Cleveland/Northeast Ohio : Innovation + Job News

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

The algae may not be greener on the other side. Executives at Algisys LLC are looking at sites in Ohio for the Cleveland biotech startup's first manufacturing plant.

No timeline or other details about the site selection process have been disclosed.

Algisys specializes in cost-effective growth and harvesting of algae for the production of nutritional oils and high protein biomass. These " algal omega-3 oils" and high protein additives are used for the multi-billion-dollar supplement, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, pet food, and animal feed markets.

Current industry practice is to obtain the nutritional oils from fish, which eat algae.

Algisys has an exclusive global license on the intellectual property and technology created at Virginia Tech by Dr. Zhiyou Wen, its chief science officer, over a 12-year period.

Things are moving fast for the company incorporated in July, 2009.

"We have letters of intent from prospective customers, we are looking at manufacturing facilities in Ohio, we have secured new funding, and we will be one of the presenters at the Ohio Early Stage Summit VI put on by the Ohio Capital Fund," said Matthew M. Minark, vice president of business development.

Algisys has received funding from BioEnterprise in Cleveland, the Center for Innovative Food Technology in Toledo, and Tower Wealth Management in Shaker Heights.

Plus, this summer, Algisys got funding from the Cuyahoga County New Product Development and Entrepreneurship Loan Fund; this spring it was awarded a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research Phase I grant.

Sources: Matthew M. Minarik and Charles L. Roe, Algisys LLC
Writer: Gabriella Jacobs

A $5-million federal grant is aimed at revving up the skills of Ohio's displaced auto and other workers, training them for jobs in the growing bioscience world.

The grant was awarded to BioOhio, a nonprofit, Columbus-based bioscience accelerator, for its Ohio Bioscience Industry Workforce Preparedness Project. BioOhio doled grants to Cincinnati State Technical and Community College,  Columbus State Community College,  Cuyahoga Community College, Lakeland Community College,  Owens Community College and Sinclair Community College.

The initiative will take place over three years, and more than $2.8 million of grant has been set aside for tuition reimbursement and trainee scholarships

The dollars will be used to create new programs or build on new ones at the colleges, which are partnering with employers and labor, workforce development and non-profit organizations to develop programs to retrain and identify workers in Ohio's auto and other declining industries.

The program is focused not just on education and training but moving people into jobs through the public and private partnerships says Dr. Bill Tacon, Senior Director, Workforce & Education at BioOhio.

"We will help them find a job. We're not simply training and just letting them go. Each has an industry advisory board, and when we got the grant the industry advisory board signed a letter of commitment saying they are looking at new potential hires," Tacon says.

The program has a goal of retraining 660 displaced or underemployed workers in declining industries

Northeast Ohio is leading the charge, because the region's colleges have several programs in place that likely will spread to other campuses, Tacon says. For example, Cuyahoga Community College and partners have a medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturing program that could be implemented across the state.

Source: Bill Tacon, BioOhio
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

Founded in 1995, Dovetail Solar and Wind began modestly, installing solar systems for rural-Ohio residents seeking to go off-the-grid. Solar panels were incredibly expensive � but still a substantial savings for many who could not afford to have a utility company run power to their homes.

A little federal and state legislation changed everything. For the better.

"Prior to 2006, it was almost all residential," says Dovetail vice president Alan Frasz. "The (Energy Policy Act of 2005) offered a 30 percent tax credit. Businesses took notice."

Then, a second tremendous boost for the company, Frasz says, came from the renewable portfolio standard bill that Ohio approved in 2008, requiring 25 percent of the state's energy to be generated from alternative and renewable sources.

"We doubled our business," he adds. "We've been growing quite a bit in the last in few years."

A member of the University of Toledo Clean and Alternative Energy Incubator, Dovetail now provides energy systems for solar electric, solar thermal and wind � and has installed 175 systems such across Ohio and its neighboring states.

"We expect to finish the year between six and seven millions dollars in sales," Frasz says. "In a worldwide economy, the beauty of renewable energy is that the wind and sun are free. They don't put out any pollution � and renewable energy creates clean, green jobs in Ohio, as opposed to other places."

There are now offices in all corners of Ohio: Athens, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati. In 2006, there were just a handful of people employed with the company. There are now 32 full time employees, but Frasz says that number could hit 50 by the end of 2011.

"Rather than having this money going out of the state and burning in a smoke-stack, let's take some of that and put it into renewable energy," Frasz says.

Source: Alan Frasz, Dovetail Solar
Writer: Colin McEwen

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

The events of September 11, 2001 spawned an Akron-based business that protects clients from disaster by warning large groups of people within minutes of a threat.

"Post-911, I saw the need for a robust form of emergency communication for the masses," says Scott Dettling, company president.

Established 2003 in Washington, D.C. and later moved to Ohio, Dettling's home state, Inspiron Logistics' original focus was telecom consulting. The system was designed for emergency notification of federal agencies and contractors.

Today, universities, fire and police departments, municipalities, and others rely on WENS (Wireless Emergency Notification System) from Inspiron Logistics to get critical information to those who need to know as quickly as possible

"From day one, our system had to be turnkey; it had to be simple to use. At the height of an emergency, complexity has no place. Alerts can be issued in two steps. Other systems may have four pages of options, and if you check the wrong box, the alert is never going out," Dettling explains.

Unlike 9-1-1, which is intended for individuals to report a problem to emergency services, WENS is a hosted Web site.

"We are an inversion of (9-1-1), designed for use by emergency services or a county emergency management director who needs to alert hundreds of thousands or even millions of people very quickly," Dettling says. Within minutes, WENS can notify huge numbers of people through voice calls, sirens, digital signage, or text messages, he says.

