The University of Pittsburgh is launching a research center dedicated to forwarding technology that uses radio waves to identify objects and people from a distance.

Ambitiously touted by Pitt as "the next generation of bar codes," so-called radio frequency identification technology, or RFID, promises to make typically time consuming processes quicker and more efficient -- such as the EZ Pass system already used on toll roads to future applications such as allowing shoppers to bypass checkout lanes by paying for items without removing them from their shopping carts.

Pitt is banking that the center, which will employ about 28 faculty and researchers and whose start-up costs are in the range of $2 million to $3 million, will generate improvements in the technology, impacting industries from medicine to retail and raising the profile of local research in the field.

Named the Radio Frequency Identification Center of Excellence, the center will be directed by well-known electrical engineering professor and RFID researcher Marlin H. Mickle, who has several patents on the technology and has developed an inexpensive device that can be attached to track products at a low cost.

The center, according to Mickle, will combine the work of a number of university departments including, electrical, computer, industrial and mechanical engineering, the School of Medicine and the information sciences.

It's expected that Pitt as well as philanthropic and federal sources will provide the funds to get the center up and running, but Mickle hopes to raise an additional $3 million from companies looking to capitalize on developments in the field. He cited as examples Del Monte Foods, which has major operations on the North Side, and GlaxoSmithKline, whose consumer health care operations are based in Robinson.

Representatives from both companies are expected to be on hand today when Chancellor Mark Nordenberg joins Mickle in opening the center, which will be housed in the John A. Swanson Institute for Technical Excellence in Pitt's School of Engineering.

Already, Mickle said Pitt RFID researchers were testing the technology on some of GlaxoSmithKline's promotional products, placing the tags on the products to track them from the manufacturer where they are made to the store shelves where they are sold.

Other local firms that have sponsored research or licensed RFID technology from the university include North Side-based biotech start-up Clear Count Medical Solutions and Wilkins-based voice recognition systems maker Vocollect Inc.

Still, it's too early to tell how long it will take for the Pittsburgh region to reap the economic benefits of the center's research.

But Don Smith, director of economic development at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, said,

"If the market grows rapidly, we should be well positioned to capture that growth."

Mickle, who began researching RFID with a grant from the Defense Logistics Agency in 1998, said establishing the center and coordinating the work of a number of researchers in various departments would put the region on track to be a leader in the field.

Pitt only trails institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom in RFID research, he said.

"If you look around the country, a lot of people are talking about RFID, but we are more interested in what makes it work," Mickle said.