Successful innovator honors Nevada's best

Rudolf Gunnerman holds a dozen U.S.

patents and more than 70 international patents.

But the 75-year-old Reno inventor remembers all too clearly the hollow feeling of his early days a feeling he hopes to erase for at least one inventor each year.

"I know how difficult it is when you are an inventor and an innovator to raise money and be recognized," he said last week, shortly after the Desert Research Institute called for entries in the Rudolf W.

Gunnerman Silver State Award for Excellence in Science and Technology.

The winner of the annual award receives $25,000 and a medal.

The award is limited to applicants who did a significant portion of their work in Nevada.

Gunnerman, an environmental inventor and scientist who came to the United States from Germany in 1945, founded Clean Fuels Technology of Reno.

The company promotes use of a water-bearing emulsified fuel that reduces emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulates.

After a career devoted the study of pollution, Gunnerman's current work comes at SulphCo, a Reno-based company that developed and commercialized a process to remove nearly all the sulfur from petroleum products.

He's chairman and chief executive officer of the company.

Gunnerman said recognition often is as important as money to innovators and inventors.

The award, he said, "gives them recognition that keep them going." Now in its fourth year, the Gunnerman Award in past years has recognized:

*

Dr.

Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada, Reno, who was honored in 2002 for his advances in systems to remove radioactive particles from soil, toxic metals from drinking water and pollutants from mining wastes.

* Peter S.Guifoyle, founder and president of OptiComp Corp.

of Zephyr Cove.

He was honored in 2001 for his development of a new type of optical switch which improves data transmission.

* Dr.William Zamboni of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Medical School.

He won the award in 2000 for advances in the reattachment of limbs.

The deadline for award nominations is Aug.

1.

(Contact Dr.

Roger Jacobsen at DRI at 673-7322 or go to http://ia.dri.edu/Gunnerman.) The award will be presented this autumn.