Columbus/Central Ohio : Innovation + Job News

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

IR Diagnostyx is working to develop fast, accurate and painless diagnosis techniques for a variety of functional diseases like irritable bowel syndrome, interstitial cystitis (painful bladder syndrome) fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Formed last year and based at TechColumbus, the company grew out of Ohio State University's Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Institute at the Fisher College of Business.

Company founders -- OSU graduate students in OSU's Fisher College -- won third place in the 2008 Fisher business plan competition, says president and CEO Gary Smith. Since then, IR Diagnostyx has received a $50,000 TechGenesis grant and is currently under consideration for an additional $250,000 in funding through the TechColumbus Pre-Seed Fund.

While the company is looking for new diagnostic techniques for a variety of ailments, "we're really focused on interstitial cystitis," Smith says. "The technology's based on work done in Tony Buffington's laboratory in veterinary medicine, and that of Luis E. Rodriguez-Saona. Ironically, Luis is a food scientist, but his competency, his research area, is in infrared micro-spectroscopy."

How does that relate to the diagnosis of functional ailments?

"We take a blood sample and we're developing an algorithm, and using some complicated software we can take a look at a serum sample and see a characteristic signal generated from patients with these specific diseases," Smith explains. "And we take that diagnostic information and compare it with others and provide the physician with some feedback on the health of the patient."

The company is still in the early stages of its product development, having completed feasibility work and now preparing to launch regulatory research, Smith says.

"We're going to collect data from about 500 patients to submit to the FDA later this year," he says.

Source: Gary Smith, IR Diagnostyx
Writer: Gene Monteith

Who knew that radioactivity could actually save your life?

Thanks to some very smart people at Neoprobe, a Dublin-based company specializing in the development of diagnostic systems for cancer patients, gamma detection treatments in tracking the spread of cancer are becoming more effective.

Neoprobe is about to begin a third multi-center Phase 3 clinical study of Lymphoseek®, which has received investigational review board approval and begun enrollment of subjects diagnosed with breast cancer or melanoma, says Brent Larson, senior vice president and CFO.

Lymphoseek® is an injectable radiopharmaceutical used by surgeons as a sentinel node targeting agent in intra-operative lymphatic mapping (ILM) procedures for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and related diseases.

ILM procedures provide useful information to avoid the unnecessary removal of non-cancerous lymph nodes and surrounding tissue. The Lymphoseek® technology enhances the determination of cancer stage and may help improve the complete diagnosis of disease, says Larson.

In an ILM procedure, a radioactive tracing agent is injected at the site of the primary tumor. Following injection, the tracing agent follows the drainage path of the tumor to the nearest lymph node or nodes. A gamma detection device is used to detect the path of the tracing agent. Since the lymph nodes are connected, oncologists believe that if the sentinel nodes show no sign of malignancy, then the downstream nodes in the pathway are likely to be clear of disease.

If approved, Lymphoseek® will be the first tracing agent specifically labeled for lymph node detection.

Neoprobe was founded in 1983 and is considered a leader in gamma detection systems. Earlier this month, Neoprobe initiated the application process for listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The company currently has 35 employees and expects to add as many as 10 new jobs in the next year, says Larson.

Source: Brent Larson, Neoprobe
Writer: Val Prevish

Mitch McLeod established ARCOS as a custom software company in 1993 in the basement of his home. Little did he know that a one-off software request would eventually propel the Columbus-based firm into 23 states.

In 1997, Wisconsin-based Alliant Energy approached McLeod about building an application to help manage crews called out to repair lines during power outages. The problem: Dragging line crews out of bed in the middle of the night can be hit or miss without an organized way of doing it.

"In 1999, two more companies came to us and they said 'we want what Alliant Energy has,'" McLeod recalls. "So we built a little more general purpose version of the product."

Unprepared to market the product full-force, "I went to the Ohio Foundation for Entrepreneurial Education and rewrote the business plan," McLeod says.

The market research conducted as part of his plan revealed that most utility companies were using manual call-out processes using notebooks and spreadsheets, or home-grown systems that left a lot to be desired.

