Third Frontier : Innovation + Job News

Energy Focus Inc. began in California in 1985 as Fiberstars, a fiber optics firm specializing in architectural lighting such as that used to illuminate underwater spaces in spas and swimming pools.

Today, the company is headquartered in Solon, the Fiberstars brand is an Energy Focus division and the parent company is zeroed in on new LED products for both military and commercial applications.

The company moved to Ohio in 2006 because of a well-trained workforce and a bevy of northeast Ohio research and commercial entities related to lighting, says Julia Dolsen, the company's marketing manager.

"Then, in 2007, we changed the corporate name from Fiberstars to Energy Focus," Dolsen says. "And with that, we changed our core focus a little bit away from this architectural lighting division to really concentrate on R&D."

Much of the R&D in recent years has resulted in new lighting solutions for the military, she says. However, "a lot of the product we've developed for the military we've then been taking and commercializing."

That's what's happened with a new lighting fixture the company is developing with the help of a $1-million Ohio Third Frontier award, she says. Energy Focus, in collaboration with Replex Plastics, Ohio State University and Lighting Services, Inc., will use the money to develop a photovoltaic system for exterior building lights. The solar-powered wall pack being developed is designed to reduce the hefty costs that large buildings currently incur to illuminate exterior grounds, she says.

"Most of the wall packs out there use metal halide lamps," she says. "They use between 250 and 400 watts in energy consumption per fixture."

If a building like a Wal-Mart has 50 such fixtures around its outside, those lights could burn as much as 20,000 watts per day -- translating to hefty electric bills.

"So what we're proposing is that, with a solar-powered pack, you would save that money."

Besides Ohio, Energy Focus has offices in California and the U.K. It employs about 70 companywide, with about 30 in Ohio.

Source: Julia Dolsen, Energy Focus
Writer: Gene Monteith

Lorain County Community College is on a roll.

Earlier this month, the Elyria institution was picked as one of 10 community colleges to participate in a national business incubation model. And this week, the White House endorsed Innovation Fund America, which LCCC will develop as part of its involvement in the incubation initiative.

The virtual incubator, a pilot funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, was announced as part of President Obama's Startup America Partnership. Startup America is designed to increase the success of entrepreneurs through collaborative initiatives among businesses, institutions of higher learning, private foundations and others.

According to an LCCC news release, the virtual incubator initiative "will be implemented in collaboration with the American Association of Community Colleges and the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship. Eventually it will include other partnerships through a national network of small business incubation centers, like the Great lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE) on the LCCC campus."

GLIDE is a business incubation organization serving a 21-county area of northeast Ohio.

According to the news release, "the virtual incubator network will work to increase the capacity of community colleges to service their startup business community." They will do that by studying and implementing best practice and will "demonstrate ways for established business leaders and emerging small business entrepreneurs to work together to help grow local businesses."

On Tuesday, the White House gave its thumbs up to the launch of Innovation Fund America, which LCCC says is modeled after its own innovation fund. The national innovation fund will be part of the incubator pilot and will help high-tech entrepreneurs across the country access "funding and talent when they need it most," LCCC says.

The Lorain County Community College Innovation Fund is supported by both private and public sources, including the Ohio Third Frontier.

Attempts to reach LCCC officials for additional information were unsuccessful.

Source: Lorain County Community College

A newly-launched initiative to create a more robust entrepreneurial American economy has tapped the expertise -- and name -- of Cleveland-based JumpStart.

JumpStart America, a new nonprofit organization also based in Cleveland, is one of 21 national partners announced last week with the launch of Startup America, a private sector answer to President Barak Obama's National Innovation Strategy.

JumpStart America is the only Ohio-based national partner and will draw on entrepreneurial approaches developed by JumpStart, a venture development organization that provides counsel and funding resources to promising new businesses in northeastern Ohio, says Cathy Belk, JumpStart's chief relationship officer. While the two organizations are separate entities, JumpStart America is expected to do nationally what JumpStart has done on a smaller scale, Belk says.

