Aurora Regional Fire Museum

Transcription

This city is fortunate that it has had some great founding fathers. The University of Missouri Kansas City was founded as the University of Kansas City in 1933 during the heart of the depression. It was during that same period that it decided it needed an art gallery and started the Nelson Art Gallery. Not long after that, it decided it needed a world class research institute and founded MRIGlobal. MRIGlobal is one of the leading research institutes not only in the Midwest but across the world. We do work for companies, we do work for the federal government, we do cutting edge research that effects your lives and our lives around the world. We're one of the top applied research organizations in the country, and we focus on national security and defense, global health, and energy and environment, and we take technologies that are applied by the US Government as well as industry that can be used for future programs. To know what's going on inside of MRIGlobal, we have to be careful, because there are a number of things that go on within these walls which are classified, but I think the one thing we do know is that great science is going on here. There are discoveries that are being used by the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, by industry, by others that are important to the health, safety, and welfare of the country. Popular consumer products that MRIGlobal's been involved in really relate first to a fertilizer where the Spencer Chemical Company really grew out of the use of nitrates from the second World War that could then be used for fertilizers. And then there've been products like freeze-dried coffee, Folgers, like M&M's and the coating for M&M's, those kinds of products have come out of MRIGlobal. I might say, as chairman of the board, in the future we're going to do a better job of licensing some of our science.   ♪   MRIGlobal started at the end of the second World War. In 1943 a group of civic leaders in Kansas City began raising money in order to start the institute. Well, I think the vision for MRI was a recognition by a number of civic leaders that science was going to make an enormous difference in a post-World War II era, and they saw MRI as one of the economic drivers for the community as we entered the late '40s and '50s, and it certainly has been.   ♪   We have a number of very smart people who add greatly to the texture of the community. That's probably the most important aspect. I'm Mike Fischer. I'm an engineer here at MRIGlobal. At MRIGlobal I'm Director of Energy Operations. My name's Joe Bendel. I'm a staff engineer here at MRIGlobal. I'm a chemist at MRIGlobal. As a medicinal chemist-- I'm an engineer at MRIGlobal. I am a mechanical engineer by degree. My name's Kara Cooper, and I'm a microbiologist here at MRIGlobal.   ♪   It's very important to keep up in the area of technology and in science. New developments are happening very quickly, and to be productive and competitive in the workplace these days, we have to have the most current state of the art technology, and scientists and engineers who are versed in the most current technologies so they can compete in the workplace. We're in one of our prototype laboratories in the engineering division. Some of the things we build in here, you can see back there is an air sampler. This is a 3D printer that we use to make different parts for our prototypes. For example, this is a bicycle chain, or a timing chain, that was made all in one piece on this device right here. We're in one of the laboratories that we use for our environmental focus. This is an SEM, a scanning electron microscope, that we use initially for identifying compounds that might be pollutants in our environment. Well, we're walking down one of the hallways at MRI that has different technical spaces within it. So we have biological labs on one half of our hallway, and then I'm gonna take you into some of our engineering labs. So a lot of the work I do is related to Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security projects. And we use, you know, we have some fairly generic lab space that let's us work on any type of electrical, mechanical, aerosol type of programs here at MRIGlobal. This room simulates temperature and humidity conditions, and can even actually make it snow inside here. We've done that on a few different occasions, so we can use this as a generic facility that we can bring in different products from different clients that have need for testing in simulated environments.   ♪   Well, MRIGlobal certainly started small. I think if you go back and look at Charlie Kimball's paintings of the various places where MRI was housed, it started out, I believe, in a fire house, moved to another relatively small building, and then it continued to grow. First it was local, then it was regional, now we've become a national and international research organization with offices throughout the country, and people who are posted throughout the world. My name's Dustin Smith. I'm the executive director of the Solar Technology Acceleration Center in Aurora, Colorado, or SolarTAC for short. SolarTAC is a key component of MRIGlobal's energy initiatives. SolarTAC is a membership based organization where our members do both the collaborative and the proprietary research necessary to drive their own business as well as the industry itself. We've already seen award winning and record setting technologies moving from the site out into the marketplace, which is, you know, really going to continue to drive our local economy and national economy. The business opportunities tied to solar in the future are potentially enormous. As more and more homeowners, as more and more businesses move to put solar panels on their roof, there will be a huge demand for that, and so we can look forward to substantial business growth. Energy efficiency is one of the most important things that we can devote our time and energy to from a scientific and technical point of view because we currently waste sixty percent of the energy that gets created in this United States just in the use of it, so we waste it. We have to do everything better. We have to use all the resources necessary. Again, it's all about how do we produce these electrons in the United States, and then how do we produce them with renewable technology. So we have to use the current technologies better, we have to make 'em more efficient, and we have to make 'em cleaner, we have to use power in better ways, and then we have to supplement that as much as possible with electrons that are generated in a renewable fashion. So the technologies at our site are really focused on making that last big step from moving from the lab really into a very marketable and efficient and reliable product, and that is really gonna be a key component of the renewable energy economy moving forward.   ♪   Some of the defense applications that we do here tend to focus around the development of applications for chemical and biological defense around protection of our war fighters. That could be such things such as vaccine development or medical countermeasure development or protective outerwear for our soldiers. One of the challenges that the military has is testing these suits that the soldiers have to wear in the event that they might be exposed to a chemical attack. So MRIGlobal built on our experience to work with a couple of companies, including Boston Dynamics, to design a robot system that can be used to really fully test these protective suits. In designing this system, the mannequin had to be able to move like a person does in a realistic manner. The mannequin also has to have a surface that's the same temperature as your skin, which isn't the same temperature that a robot normally would be. In addition, it has to be able to sweat, and we have to be able to sense underneath the suit any potential breakthrough of chemicals. So basically we had to design as a team the mannequin, the sensor systems that fit underneath the suit, and the chamber in which the mannequin will be used. In the area of the environment, much of the work that we do has to do with working with companies who are producing pesticides and herbicides, and helping to develop those materials to be safe before they go to market. In our environment, there are millions of chemicals, and one of the things that we do here at MRIGlobal is to test to make sure that those chemicals that could be contaminous and harmful to humans don't end up in the water supply or in the soil that could then leech into the water supply. Some of these chemicals are due to the manmade products that make our lives easier, but could also cause risk as far as our health. This equipment on this side of the laboratory is ion chromatography mass spectrometry, and we would utilize this equipment to look for toxic salt materials that could be a byproduct of the manufacturing process that would be of concern by the Environmental Protection Agency that could cause a health hazard if they were to leech into our soil or into our drinking water. We work with Animal Health and Food Safety. A lot of the biotechnology companies in the area are focused in on that, and we do drug efficacy testing, we do assay development for Food Safety. And so we work closely with other groups in the area in regard to those different research areas. MRIGlobal really works with a large number of different startup biotechnology companies or drug companies that have a new product, a new idea that they would really like to bring to market. So we work with them to identify funding mechanisms to work with their research to provide them with the testing and the technical expertise that's necessary to really evaluate their product. In the area of life sciences, we have a major focus on the area of helping with cancer materials and anti-cancer drugs that are being used in clinical trials, and we manage a repository operation in which we supply chemicals for some of the major clinical trials around the country. This is the National Cancer Institute's Centralized Chemopreventive Agent Repository, operated by MRIGlobal here in Kansas City, Missouri, and we're looking at an area that really serves as an incubator for the next generation of anti-cancer compounds, specifically focused on chemoprevention agents. Again, driven by the National Cancer Institute, who MRIGlobal has worked with since 1969. What you're seeing here are compounds that are in the very early stages of investigation. These are not compounds that are commercially available, something that you would get from your doctor. These are compounds that are actually in the research setting. The National Cancer Institute sponsors these trials to investigate both the safety of these compounds as well as the efficacy of these materials. It's interesting because these are not being developed by larger pharmaceutical companies, but rather by the National Cancer Institute. And these will actually serve as an entry point for a lot of smaller incubator companies that will actually then come on, once these compounds have gone through very early testing stages, to investigate these more fully, and ultimately commercialize these compounds, and that's the stage you would see them in your physician's office. The way we interface with inventors and innovators and entrepreneurs here oftentimes has to do with either doing some preliminary lab work for them, sometimes in helping them vet their ideas and develop them to market, and in some cases we partner with them on larger programs that we can bring a new company along with us as we work on a large government program, for example. Here at MRI we sponsor First Robotics Team at the Paseo High School, and I'm the task leader for that. My name is Kim Burke, and I'm the chemistry and physics teacher at Paseo Academy. And we've had a robotics team at Paseo for the last eight years. This is our eighth robot. MRI were the ones that came in and funded us, and gave us the support. They have seven, eight, sometimes 11 different mentors that come over and help us to put the robot together, go through all of the technical stuff that we have to have, and help the kids get the robot completed. This has had a tremendous effect on our kids at Paseo. Working with MRI and having these mentors come over, they teach us a lot of stuff about building and the wiring and the electrical stuff, and we learn how to work together as a team, and we--well, basically we just have fun putting the robot together. This experience can help me get a job because it's actually great experience for what I want to do because, like, in the future, I wanna be a mechanical engineer. Well, in the future I want to be an engineer. My mom is really pushing me forward to being an engineer because it's very hard. Well, the robotics program definitely helps the students a lot with, you know, kind of basics of engineering and, you know, mechanics, and being able to think outside the box. Is it handling okay while we're driving? Oh yeah. It's handling good that way. I would love to start my own engineering business in the future, and just have everything built by hand by myself and my own employees and everything, and just have everything built. That's why being at Paseo and being on the Robotics Team is just--it's actually a blessing to me because it's just--it's a really hands on program, and I really appreciate being here. The entrepreneurial spirit of Kansas City has really been growing in recent years. In the years when I've been active in business, entrepreneurial spirit wasn't talked about. It certainly was going on. People like Mr. Joyce Hall, people like Ewing Kauffman, but now that it's been institutionalized by the Kauffman Foundation and by others, Jim Stowers in particular, they are building upon the kind of work that has been done at MRIGlobal for a number of years, which is to take teams of people to tackle difficult scientific problems, and come up with solutions that really have changed the world. As a chemist working for MRIGlobal, I get a lot of job satisfaction out of knowing that the analytical work that we do protects the environment, and also the impact on human health. It's very rewarding for me to know that the tests that I develop and evaluate are ensuring the safety of the food that I feed to my family every day. As an engineer, I love seeing our products that get turned into solutions for our clients, and to have a lasting impact on our world. And that is a piece of the work that I love about being here at MRIGlobal.   ♪   We have a great city that's full entrepreneurs and others who have invested here, and because they've invested here, we have more philanthropy per capita than any other city in the world. And it all comes from those folks who started their businesses here, made great money, stayed here, formed foundations, and they're now giving back to this community. That's what helps make this community what it is.   A coproduction of KCPT and Outpost Worldwide, at home in Kansas City.   ♪   Captioned by