exciting new opportunity for us,” Lattman said. “It will provide welcome diversification in our funding sources, as well as opportunities for staff development and new collaborations with our colleagues in industry.”