With four more utilities in the pipeline for his software, McLeod's company dove headlong into fully developing a marketable product. The resulting solution automates the process for identifying available line crews, contacts utility workers at home and allows them to electronically report into work. It then tracks their work so "we know that they have been called out, we know not to notify them again, and then when they're released from work we know not to call them again."

Today, the Columbus-based firm serves utilities all across the country. Company revenues have been growing at about 20 percent a year during the past two years, and McLeod is projecting 30 percent growth in 2010.

At the same time, the company has nearly doubled headcount in the last year, with 18 employees now compared to 10 in January 2009.

Source: Mitch McLeod, ARCOS
Writer: Gene Monteith

Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel funders and economic development officials will descend on Columbus Sept. 27 and 28 to network and to hear the latest developments within Ohio's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Sponsored by the Ohio Capital Fund and the Ohio Third Frontier, the Ohio Early Stage Summit will focus on the vitality of Ohio's early stage companies and investors, says Paul Cohn, the Capital Fund's vice president and regional director.

While past events have provided an opportunity for a handful of early stage companies to pitch their services and products to potential funders, popular demand has led to an expansion of that portion of the summit on the event's first day.

"For the past two years, we had half a dozen companies make pitches during the conference," Cohn says. "That's resulted in companies actually getting funded. We've expanded that to a separate event -- a half a day leading up to the summit."

Other presentations and panel discussions this year will include the state of the Ohio Third Frontier and what capital needs continue to exist across Ohio.

"Now that the Third Frontier has been investing for a number of years in early stage companies, is there a need for some later stage money as these companies are starting to mature?," Cohn explains.

Another discussion will focus on minority early stage businesses and both the opportunities and challenges they face. And participants will hear about the state of venture capital in Ohio.

Cohn notes that about 350 people from throughout Ohio attended last year's event.

The summit is free of charge, but attendees should register by Sept. 22. That can be done by going here. 

Source: Paul Cohn, the Ohio Capital Fund
Writer: Gene Monteith

While ChumpDump itself may never make its creators rich, the user information it is now pouring into a central data base just might pay off.

The concept for the Twitter-related game germinated during Startup Weekend Columbus 2010, an April event that brought the entrepreneurial-minded together for three days of brainstorming and fleshing out of new ideas for startups, says Dan Rockwell, co-founder of ChumpDump and CEO of Columbus-based Big Kitty Labs.

"I wasn't interested in jumping on another team," Rockwell says of that weekend. But a light bulb went off while chatting with colleagues about a company Twitter managed to shut down for enabling bulk, automatic "unfollows" of Twitter friends.

"We were laughing about that, and we thought we can make something faster and easier than that, and we'll do it nice and novel and wrap it in a game. We'll call it ChumpDump."

ChumpDump debuted for iPhone and Google Android earlier this month. Within two weeks, 500 people were playing. Each day, ChumpDump picks a name randomly from your friends list and scours through a month of tweets. It tells you how many times your friend sent you a direct message, how many times he or she retweeted your tweets, number of replies to your messages and other factors that enable you to answer this question: "Save or dump?"

Three points for saving -- and three points for dumping. More importantly, Rockwell says, players must give a reason why they are saving or dumping a friend.

The free game is unlikely to create much revenue, says Rockwell, but that's OK. The project helped its creators gain new capabilities in game mechanics, leader board design, in-game ads, Android development and in-game purchasing. And, as ChumpDumpers grow in number, the rich information concerning why people choose to save or dump could become a data mine worth its weight in iPhones.

Source: Dan Rockwell, ChumpDump
Writer: Gene Monteith

New Product Innovations (NPI) has been doing business in China for years. Now, it wants to help American medical device manufacturers do more business there, too.

On July 19, the Chinese Medical Device Trade Association (MDTA) announced it had chosen NPI as its official U.S. branch. The association between NPI and MDTA is seen as a way to provide easier access to Chinese markets, particularly Shanghai, where MDTA is based.

NPI designs, develops, engineers and manufacturers new products for client companies. It also helps customers bring those products to market. While the Columbus-based firm serves consumer, industrial and medical clients, it has begun to put more focus on the medical device marketplace, says Mike Billman, managing director for the new MDTA branch and NPI's development manager for new product innovation. As an MDTA branch, NPI will concentrate on medical devices used in non-invasive procedures, he says.

