I routinely buy used lab equipment items on EBay and LabX, repair them, and use them for research and teaching at Florida Tech. I routinely make significant improvements on existing technologies by using such old lab equipment as a starting point. Unlike Galt, I have not invented “out of seamless cloth”, meaning that I read the open and patent literature and build off of ideas that others have demonstrated. Yet my ideas and inventions are certainly substantial enough improvements that they are worthy of their own patents. Does this make me a looter? I certainly don’t think so, and I don’t feel the least bit guilty about being a vulture when it comes to other people’s soon-to-be-discarded lab equipment. Most of it is not even supported by their manufacturers anymore.

I have been a professor for almost 16 years at Florida Tech in chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, and as of this year, biomedical engineering. Florida Tech is a private, non-tenure-granting university. The faculty here either prefer it that way, or at least realize that, if they work up to their own high standards, the tenure system would be irrelevant anyway. Besides perhaps Hillsdale College, the closest one will find to the Patrick Henry University is Florida Institute of Technology, also known as Florida Tech. I have found my ideal Shrug job.

Florida Tech has about 3000 on campus students and about the same number at our graduate sites at about ten military bases and space center sites (with apologies to true Rand followers). It is primarily an engineering college, with excellent colleges of science and psychology, and solid programs in business and aviation for future Galts, D'Anconias, Taggarts, Danneskjoelds, Reardens, etc. Florida Tech just made it into Tier 1 (the top 150 universities in the U.S.). Florida Tech is the youngest university in Tier 1, is the fastest growing university in the U.S. in Tier 1 (about 30% in the last two years overall and doubled enrollment in my departments in that time), and is the 3rd fastest growing university in the U.S. overall. There are better places to go to graduate school, but I would put our undergrads up against anyone's.

My primary focus has been developing a nanotechnology minor program that has more credits of lab than any others I have seen. I have funded that program and my research with about $100 K from my own pocket, purchasing items on EBay and LabX, and either getting them working myself or having students do it with me. I was able to afford to take this professorship with a slightly lower than average salary because of my investments I made in the 1990s during the dot.com boom. I am willing to take the slightly lower salary because I am more or less autonomous and not persecuted for not bringing in government grants like I would be elsewhere. I avoid government grants more than any faculty member you will meet (although I have not been perfect in this regard). All such government grants were before I read Atlas Shrugged. Since I read the book, I have either self-funded or worked with industrial partners. At Florida Tech, if I bring in research contracts and can't publish for propietary reasons, that is acceptable (unlike the publish or perish elsewhere). In addition to the traditional research grants and contracts, we have a branch called Florida Tech Consulting for which you can pay only a 15% overhead rate for my (and perhaps my group's services) while keeping the intellectual property (IP) for your company.

At the risk of seeming un-Galt-like, having put $100 K into my university (primarily my own research group's work) myself, I do not apologize for asking for equipment or financial donations to support future Galts. Whereas some people donate to “charity”, I put that portion of my “charity” into my own research group’s enterprise, which is definitely Galt-like. Equipment donations are solicited in the areas of chemical, biomedical, mechanical, aerospace, electrical, and materials engineering, particularly nanotechnology and materials characterization equipment, in EXCHANGE for a) a tax deduction (so as to not feed the looters), b) the training of future Galts, and c) usage of all the materials synthesis and characterization facilities that I control on an as-needed, prompt basis (whether by you or by one of my students). We also do materials characterization on a per sample (or batch) basis for a reasonable fee.

I see myself as like Quentin Daniels, John Galt's assistant from the Utah Institute of Technology. I have been a partner in two startup companies, including one started in someone's two story garage to build a plasma arc reactor similar to Mr. Fusion from the Back to the Future movies for the DeLorean. The equivalent to Mr. Fusion was invented by Dr. Albin Czernichowski, born in the 50's in Poland and emigrated to France after Poland was liberated. He is as close to John Galt as I likely will ever meet. My job was to build the process upstream and downstream of his reactor. The other company I helped start up (as a minor partner and VP for Sensor Development) made an alternate to the EPT pregnancy test kit before we got swallowed up by EPT. One of those positions would have been my life’s work in a Galtish world, but my current position as professor is my “shrug job”, even though I work as hard and smart as anyone I know.

I've spent time on just about every side of the energy business from solar to oil to hydrogen to biofuels, specializing in applications of porous materials and nanoparticles such as a) catalysis for crude oil upgrading; b) hydrogen storage and purification (with apologies because part of that job was to supply tritium for nuclear bombs before I read Atlas Shrugged); b) Au and CdSe nanoparticles for biomedical imaging; c) tissue scaffolding generated from 1) electrospinning (the conventional way); 2) 3D printing; and even 3) a modified cotton candy maker; and finally d) biosensors for detecting whether a woman is pregnant (before being bought out by EPT to stay off the market) and recently for detecting biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease and shortly for detecting specific types of cancer cells.

If your kids are looking for this era's Patrick Henry University, e-mail me or call me at Florida Tech, where for a reasonable price at a private university, I will be glad to mentor future John Galts in nanotechnology, the field John Galt would have been in now had Atlas Shrugged been written today.

If you want on my e-mail list that advertises chemical, biomedical, aerospace, and mechanical engineering jobs posted on LinkedIn or in the east central Florida area, as well as nanotech, biomedical engineering, materials science, and 3D printing news, shoot me an e-mail and expect e-mail from jbrenner@fit.edu.

If you or your son/daughter chooses to come to Florida Tech (also known as Florida Institute of Technology, or FIT), please notify me for $1000 off of your tuition per year by my referral.

Educating future Galts,
Prof. Jim Brenner
Florida Tech Chemical and
Biomedical Engineering Departments
Chair, Nanotechnology Minor Program
150 West University Blvd.
256 Olin Engineering Bldg.
Melbourne, FL 32901
jbrenner@fit.edu, jb012767@aol.com
http://my.fit.edu/~jbrenner
321-749-3437