Betty Ireland said Mid-Atlantic Technology Research and Innovation Center has intrigued her since its inception in 2003.

Now the former West Virginia secretary of state has become vice president of business relationships for the South Charleston-based nonprofit research institute that she said encourages economic development through scientific research in chemical and environmental technologies, health and life sciences and advanced engineering.

"Typically you would see 'vice president of business development,' but this is about relationships," said Ireland, who left the Secretary of State's Office in early 2009 and most recently worked for Parkersburg-based Professional Services of America Inc. "Business is all about relationships, so I'm there to build on the existing relationships that they have and to explore and grow new relationships."

Ireland said she sees MATRIC as a vital and promising economic development movement. Today, she noted, it has 150 employees and serves as the anchor tenant in the South Charleston Technology Park -- the former Dow Chemical property the state acquired earlier this year. She said MATRIC's work has helped support 10 spin-off businesses, and four of those continue to operate.

MATRIC also has offices in Morgantown and Oak Ridge, Tenn. It also opened laboratories and offices in January in Milan, Italy, where a small team of European-based scientists and engineers support the chemical, pharmaceutical and energy industries. Most of the laboratory and engineering work will be performed in West Virginia, MATRIC said.

"MATRIC is very pleased to have a professional of the caliber of Betty Ireland join our management team," said Keith Pauley, MATRIC president and CEO. "Her extensive background in business and management will greatly increase our executive capacity, which will be the primary fuel for our future growth."

Ireland said her business experience makes her relationship with MATRIC a perfect fit.

"It's exciting for me to bring to this robust brain trust my experience in business and my contacts I have garnered over 25 years of being in business to help move them forward and to help move the state forward," she said.

Ireland said MATRIC partners with universities or bigger companies to develop technology and then take it to market.

"I am there to make MATRIC more well known, to sing their song, to sell their product, which is brainpower and scientific research," she said.

About 40 percent of MATRIC's employees are former and retired Dow Chemical and Union Carbide engineers and scientists who maintain strong relationships with past colleagues who have moved to other states, Ireland said.

"It's what they call the community of colleagues," she said. "A lot of their business comes from referrals. It comes from the brainpower, the Ph.D.s, the engineers, the scientists who still reside in this valley."

As a result, she said, MATRIC conducts about 90 percent of its business out of state or with international companies.

According to Ireland, MATRIC is positioned to work closely with major research institutions. She noted that it has a relationship with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and MATRIC announced last week that it will work with the University of Notre Dame under a $2.6 million grant to research carbon-capture technology for the power industry.

Ireland said MATRIC, which is funded through contracts, is financially stable, and the South Charleston Technology Park will provide MATRIC with a greater connection to higher education in West Virginia.

Ireland said state ownership of the Technology Park has brought stability to the campus. State and local officials have discussed moving the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, West Virginia Community & Technical College System and Kanawha Valley Community & Technical College to South Charleston.

Ireland said higher education's research institutions in West Virginia -- large and small -- are candidates to work as partners with MATRIC. She said the state's Bucks for Brains research initiative for higher education complements MATRIC's mission to commercialize the products that research produces.

She said she envisions higher education in West Virginia expanding its research capabilities and MATRIC partnering with in-state institutions and taking their innovations to market.

"Why don't we grow the pie so that we all have bigger pieces of a bigger economic opportunity?" she asked.