"We've been doing business in terms of manufacturing in China for a long period of time," explains Billman, "A couple of years ago, we realized that since we already have assets in China with three offices," as well as an intimate knowledge of the banking and legal infrastructure, "that we can help U.S.-based medical device companies tap into the growing market in China."

The July 19 announcement piggybacks onto a four-phase process that NPI has been using to assist companies interested in doing business in China, Billman says. The process includes early market analysis, formal due diligence, distribution channel development and, finally, assistance bringing the product to the marketplace..

NPI was established in 1989 as a joint venture of GE Plastics and Fitch, a global design firm. The company has 40 employees in the U.S.

Source: Mike Billman, NPI
Writer: Gene Monteith

Today's insurers are sticklers for making sure medical providers don't prescribe costly medications or treatments that could be substituted by generics or lower cost alternatives.

The result is "prior authorization," a set of rules and procedures that can make for a complicated and paper-intensive process for doctors, pharmacists and other professionals who must deal with a large number of insurers and a large number of forms.

CoverMyMeds has set its sites on eliminating hard-copy paperwork related to prior authorization of pharmaceuticals. The year-old company, based in Twinsburg with operations in Columbus, rolled out its solution last April. Sam Rajan, one of the company's founders, says since then thousands of clients all over the country have embraced the new online procedure that reduces time on task by as much as 75 percent.

Until now, prior authorization has been "a very manual paper process," Rajan says. "Any time there's paper involved, the work flow is disrupted and work stops. There are a couple of studies out there that show patients -- a good number of them -- can go without therapy if these prior authorizations aren't completed. That's primarily due to the provider not knowing where to go to look for the proper forms, the rules and how to get the ball rolling."

CoverMyMeds allows a provider to go online, find the right form, share it with another healthcare professional, fill it out and e-fax it to the insurer -- all in under five minutes, compared the traditional 15 to 25 minutes.

The firm has caught the attention of JumpStart, which recently invested $250,000 in the company. The funds will be used for additional technology infrastructure and personnel as the company further develops its capabilities, Rajan says.

CoverMyMeds has 11 employees and expects near-term growth to push that number up by about 50 percent.

Source: Sam Rajan, CoverMyMeds
Writer: Gene Monteith

With the launch of their new 2.6 Version Remote Backup Appliance, 3X Systems of Columbus is optimistic that the future holds strong growth as their market share increases both in the U.S. and overseas.

3X was founded in 2006 by Alan Arman with the help of a $500,000 grant from TechColumbus. Today, the company has hundreds of clients in countries around the world and saw growth of 74 percent in 2009, says Arman.

Arman's mission when he founded the company was to create data back up that was affordable and reliable. Customers include medical practices, law firms, non-profit groups and small to medium size manufacturing companies, he says. They appreciate one of the key features of the storage back up - which is that they control where the data is stored.

"We allow customers to control where the data back up goes," he says. "They have access to the data. No one else can access it."

Arman says clients choose where the data storage appliance is located, something that is not normally a choice when hiring a data back up service.

As sales continue to increase in the next 12 to 24 months, Arman says he plans to hire up to three new professionals in sales, marketing and software development to add to the 10 employees he now has. He says he expects sales to double this year.

Source: Alan Arman, 3X Systems
Writer: Val Prevish

Estech believes it has found a clean energy alternative to fossil fuels -- and a way to keep from filling up landfills. With sales pending around the world, it's hoping that when the technology catches on, it will create hundreds of new Ohio jobs developing and building garbage-baking autoclaves.

Founded in 1998, the Powell-based company takes municipal waste and cooks it down to usable components.

"When we get through with that, it's easy to separate out the fiber, which is really clean when we separate it out, and metals, aluminum and plastics," says Ted Thomas, manager of engineering. "And all of those have a value in a recycle market."

Thomas says Estech is well positioned to provide both cheaper electricity -- by burning processed biomass -- and savings on municipal landfill costs.

While the process is straightforward, the market realities are more complicated. In the United States, it's now difficult to compete with a typical landfill's low "tipping fees" -- the cost of dumping garbage. Regulations also present a barrier to hooking up generators to the existing power grid, Thomas says.

