Dayton/West Central Ohio : Innovation + Job News

If you've ever come home from the hardware store with hundreds of little stamp-sized paint color swatches and tried to match them to your couch or carpet then you'll appreciate a new product that Miamisburg-based Color Savvy Systems Limited is introducing next year.

Founded in 1993, Miamisburg-based Color Savvy has been seeing tremendous success with its original product, Color-Helper, that uses digital technology to find a matching color for any item in a room.

It works by taking a picture of the item, and then, using mathematical equations, precisely identifying the color and also colors that closely match it from a data base of more than 18,000 possibilities.

Color-Helper has primarily been sold to the commercial contractor market and has been a sales success around the world, causing Color Savvy's revenues to double each year since 1999, except for 2009 due to the economy, says CEO Gary Bodnar.

With the launch of a new, less expensive version of Color-Helper aimed at the retail market in the first quarter of next year, Bodnar says he expects to see even greater sales growth.

"The consumer market is 100 times bigger than the commercial contractor market," says Bodnar of the potential sales.

The development of the new consumer tool was made possible in large part by a nearly $1-million grant from the Innovation Ohio Loan Fund.

Without that Ohio Third Frontier loan, Bodnar says the research and launch efforts would have been impossible during the slow economy of this year.

As revenues increase after the roll-out next year, Bodnar says he expects to hire a few more employees, but he is still cautious about adding staff too quickly from his current employee base of six.

"If the economy improves then we will be adding a few select positions," he says.

Source: Gary Bodner, Color Savvy
Writer: Val Prevish

In 1956, Elvis Presley released his first hit, Prince Rainier of Monaco married American actress Grace Kelley, and the Federal Highway Act was signed into law promising 41,000 miles of road improvements across the United States.

Under the radar, another milestone occurred: The University of Dayton Research Institute was born.

Starting with just 20 sponsored projects, those seeds have born tasty fruit. Today, the institute has grown to more than 1,000 sponsored projects, 400 employees and more than $96 million in research expenditures this year.

The university now ranks second among all American colleges in the amount of federal and industry-funded materials research it performs. It also ranks first in Ohio and among the top 30 universities for federally sponsored engineering R&D.

All the while, it has managed to do something no other university has done, according to UDRI Director John Leland: remain a not-for-profit arm of the university.

"There have been a lot of university research institutes," he says, "but all have spun off into separate corporate entities. The University of Dayton never spun this off," instead keeping full-time researchers on university staff, which "gives them the ability to give full-time attention to customers."

Projects can run from the simple -- analyzing why a part broke on a piece of machinery -- to complex -- analyzing how a bird brought that plane down in the Hudson River.

Besides its work helping companies develop new materials and scale them up for production, UDRI is also conducts research related to energy and the environment, aeropropulsion, structures, mechanical systems, sensors and how to improve the interface between human beings and complex systems.

When natural disasters strike, response teams are faced with assessing damage so cleanup efforts can be mobilized quickly. Yet, disasters also require mountains of paperwork to map the damage and document response efforts -- often meaning too much time in the office and not enough in the field.

TDC Group, a Dayton software firm, has one answer: a new application that allows government agencies and businesses to file reports from the field -- right from a BlackBerry.

TDC's Freeance Mobile allows users to receive and file real-time data on location, cutting down on travel, says Matthew Reddington, TDC Group's president and CEO.

"They don't have to come into the office at the start of the day, get information (from the data base), drive half-way across the state and come back at the end of the day to file their reports."

That saves valuable time -- an important commodity during disasters.

Reddington says that Freeance Mobile is the first software that allows GIS (geographic information system) applications to be run from a BlackBerry. As such, it's not just the U.S. Weather Service that is using the software, but law enforcement, businesses and utilities that need a real-time picture of their infrastructure, crime sites or distribution of their people.

TCD was formed in 1988. With customers in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, TDC is growing and adding jobs, Reddington says, though he declined to reveal how quickly for proprietary reasons.

