A leading scientist from General Electric Corp. has been hired to direct the University of Utah's National Cold Fusion Institute at Research Park.
U. officials announced Tuesday that Fritz G. Will, a scientist who gained international recognition for developing an electrochemical technique to study electrode surfaces, will begin work in Utah Feb. 1, 1990. His salary was not released.He will be relocating to Salt Lake City from Schenectady, N.Y., where he has worked at GE's Development Center since 1960.
In announcing the appointment Tuesday, James Brophy, U. vice president for research, said Will's experience in directing industrial research programs will contribute directly to the "ultimate goal of the institute, which is to discover the range of practical applications of this new technology."
Brophy, acting institute director, said Will "brings to the institute an unusual combination of a research administration background in a corporate setting together with scientific and engineering research experience. These are the elements important to the successful operation of NCFI."
A major responsibility of the new director will be negotiating with corporations for funding for the institute, which currently is relying on $4.5 million from state coffers.
In June, GE and the U. announced a cooperative research effort, which involved the exchange of personnel and resources to develop the revolutionary fusion experiments of U. chemistry professor B. Stanley Pons and co-researcher Martin Fleischmann, of Britain's Southampton University. However, the agreement did not provide any seed money to the U. but left the door open to both sides to make further commitments to collaboration efforts.
U. officials are hopeful that Will, who has been a principal figure in fusion-related research in Schenectady, will expedite agreements financially beneficial to the institute.
"He's a very highly respected scientist whom Martin has known for many years, and I've become acquainted with through our ongoing collaboration with General Electric," Pons said Tuesday. "Dr. Will is an extremely capable scientist and we look forward to interacting with him."
A native of Breslau, Germany, Will was educated at the Technical University in Munich, where he earned a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1959. He is former president of the Electrochemical Society and active in various positions with the society for the past three decades.
Since 1973, Will has directed General Electric's research programs in the areas of zinc-bromine batteries, aluminum-air batteries and hydrogen sensors. In recent years he has done research on conducting polymers and the insulators for space power systems.
Brophy said a technique Will developed for studying the chemisorption layers on metal electrodes has been widely used in a broad range of electrode surface investigations. Will's publication describing his potential sweep, or potentiodynamic technique, received a "Citation Classic" designation in 1984 from the Institute for Scientific Information. The paper has been cited more than 300 times in scientific literature.
The author of more than 50 publications, Will holds two dozen U.S. patents.