But in much of Europe, where land is more limited and tipping fees represent a hefty cost for waste generators, Thomas says Estech, through Estech Europe, expects to make significant inroads into the marketplace. Likewise, Estech sees opportunity in developing countries where the cost of dumping may be free (in other words, along the road) but the cost of electricity is extremely high.

Thomas says the company now believes it could also operate profitably in the U.S., reducing the need for landfills and providing electricity cheaper than utilities -- if it can hurdle the barriers to market entry.

Estech received a TechColumbus Green Innovation award last year. It employs seven.

Source: Ted Thomas, Estech
Writer: Gene Monteith

An electric utility's biggest bane, John Lauletta says, is the power outage. It makes sense that if utilities could predict outages -- or at least when parts of the system were about to fail -- they'd jump at the chance.

Enter Exacter, which over the past four years has grown rapidly by helping to predict how and where overhead power distribution systems might fail.

Lauletta, Exacter's CEO, says the company began to gel in 2004, when he and fellow utilities veteran Larry Anderson (Exacter's vice president of international business) "started talking about this idea of predictive technologies. We started our work with the Ohio State University High Voltage Laboratory, and we opened our company on July 1, 2006."

Today, Exacter has 100 utility customers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia and the U.K.

In a nutshell, here's Exacter's approach: As a vehicle drives along the distribution route at regular speeds, a patented sensor in the car detects radio emissions from damaged components. Exacter sends a person into the field to confirm which component is damaged or failing. A digital photograph is taken, latitude and longitude confirmed, and reported to the utility so the problem can be fixed.

While there are other methods for finding bad components, none is as accurate, fast or as comprehensive as the method Exacter uses, Lauletta says.

Lauletta says another growing service for Exacter is helping utilities understand the feasibility of laying "smartgrid" networks over their distribution lines.

Exacter has received support from the Ohio TechAngel Funds and the Ohio Third Frontier Innovation Ohio Loan Fund. Last year, the company received Outstanding Startup and Outstanding Service awards from TechColumbus, and, more recently, a statewide professional engineering award for innovation for small companies.

Source: John Lauletta, Exacter
Writer: Gene Monteith

Ohio State University has announced a new commercialization center that it calls a unique model for collaboration between university researchers and business -- one that will strengthen the state and national economies and increase university revenues.

The Technology Commercialization Center, which Ohio State says departs from typical university commercialization models, will emphasize partnerships between the colleges of engineering, food agricultural and environmental sciences, health sciences, business, law, and the Office of Research.

In a news release, OSU said the center will be housed within the Fisher College of Business and will "bring together, in one unified organization, new-technology evaluation, license negotiation, company-formation mentorship and undergraduate and graduate education on entrepreneurship and commercialization."

In addition, a Proof of Concept Center will be established to ensure inventions with the greatest potential for the commercial market will receive the most attention.

Caroline Whitacre, vice president for research, told hiVelocity in May that the center was in development.

"We need to prioritize these technologies and develop the most promising ones further within the university," she said at the time. "So the idea here is twofold: to do a thorough evaluation of these technologies, and that involves bringing in some people from outside as well, bringing in some market experts, both local and national. And using the expertise within the university to look at what's really valuable."

OSU says the strategy presents a significant opportunity to generate new revenue for the university, which is recruiting a chief commercialization officer to lead the effort. Ohio State, based in Columbus, ranks in the top ten nationally with $716 million in research expenditures in 2009 and is second in industry-sponsored research. The university's 2009 licensing revenue was $1.7 million.

Source: Ohio State University
Writer: Gene Monteith

Rocker Bret Michaels has one. Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi has one. Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, has one too.

What they have is a hole in the heart known as a patent foramen ovale, or PFO. It's a problem shared with millions of other Americans -- one that, left undetected, can lead to strokes and death.

Until now, detecting a PFO has required the skills of two physicians, use of a heart catheterization lab, mild sedation and a plastic tube shoved uncomfortably down the throat, says CardioX CEO Larry Heaton. That procedure is so uncomfortable that many patients refuse follow-up tests to determine if treatments have been effective.