Reddington notes that the Dayton Development Coalition has provided funding and consulting services that have allowed the firm to expand into new markets and build infrastructure.

Source: Matthew Reddington, TDC Group
Writer: Gene Monteith

The city of Wilmington and Clinton County have faced some hard knocks following the recent pullout of major employer DHL Worldwide Express, which cost the Southwest Ohio area thousands of good jobs. But creative local officials are looking toward the future with an innovative renewable energy employer incentive program to create new jobs.

Wilmington officials this year created the country's first Green Enterprise Zone in Wilmington and Union Township. Renewable energy businesses that locate in the zone will be given tax and other incentives to locate there.

"Our goal is to have a group of companies here that would be related solely to alternative energy, and we are going after those folks," says Clinton County Administrator Dr. Mark Brooker.

Already, the Green Enterprise Zone has sparked interest. UK-based Gaia Energy is in the design phase of a pilot program that will convert biomass from local farmers into energy that will fuel coal burning power plants, says Brooker. If the pilot proves successful, the company could expand it.

"They will be buying crop residue from the local farmers initially," Brooker says. "They want to start testing this by the fall harvest."

At least two other companies are very interested in locating in the Green Enterprise Zone, including one that has property under contract, says Brooker, adding that more details should be announced on those companies near the end of the year.

Find out more about these efforts at Energize Clinton County.

Source: Mark Brooker
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

The world's largest infrared camera may soon be helping to keep America safe.

That's just one of the latest products sprouting from a collaboration between the University of Dayton's IDCAST and its partners in business, government and academia.

Two-year-old IDCAST � short for the Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology � accelerates the development and commercialization of camera and sensor technologies for private and government entities. In partnership with the UD Research Institute, the Air Force Research Laboratory Sensors Directorate, and other university, government and military entities -- IDCAST has fast become an organization that matters.

Initially made possible by $28-million in state grants, "we've created more than 250 jobs, 36 in academia and 215 in industry," says Larrell Walters, the center's executive director.

That brings us back to the world's largest infrared camera.

L-3 Cincinnati Electronics, a division of L-3 Communications Corp., is developing the camera with the help of a $4.2-million grant made through IDCAST. It's only the latest in sophisticated imaging devices the company has built for the surveillance needs of private and government clients.

Dubbed "Night Stare," the camera boasts a 25 megapixel resolution (that's 25 million pixels), but by panning its target in a four-step pattern can supply an image reaching 100 megapixels, says John Devitt, the company's engineering manager.

What does that mean? The next biggest infrared camera provides just over 300,000 pixels � about the resolution of a traditional TV screen. Devitt "we should make delivery of a prototype this year."

Sources: Larrell Walters, John Divett
Writer: Gene Monteith

Just a few years into its founding, AssureRx, a Mason-based personalized medicine company, has brought on a new president and CEO with more than 30 years of strategic executive experience to grow the company.

James Burns was most recently president and CEO of Maryland-based EntreMed Inc., a public, clinical-stage pharmaceuticals company that develops cancer and inflammatory disease drug treatments.

Burns now is bringing that expertise to AssureRx, founded in 2006, through a joint investment of Queen City Angels, CincyTech, Blue Chip Venture Co., Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Tomorrow Fund, Ohio Tech Angels, DHC Tech and private investors. The company was formed to license and commercialize personalized medicine technology research from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Mayo Clinic.

AssureRx is developing the next generation of medicines, recently bringing to market its first product GeneSightRx, a lab-developed test that will measure and analyze genetic variants in psychiatric medicine -- in other words, how individuals respond to the drugs they get. The test will help doctors determine the appropriate drug and dosage for each patient's individual needs, which could lessen side effects in patients taking them.

"I believe that this technology has the potential to place AssureRx on the forefront of the emerging personalized medicine market. I look forward to leading the company during this exciting period of its development," Burns says.

The test is based on pharmacogenetics, or the study of how a person's genetic makeup influences his or her body's reaction to drug treatments.

Source: Carolyn Pione of CincyTech USA, and AssureRx
Writer: Feoshia Henderson