As northeast Ohio's coordinating body for the Ohio Third Frontier's Entrepreneurial Signature Program, JumpStart has invested $20 million in 52 companies, which in turn have raised more than $140 million in follow-on capital and created more than 800 jobs, JumpStart says. As part of that, JumpStart has brought together at least a dozen philanthropic and private industry funding partners, says Belk.

More recently, JumpStart has been sharing some its expertise and experience with organizations throughout the Midwest as part of its JumpStart Community Advisors initiative.

"That is kind of the model of what the JumpStart America work will be," says Belk.

Belk says JumpStart CEO Ray Leach is leading the team that will develop a governance structure for JumpStart America. The process is expected to take three to four months.

Formation of the group will not only benefit the nation but Ohio, Belk says, noting that "it puts (Ohio and northeast Ohio) on the national stage. One of the other great benefits is that national philanthropy will be aggregated in Ohio, and by virtue of Ohio being recognized as offering best practices in this particular area, I think this can be great for the sustainability of the Ohio (entrepreneurial) ecosystem we've been building."

Cincinnati-based accelerator The Brandery was named last week as a new partner in the TechStars Network -- another national partner in the Startup America initiative that operates accelerator programs in New York City, Boston, Seattle and Boulder, Colo.

Source: Cathy Belk, JumpStart
Writer: Gene Monteith

Ohio's status as a leader in photovoltaics could shine brighter should a $46 million US Department of Energy grant come through.

The $46 million grant, expected to be announced by early 2011, would be shared between the University of Toledo and Dow Corning Corp. Earlier this year, two paired to form the Solar Valley Research Enterprise (SVRE), which submitted the grant application to the DOE with wide support from the two states' governors, Congressional rosters and private industry.

The grant would be part of $125 million in funds available though the DOE's Photovoltaics Manufacturing Initiative, which seeks to establish three national centers of expertise in the field by 2015.

Split evenly between the SVRE partners, half of the funds would be used to establish the Photovoltaics Manufacturing Initiative Center on the Toledo campus, separate from the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization based there, but working in conjunction with it.

The Wright Center was created in 2007 and supports research and test locations located at the University of Toledo, Ohio State University and Bowling Green State University.

"I tell people the SVRE would be like the Wright Center on steroids," says Rick Stansley, co-director of the Wright Center and chairman of the UT Board of Trustees.

He estimates a direct impact of 800 jobs added to the area, and an indirect impact six or seven times as large.

The partnership has already received grants from both Ohio and Michigan, including a $3.5 million grant from Ohio Third Frontier. Along with the Ohio "node" of the SVRE, Stansley said the grant money would be used to set up a similar center in Midland, Mich., near the corporate headquarters of Dow.

Both sites would work with a cluster of private companies, government labs and universities to further solar cell development, making it more competitive with traditional energy sources. The centers would also help guide new solar panel start-ups in the northwest Ohio-southern Michigan area.

Source: Rick Stansley, Wright Center for Photovoltaics
Writer: Dave Malaska

A three-year-old Columbus firm is forging a new path in branding by developing browser themes that fans can download for their favorite sports teams, news sites or other entities.

Brand Thunder, founded in 2007 by former AOL/Netscape marketer Patrick Murphy, has provided themes -- or skins -- to more than 250 brands, including 60 NCAA universities.

"Brands are looking for new ways to engage their audience," says Murphy, the company's CEO. "Great brands are building these destination sites . . . but we all know people are getting their content elsewhere. So, how do these brands embrace their users, no matter where they are on the web?"

RSS feeds, Twitter feeds and Facebook updates can be built into brand themes, providing users with up-to-the-minute information about the goings on of their favorite brands -- and driving them to that organization's website, Murphy says.

"The Huffington Post one was one of our first clients. The average reader maybe visits their site three times a day. But we found if they were using our browser, usage was about 20 times a day."

The company shares advertising and merchandising revenue with clients based on clicks from within browser. But the principal revenue comes from the search function, enhanced by a recent partnership with Bing, which becomes the default search engine when a skin is downloaded (Murphy says users can easily change to a different engine afterward).

