Hoping to grab a bigger share of federal stimulus spending, Brown University is partnering with the Draper Laboratory on alternative-energy research.

Since last winter, scientists from the two institutions have been coauthoring grant proposals to the U.S. Department of Energy. On Tuesday, they formalized that arrangement, announcing plans to open a Center for Energy Research at Brown.

“We really needed a partner,” Len Polizzotto, who directs Draper’s energy research, said in an interview. “It’s working like gangbusters.”

The Energy Department is rushing to hand out $39 billion in stimulus funds, creating historic opportunities for researchers at Brown and Draper, a nonprofit laboratory in Cambridge, Mass.

Together, Polizzotto said, both institutions have a better shot at winning grants.

Draper is known for its electronics research and advances in guidance and navigation systems. It does not, however, have deep expertise in the physical sciences and basic research.

Brown, on the other hand, excels in basic research. But the university does not match Draper’s track record of developing discoveries into useful products. “We bring things to the prototype stage, where it’s ready for prime time,” Polizzotto said.

Already, researchers have submitted seven joint grant proposals, asking the federal government to fund research into capturing and storing carbon dioxide, as well as a project to find ways to store alternative energy so the lights don’t go out when the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing.

On its own, Brown has been seeking tens of millions of dollars in stimulus funds for a new medical school complex in the Jewelry District, and for its effort to upgrade its technology infrastructure, including data storage.

Brown’s researchers work just 50 miles away from Draper, where 900 engineers, scientists and technicians help the Navy, Air Force and NASA with a variety of projects including efforts to modernize the country’s strategic missile guidance systems, and new technologies for human space exploration.

The Center for Energy Research, however, would put the collaborators in the same room.

Draper hopes to post several scientists at Brown if enough federal grant money becomes available. The center is designed to be permanent, meaning it would outlive the stimulus package.

“Brown’s expertise in combustion, carbon chemistry, fuel cells and other energy-related areas is impressive and very accessible,” Michael Feng, who is managing the collaboration for Draper, said in a statement. “Our goal is to shepherd tomorrow’s technologies sprouting in Brown’s labs to production in industry.”

The initiative will be welcome news for Rhode Island policymakers, who hope to make the Ocean State a hub of alternative energy research.

Governor Carcieri has celebrated the plans by a New Jersey company, Deepwater Wind, to build the country’s first off-shore wind farm off Block Island.

That project promises to establish the state as a place not only for generating wind power, but for the manufacture of wind energy technologies such as turbines.

In the same way, the founders of the new Brown center –– including Clyde L. Briant, Brown’s vice president for research –– hope to come up with discoveries that help solve the country’s energy troubles and find their way from the “lab to the marketplace.”

bgedan@projo.com