COLUMBIA, S.C. - University of South Carolina president Andrew Sorensen's sleep is the sleep of the faithful, of a true believer in South Carolina's future.

In Innovista, USC's new research campus, Sorensen is convinced the school has a plan to help take the state not just into the 21st century but the 22nd.

The state has lost manufacturing jobs steadily over the past decade. To compete in the global economy, South Carolina has shifted from an almost complete reliance on pursuing smokestack industries. Instead, the state is investing millions in its research universities - to attract top professors and knowledge-based companies, with hopes they'll spin off even more companies.

It's a jobs strategy South Carolina leaders have been slow to pursue while other states have been speeding along. What gives South Carolina the chance to catch up is that USC, Clemson and the Medical University of South Carolina long ago turned their attention to leading-edge science.

The University of South Carolina is especially strong in the area of hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cell research. If the university can sustain its edge and momentum, experts say, the promising "alternative fuels" technology could add thousands of high-paying jobs and transform South Carolina's economy.

"The state will have three really strong economic development and research engines geographically located throughout the state," said Rick Kelly, USC's vice president for finance, who is shepherding Innovista's construction. "We will broaden the economic base of this state."

Of the three research universities, perhaps making the greatest gambit is USC, which has plans that could eventually double the size of its campus.

The highly competitive field is also where USC and the state arguably have gained the most momentum. One Connecticut official recently described South Carolina to The New York Times as the most competitive of the two dozen or so hydrogen-focused states.

Fuel cells, battery-like devices that create energy by mixing hydrogen and oxygen, might one day power everything from laptops to cars, trucks, houses and businesses. And they could obviously lessen the country's vulnerability to the geopolitics of oil.

Larry Wilson, a member of the USC Research Campus Foundation Board, believes South Carolina can be to hydrogen what Texas was to petroleum, that Columbia could be the new Houston.

In fact, the first company USC has attracted is Duck Creek Technologies, a research-oriented insurance industry software company that Wilson is chairman of.

Duck Creek expects to have about 200 employees with an average salary of $83,000 working on campus. It will be located in the first "private partner" building at Innovista, a sort of vertical research park.

And already on campus are a dozen industry partners working with USC researchers in the National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Fuel Cells.

Those companies - such has Boeing, John Deere, BASF and General Motors - can take discoveries gained through the center and turn them into products or services. The partners work in groups on projects and have access to patents developed.

It's a new role for university leaders, who over the years mostly watched while the state's politicians and business leaders worked to create jobs.

The country's use of technology is increasing, he said. But "that doesn't mean every research park in the country is going to make it. All you do is put a sign up and hope you can fill it."

But Pastides believes Columbia will make it and Innovista will make it. He and Sorensen tell that to every researcher and industry head they get on the university's plane to recruit, every congressman who will listen and every Rotary Club that will have them.

When the NSF four years ago created the country's only industry-university center for fuel cell research at USC, the university's "mission picked up momentum like a snowball rolling downhill," said professor John Van Zee.

The school also now can hire researchers who are stars in their fields, thanks to $30 million set aside by state lawmakers each year since 2003. The money pays for endowed chairs, which includes higher salaries for professors, the salaries of the professor's research teams, expensive equipment and new labs.

State money, too - $70 million in bonds so far - is going toward USC's buildings. Richland County and the city of Columbia are paying more than $30 million for two parking garages.

Going up at the corner of Blossom and Assembly streets, in the Horizon Center complex, are two of the five buildings planned so far for Innovista.

The 125,000-square-foot academic building will house USC researchers in alternative fuels as well as in chemistry, engineering and nanotechnology. It will be home to NSF's fuel cell center.

The other building is for USC's industry partners. It's being built with private money by Craig Davis, who developed North Carolina State University's Centennial Campus in Raleigh.

The academic building also will house an incubator for start-up companies. EngenuitySC, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring a knowledge-based economy in the Midlands, is using a $1 million federal grant to create the incubator, complete with lab space.

People in Columbia are impatient, said Davis, the North Carolina developer, "but everybody has just got to calm down. It will all happen. It is just taking a little bit of time."

USC thought it had a home run in Project Genesis. Officials say they were well on their way to landing an unnamed Fortune 100 information technology company when the company backed out.

Business conditions were forcing the business to lay off thousands nationwide, Sorensen said. A company officer told Sorensen that company leaders couldn't announce layoffs on Monday, then turn around Tuesday and say they were investing millions in a Columbia facility.

The deal was incredibly close to happening, said John Lumpkin, a Columbia real estate consultant who was interim director of Innovista at the time. "The transaction was done, a lease was negotiated." The deal was headed to the company's board for "the final Good Housekeeping seal."

"But there was just no time - this was so big. Basically, the prevailing attitude was, get this one, get the big kahuna, and others are gonna drop," Pastides said.

One of the biggest lessons has been the need to manage expectations. "We had a team meeting, and we recognized that we let Genesis get too far out ahead of us, and expectations got too high," said USC's financial officer, Kelly. "When that failed, it crushed (us)."

Since Genesis, John Parks, with the University of Kentucky since 2004, joined USC as executive director for Innovista and associate vice president for economic development.

Pre-Parks, the recruitment of possible Innovista tenants was coordinated by Lumpkin and split largely between Lumpkin, Davis, Sorensen, Kelly and Pastides.

Lumpkin gets credit for steering the team through a learning curve. "There wasn't a recipe," he said. "We didn't open up a cookbook, and say, `OK, recipe No. 4, let's go cook up a research knowledge economy.'"

Part of why USC went out and got Parks, Pastides said, was to become more focused on corporate recruiting and to learn from someone who has been doing it.

"I had a CEO and a vice president for financial affairs of a company that wants to build a 110,000-square-foot building in Innovista," Sorensen said.

Davis has an office and a team of four in Columbia, plus a project manager who comes in regularly from Raleigh. Davis said he spends two to three days a week on Innovista, mostly on recruiting.

"I think you are always thrilled to hit a home run," Parks said. But "sometimes it can take two to three years to get from the initiation of a project to getting a presence."

The South Carolina Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Economy Strategy, crafted in 2005 by scientists and state business, university and community leaders, lays out a 20-year plan.

It calls for landing the first hydrogen and fuel cell companies between now and 2010. Growth would accelerate from 2011 to 2015, bringing 2,000 to 3,000 new jobs and 40 to 50 new companies.

Between 2016 and 2025, the state should have a mature industry, with 8,000 to 12,000 jobs and an equal number of supply-chain and secondary service jobs.

Those connected with Innovista frequently cite Harvard professor Michael Porter's comment about reinventing South Carolina's economy: "This is a marathon, not a sprint."

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