"As soon as that person clicks a sponsored link, Bing just made a buck or two,"  Murphy says -- and Brand Thunder earns a percentage.

Two and a half years ago, Brand Thunder received $350,000 from TechColumbus, and more recently received $1 million from the Third Frontier's Ohio Innovation Loan Fund. The company is closing on a second round of investment from North Coast Angel Fund and Ohio TechAngels.

Brand Thunder currently has seven employees -- three outside of Ohio -- but expects to add up to a dozen more in the next three to four years.

Source: Patrick Murphy, Brand Thunder
Writer: Gene Monteith

The University of Dayton is getting a new tenant.

GE Aviation announced Nov. 22 that it had chosen a site on River Park Drive for its new Electrical Power Integrated Systems Research and Development Center (EPISCENTER). The $51-million, 115,000-sq.-ft facility is expected to be operational by late 2012 and attract an initial 10-15 jobs.

The facility will make GE Aviation an initial launch partner of the Ohio Hub of Innovation and Opportunity for Aerospace, assigned to the Dayton region in September 2009 by Gov. Ted Strickland.

Jennifer Villarreal, a company spokeswoman, says proximity to the University of Dayton Research Institute and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base -- as well as the Dayton region's designation an aerospace hub -- all contributed to GE Aviation's decision to locate the center on the UD campus. She says that in addition to benefiting the region's and state's economy, EPICSENTER will help GE Aviation attract new talent.

"It's an excellent catalyst for growth with new program and contracts," says Villarreal. "It's a great pipeline for talent from the University of Dayton as far as researchers, technologists, engineers and others, so that's really key to us as far as development and advancing electric power for all kinds of vehicles."

The facility will sit on eight acres and will focus on a number of markets, including electrical power starter/generation, conversion, distribution and load technologies for commercial and military aerospace applications. UD will partner with the CityWide Development Corp. to build the facility, whose construction should be completed by the third quarter of 2012. The Ohio Third Frontier has chipped in with a capital grant of up to $7.6 million.

Villarreal says it's difficult to predict job growth over time, but that some have estimated 100 to 200 "depending on future contracts and programs."

Source: Jennifer Villarreal, GE Aviation
Writer: Gene Monteith

Avtron Industrial Automation, with roots in aerospace testing equipment, is flying a little closer to the ground these days. With some help from Ohio's Third Frontier, the company is developing encoders for use in wind turbines. The encoders sense position within 360 degrees.

Worldwide, Avtron has about 400 employees, 350 of which are in Cleveland. The remaining employees work in New Hampshire and Beijing. Spurred by the $1-million Third Frontier award, Kosnik says the company plans to add another 30 jobs by 2014.

The company makes drive systems, load banks, aerospace test equipment and incremental encoders for measuring speed and position in industrial control systems. Users of the encoders include heavy industry, the wind turbine industry, and offshore oil platforms. Overall, company sales have been strong, says Don Kosnik; Director R&D (Engineering), about doubling over the last three to five years.

Over one third of Avtron's staff are technical personnel with four-year degrees or higher. Most have backgrounds in electrical and mechanical engineering, electronics or computers. Many of its product design engineers come from Avtron's Field Engineering Department.

Avtron Aerospace, Inc., Avtron Loadbank, Inc., and Avtron Industrial Automation, Inc. are part of Avtron Holdings, LLC. Their customers include 95 percent of the Fortune 500 and nearly every major airline in the world. The company has been in business since 1953. In 2007, Avtron was acquired by Morgenthaler Partners, LLC, a private equity company with assets under management of approximately $3 billion.

Source: Don Kosnik; Director R&D, Engineering
Writer: Patrick G. Mahoney

ButylFuel believes bio-butanol may be the best green replacement for gasoline or diesel -- but first, it has to bring the price down.

The Columbus company is using a new strain of bacterium developed by Shang-Tian Yang, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State University, to turn feedstock into butanol, bypassing the petroleum refining process through which the product is now made.

ButylFuel is currently running a pilot plant in nearby Gahanna to prove its technology and find new ways to make the fuel commercially viable, says Tom Grote, ButylFuel's chief financial officer. Grote, whose family owns Donatos pizza and Grote Company, says his family bought ButylFuel because "we're very interested in green initiatives."