But if all goes as planned, the Dublin-based CardioX will complete clinical trials this summer -- and next year begin marketing -- a siimpler process that requires only a small injection of dye into the blood, sensors attached to a person's ears and a tube into which a patient blows to open the flap covering the PFO. (Because blood passing through a PFO doesn't go to the lungs as it should, the dye will reach the ears ahead of schedule -- proving the existence of the hole).

CardioX, founded in 2008, has raised about $4 million in outside investments, including two rounds led by Reservoir Venture Partners and Early Stage Partners, respectively. The company has also benefited from angel funding led by Ohio TechAngels and $500,000 through the TechColumbus Regional Commercialization Fund.

"The combination of (state) initiatives, along with the source of capital, have combined to make a very nice climate for CardioX to stay here in this area," Heaton says.

The company has five full-time employees and a network of about half-a dozen outsourced or part-time people, Heaton says. More will come on board as the system goes to market.

Source: Larry Heaton, CardioX
Writer: Gene Monteith

Columbus-based DoMedia was founded in 2007 to help bring some order to the "out-of-home" media marketplace. Since then, it's tripled its employee base and is ready to ride the booming digital media wave.

Out-of-home advertising is anything out of the home on which you can place a branded message, explains DoMedia CEO Andy Mansinne. Bus huts, aerial banners, pizza boxes -- just about anything can be used as an advertising medium.

However, "it's very fragmented and very opaque and there aren't very many ways to get your arms around what's out there, measure its efficacy and then systematically and efficiently secure and purchase those media assets," Mansinne says.

DoMedia provides an online marketplace for finding, planning, buying and selling alternative, traditional and digital out-of-home media. Media providers (like billboard companies) use DoMedia to create detailed online profiles, while advertisers and agencies can use DoMedia's database to plan and build their out-of-home campaigns.

While traditional out-of-home is alive and well, "digital out of home has come screaming to the forefront in the last year," Mansinne says. Think of those big screens you might view while waiting in line at the movies -- "anything that can be delivered from an extended video format or even like Captivate, which is static art in elevators."

Mansinne says 400 agencies are now registered DoMedia users as well as 1,200 media sellers worldwide. The company has benefitted from funding led by Columbus-based NCT Ventures as well as support from the Ohio Third Frontier's Innovation Ohio Loan Fund -- DoMedia received more than $1 million from the fund for 2010, Mansinne says.

DoMedia has 10 employees today compared to three two years ago, and expects continued growth behind new services and the rise of digital out-of-home media.

Source: Andy Mansinne, DoMedia
Writer: Gene Monteith

Imagine an imaging technology that can identify TNT or anthrax beneath a terrorist's clothes. That's exactly the kind of capability the Columbus startup Traycer wants the world to have.

Conceived in an Ohio State University lab, incorporated in 2007 and housed in the TechColumbus incubator, Traycer is already attracting attention for its promising terahertz -- or "T-ray" -- technology.

"Terahertz is just a different wavelength of light," explains Don J. Burdette, director of scientific research. "It falls between infrared and microwave, so there are a lot of applications for infrared technology -- you know, catching the bad guys running from the cops."

But many materials that aren't easily detected using infrared or microwave can be readily identified using T-rays. "So this has a lot of applications for spectroscopy, food quality control, chemical detection under people's clothing, detection of breast cancer -- the applications abound."

That potential has attracted the attention of TechColumbus, which in early 2008 awarded it $500,000 in pre-seed funds. And it's caught the eye of the U.S. Air Force.

"We're in our third contract with the Air Force to prove out the technology," says CEO Brad Beasecker. "And there certainly are numerous applications within the department of defense."

The company is working with a variety of partners -- including IDCAST (Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology) in Dayton, where it has lab space -- and numerous Ohio and out-of-state universities.

Beasecker says the three-person company was expected to close this week on an investment round led by Ohio Techangels. But it's most important next step lies ahead.

"We've got to finish the camera. It's pretty simple."

If all goes as planned, Traycer could be in the marketplace early next year and "generate a new industry based here in Ohio," Beasecker says.

Sources: Brad Beasecker and Don J. Burdette, Traycer
Writer: Gene Monteith