He can hum a few songs of the pioneers and knows a Charlie Russell story or two.

But Gannon, 24, is doing something that until recently was decidedly un-Montanan - researching high-tech energy sources called fuel cells.

"It's fantastic that I'm able to pursue such a high-tech field in Bozeman," said Gannon, a graduate student in chemical engineering who has a strong environmental interest. "I'd like to feel like what I'm doing here may make some long-term contribution to sustainable energy technologies."

Fuel cells, despite their Spaceman Spiff image of always being in the future, really do work. But not for cheap. NASA puts them on the space shuttle. Without a big budget, however, the cost of energy produced by fuel cells is prohibitively high.

But so is the potential for cleaner, more efficient energy production, and industry and the federal government wants to expand the technology beyond high-cost niche marketplaces. They want greater production of those metal boxes whose chemistry produces electricity. They envision a clean, distributed, reliable energy source operable in a variety of settings.

People like Gannon are working toward those goals.

Until lately none of that research was happening in Montana.

Opportunity has knocked for Gannon, but he's also shown a lot of initiative, said Lee Spangler, who coordinates MSU's fuel-cell program as director of special projects in the Vice President for Research Office.

As an undergraduate, Gannon completed several internships at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. ("It was like a chemist's candy store with all the equipment they had," Gannon remembered.) His fuel-cell work with PNNL continues.

Gannon also works at Arcomac Surface Engineering, a small high-tech company in Bozeman that specializes in fine metal coatings. The company owns a piece of equipment found nowhere else in the world.

What's more, he's doing his own path-breaking research on fuel-cell materials that keeps seven kilnlike furnaces cooking at nearly 1500 degrees Fahrenheit around the clock in a lab on campus.

Gannon has a couple more years of graduate school ahead of him. By then, his research on the best metal coatings may have ushered in a longer lasting, less-expensive solid-oxide fuel cell for a broader market.

What might be next is unclear for this young man lucky enough to combine his love of the Montana outdoors with his educational interests.

"I'd love to stay here forever and do it all."