Founded by Dave Ramey as Environmental Energy in the early 1990s, the company says butanol has big advantages over ethanol. Ethanol is corrosive and can't be shipped through a pipeline. It must be mixed with gasoline to be used in current engines, while butanol can be used in a blend or by itself. And butanol has about the same energy content as gasoline, while ethanol has only about a third.

But commercially produced butanol, used primarily as an industrial solvent, costs between $3.50 and $7 a gallon using today's production methods. Grote says the company is at least a year a way from building a demonstration plant that would produce a commercial product using cleaner, cheaper processes.

Grote credits Ramey, now the company's chief technology officer, with helping to educate consumers (he showed butanol could be used as a drop-in substitute for gasoline by filling his '92 Buick with the fuel) and lawmakers, who wrote butanol into the 2007 federal energy bill as part of the nation's renewable fuels standards.

The company, in tandem with Yang, has benefited from Ohio Third Frontier funding, but "we're aggressively partnering with folks to try to accelerate development," Grote says. "We are definitely willing to take on a strategic partner who would be willing to invest as we grow this."

ButylFuel currently employs six.

Source: Tom Grote, ButylFuel
Writer: Gene Monteith

Our bones, it seems, need some reconstruction occasionally too. A Medina company has been successful in developing the right "hardware" for the job and may now double in size thanks to a new product offering.

OrthoHelix Surgical Designs was founded by David Kay, an orthopedic surgeon, in 2004. The company develops orthopedic implants for hand and foot surgery - small bone areas.

With a successful line of screw and plate instruments used across the U.S., OrthoHelix is a competitive leader in its marketplace and is expected to see sales of $20 million this year.

An Ohio Third Frontier grant for $1 million awarded to the company in June will make it possible for OrthoHelix to add an additional 42 employees to its current 50, says Dennis Stripe, CEO, as the company will commercialize a new locking mechanism product, OrthoLock, that complements its existing offerings.

"We expect to double sales in the next three years," says Stripe. "This locking mechanism is unique to us. We already have FDA approval and early trials are underway. We expect to roll out the product early in the first quarter of next year."

The growth will enable OrthoHelix to add a wide range of new jobs, says Stripe. Additional workers in engineering, technical inspection, product management, customer service, finance and marketing will be needed.

The grant will also help OrthoHelix expand distribution of its full product line throughout more areas of the country, says Stripe.

Looking even further ahead, Stripe says his company sees a bright future because of current R&D.

"We've got a very strong pipeline of product ideas coming down the line," he says.

Source: Dennis Stripe, OrthoHelix
Writer: Val Prevish

It started in the late 1940s when two entrepreneurial-minded engineers joined a chemist and formed Yellow Springs Instruments. The startup's first success was an innovative crystal clock, sold to the Air Force.

Today, the company is known simply as YSI, Inc. and is a global player, with 380 employees around the world and revenues of about $100 million. And while it has demonstrated expertise in a number of sensor applications over the years, it now focuses on the natural resource water market. In other words data collection for ponds, oceans, rivers and streams.

Gayle Rominger, YSI's executive VP, says that focus has been a successful strategy built on a solid foundation.

"(The founders) were tremendously successful, but we ended up being in several different markets," Rominger explains. "The temperature market, the biomedical market and the water market. And those were big markets. So it came to the point where if we were going to get to the next level we really needed to pick a market and develop a strategy to go after that market."

Toxic algae in your pond? YSI makes sensors that can measure oxygen and particles leading to algae blooms. Runoff from the Maumee River into Lake Erie? YSI can detect and measure the problem.

President and CEO Rick Omlor says demand for YSI products differ around the world. China has emerged as a prime source for YSI products, he says.

"While we care a lot about water quality, some areas of the world care about water velocity and water quantity," he explains. For example, some global customers are concerned about flooding, or water needed for hydro power or transportation.

Over the years, YSI has benefited from Ohio Third Frontier funds, including a $1.1 million award in April to YSI, Riehl Engineering and the University of Cincinnati to develop a new kind of sensor for measuring nitrates in water.

The company employs 130 at its Yellow Springs headquarters.

Sources: Rick Omlor and Gayle Rominger, YSI
Writer: Gene Monteith

In the early '90s companies in need of material-exposure experiments in space came to Bob Schmidt, the founder of Orbital Research Inc. Schmidt's company would arrange to fly the samples on board the NASA space shuttles.

"Our logo shows a globe with a shuttle flying around it," says Fred Lisy, Orbital president since 1997. "Our goal was to give those new materials systems some pedigree by exposing them to the harsh environment of low Earth orbit . . . We don't do that anymore."

After nine successful shuttle experiments, NASA lost its funding for the program. Schmidt then shifted his focus to Cleveland Medical Devices, leaving Lisy in charge of Orbital.

These days, Orbital's core technologies are aerodynamic controls and microdevices for the aerospace, defense, transportation, medical, and wind turbine industries. Inc. Magazine and the Weatherhead School of Management have recognized the fast-growing company.

The company develops miniature control actuation systems (MCAS) for attitude and flight control for air vehicle platforms. The systems enhance maneuverability, range, and in-flight course corrections while minimizing size, weight, and cost. They have been deployed on hit-to-kill projectiles, fixed-wing vehicles, UAVs and Slender Bodies for enhanced vehicle control.

"I work on everything from unmanned air vehicles, roughly six inches by six inches by 12 inches, to medical monitoring systems to combat obesity, and weapons steering systems for munitions ranging in size from 40mm to 155mm rounds," Lisy says.

Orbital received $175,000 from the state through the Ohio Third Frontier's Research Commercialization Grant Program and raised over $1 million in matching funds. The product is a FDA approved disposable dry Electrocardiograph (ECG) Recording Electrode that requires little or no skin-surface preparation.

Orbital has 23 employees with annual sales of about 3 million dollars, but expects significant growth.

Source: Fred Lisy, Orbital Research
Writer: Patrick Mahoney

Pyrograf Products is already the world's third-largest producer of carbon fibers, with a wide range of applications for its products.

If fate smiles on the Dayton company, Pyrograf could soon pick up another key application: material for the lithium ion battery that powers the all-electric Chevy Volt.

Pyrograf was spun off as subsidiary to Applied Sciences Inc. in 1999, and became an independent company in 2002. Since then, with research and development support by ASI, the company has produced carbon nanotubes for growing military and commercial products.

"We have striven throughout the course of our company to develop a low-cost manufacturing technology for this material," says president Max Lake. "The larger the tube the more efficient it is, and we've settled on these larger tubes."

Carbon nanotubes can improve the properties of polymers and act as either an insulator or a conductor -- for both heat and electricity.

The company's 25-year relationship with General Motors resulted in GM's licensing of its carbon fiber patents for use in automotive components. But will Pyrograf's materials ultimately make it into the Volt?

"That's our dream," says Lake. "And another part of the dream is that the Chevy Volt will be accepted in the market."

In the meantime, the company continues to sell its materials for products such as tennis rackets, golf clubs and stereo speakers -- as well as defense applications.

The company has benefited from crucial state funding over the years, including commercialization and research funds through the Ohio Third Frontier.

Together, Pyrograf and ASI -- located across the street from each other -- employ 17.

Source: Max Lake, Pyrograf Products and Applied Sciences Inc.
Writer: Gene Monteith

Usually, a glance in the rear-view mirror reveals what's in the past. But that's not at all the case for AlphaMirror. The Kent-based liquid crystal spin-off looks at its new, auto-dimming mirror technology, and sees the future.

AlphaMirror CEO and President Yehuda Borenstein says the company is focusing its work on changing the market for rear-view mirrors � one liquid crystal at a time.

Using technology developed at nearby Kent State University, the mirror will automatically adjust, depending how much light is available, using a liquid crystal display. Unlike a computer, there is only one pixel. And the panel is made of plastic, not glass.

"The tricks are in the details � how well you get the clear state and how well you get the dark state," Borenstein says, adding that auto-dimming mirrors have been around for a while."Our advantages are lower cost, a lighter weight and less power consumption."

AlphaMirror has teamed up with its parent company, AlphaMicron, and Michigan-based Magna Mirrors to develop Digital Mirror. The collaboration netted a $1 million grant from the Ohio Third Frontier initiative to develop and test the special dimming mirror. Borenstein expects the technology to reshape the entire industry.

"That's why we've had such success � people are very interested," he says.

AlphaMirror currently employs two people, but "soon we will grow to three or four" employees, says Borenstein. More employees will be added when the product goes to market within the next few years.

"We've teamed with Magna, the largest rear-view mirror manufacturer in the world," he says. "The potential is good, now the question is can we make it. I think we can. And I think we will."

Source: Yehuda Borenstein
Writer: hiVelocity staff

ZIN Technologies traces its roots back to 1957, the days of the Cold War and the great "Space Race" between the U.S. and the former USSR. Back then, the company provided aerospace design and fabrication services to NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), the forerunner of NASA. Then, in 1961, ZIN received its first NASA contracts -- and has never looked back.

Today, the Cleveland company specializes in man-rated, space-flight hardware design, development, fabrication and operations. The company has developed more than 133 payloads, which have logged thousands of hours in-orbit. Zin also transfers its advanced engineering service and products, developed for space flight, to other specialized markets such as aeronautics and medicine.

"We are one of a few small businesses with the expertise and core competencies to provide space flight hardware from development through operations," says Carlos Grodsinsky, vice president of technology.

While ZIN made its name in outer space, the company recently has gone where it had not gone before: the biomedical industry. ZIN partnered with the Cleveland Clinic to form ZIN Medical, a remote patient management company. Ohio Third Frontier funding helped the company commercialize its services and ZIN is currently seeking venture capital financing.

"We are commercializing remote physiologic health-monitoring technology that we jointly developed for the tracking and management of astronaut crews in-orbit," says Grodsinsky.

Over the past few years the company has boasted double-digit growth and increased its headcount to about 200. ZIN expects continued growth in 2011.

Source: Carlos Grodsinsky, ZIN Technologies.
Writer: Patrick Mahoney

The Dayton region may be known as Ohio's sensors corridor, but northeast Ohio's capabilities in sensor technology just got a boost -- and a big one at that.

Last week the Wright Center for Sensor Systems Engineering at Cleveland State University, allocating funds from the Ohio Third Frontier initiative, awarded six grants totaling more than $17 million to universities and other organizations for development and commercialization of sensors and sensor technologies.

The largest of the six grants -- 25 percent of which will be matched by recipients -- went to Lorain County Community College, which will receive $5.5 million to work with R.W. Beckett Corp., Acence and Greenfield Solar Corp., to create a center for sensor commercialization.

The Cleveland Clinic Foundation's Learner Research Institute will receive $2.67 million to lead establishment a new center for sensor and microdevices for biomedical applications, and the Austen BioInnovation Institute is getting $2.6 million to lead development of an advanced instrumentation platform for product development in biomedical areas.

Meanwhile, the Ohio State University is slated to receive $3 million to lead commercialization of terahertz sensors for applications such as medical imaging and homeland security, and the University of Akron will receive $1.66 million to lead commercialization of sensor technologies for clean energy products.

Youngstown State University will also receive $1.66 million, for a collaboration with the Youngstown Business Incubator and M-7 Technologies to create systems for next generation manufacturing and inspection systems.

Some recipients are already predicting new jobs due to the awards.

"Our principal commercial partner, M-7 technologies, is looking to hire an additional 70 employees over five years," says Julie Michael Smith, the Youngstown incubator's chief development officer. "That is the direct employment, and then of course there will hopefully be downstream employment by companies employing this technologies."

She says the grants are good for northeast Ohio and for the Youngstown area, where old-line industries like steel have been battered in recent years.

Sources: The Wright Center for Sensor Systems Engineering and Julie Michael Smith, Youngstown Business Incubator
Writer: Gene Monteith