Inspiron's client base has consistently grown by 100 percent annually, says Dettling, while the company's renewal rate is an exceptional 96 percent. The company has 15 employees, including contractors, and plans to expand to more than 80 employees within the next two to three years.

Source: Scott Dettling, Inspiron Logistics
Writer: Patrick Mahoney

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 NASA Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook Station in Sandusky already is a big deal when it comes to testing satellite components before launch. It could become an even bigger deal if the federal government agrees to provide $60 million in stimulus money to fund roads and a 9,000-foot runway there.

The new landing strip is proposed as a way to give satellite and aerospace companies better access to Plum Brook's space chamber, a 100-foot wide, 122-foot high facility that mimics the vacuum and cold temperatures of space. But proponents say the runway would have lasting economic benefits for the entire northeast Ohio region by enticing aerospace companies to set down roots there.

For every NASA job created by the runway, an estimated five non-NASA jobs would be created -- nearly 2,000 in all, according to an economic impact study conducted last year by Bowling Green State University's Center for Regional Development. And that doesn't count almost 800 temporary construction jobs.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is now considering Ohio's application for $60 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery money. Submitted by the Ohio Department of Transportation at the request of the Erie County Board of Commissioners, that total represents $31 million for the runway and $29 million for road improvements, says David Stringer, Plum Brook's director.

The runway is needed, Stringer says, to allow soft, slow landings of sensitive instruments aboard large aircraft.

"If you don't 'gentle' satellites in and out, they can break," Stringer says.

Currently, instruments destined for Plum Brook have come via airports in Mansfield and Cleveland. But those instruments have been of a more rugged variety, Stringer says -- for example, the air bags that bounced across the Mars landscape before releasing rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

A new runway would allow fragile components like optics to be tested in Ohio prior to launch -- a vital concern for sensitive systems like the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source: David Stringer, NASA, and Bowling Green State University
Writer: Gene Monteith

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

Wendell Turner is no newcomer to the food service business, starting in 1981 in supplies and equipment and, later, as a packager and distributor of foods. In 1990, he discovered a gap in the ethnic foods arena and founded Heritage Fare, a successful, Atlanta-based packager and distributor of down-home Southern cooking.

Despite his previous successes, Turner was always looking for more volume.

"That's what led us to the Garrett Morgan program through NASA," he says. And that's how Cleveland-based HF Food Technologies was born.

The NASA program, which helps small businesses identify new technologies for commercialization, alerted him to a US Department of Agriculture-developed product that replaces existing fats with a substitute called Fantesk -- a mixture of starch, water, and one or more oily substances.

The value? The substitute can replace unhealthy fats in meats, pastries and other foods while preserving flavor, mouthfeel and reducing fat for consumers.

Now licensed by Turner's HF Food Technologies under the name Nutrigras, the substitute has made its way into the marketplace. Assisted with an initial $250,000 investment from JumpStart, HF Food Technologies is working "primarily with beef, pork and more recently bakery products," Turner says.

"If you could take a ground sirloin steak, you could take 15 percent of the meat block out and replace it with 15 percent of the Nutrigras," Turner explains. "And in bakery products, we've shown reductions of up to 80 percent in butterfat."

Turner, who is CEO of both HF Food Technologies and Heritage Fare, says the product is being sold through distributors and "we have a number of restaurants that are using the product. And we just received one of the most important certifications for us -- the Ohio Department of Agriculture."

HF Food Technologies is located in mid-town Cleveland, was formed in 2005 and currently has five employees.

Source: Wendell Turner, HF Food Technologies
Writer: Gene Monteith

Get the winter blues? Have trouble waking up in the morning or falling asleep at night?

You may not be getting enough blue light -- or, you may be getting too much. Lowbluelights.com, a company formed five years ago as a spinoff from research conducted at John Carroll University, says it has products for all of those situations.

Richard L. Hansler, co-owner of Lowbluelights.com and director of the Lighting Innovations Institute at John Carroll, says the power of blue light came to, um, light in 2001 when scientists discovered that the blue part of the spectrum can affect the production of melatonin -- a hormone that helps you sleep.

Hansler, a retired veteran of the lighting industry, says the company was formed after he was approached to develop an LED light to treat seasonal affective disorder, or SAD -- a sometimes debilitating bout of winter depression. There is some medical evidence that exposure to blue light can help lessen the problem, he explains.

Likewise, blue light can suppress melatonin, causing a person exposed to the light in the evening to have trouble falling asleep -- just as it can help erase grogginess in the morning, he says. There is circumstancial evidence that melatonin suppresses some forms of cancer, Hansler says. To those ends, the company sells a host of products to either boost more blue light or filter it out.

Lowbluelights.com's most recent product, a filter placed over the screen of the iPad, was launched after some users complained of insomnia after using the iPad, Hansler says. The company's most popular products, however, are glasses worn before bedtime to filter out blue light, allowing the natural production of melatonin.

The company has three employees and is headquartered in University Heights.

Source: Richard Hansler, Lowbluelights.com
Writer: Gene Monteith

Take a quick look around you. Chances are good that something you'll see has a part in it made by Ferro in Cleveland. That's because Ferro is almost everywhere. In fact, the computer on which you're reading this issue of hiVelocity probably contains some Ferro parts. Ferro parts are also in your cell phone and in your car.

Ferro was established in 1919 to produce porcelain enamel frit. Today, Ferro is a leading global supplier of advanced materials for a broad range of manufacturers. What Ferro makes today enhances the performance of products in the electronics, major appliances, building and renovation, pharmaceuticals and industrial markets.

Ferro manufacturers and markets electronic materials in the form of high-purity powders, pastes, and tapes for many electronic applications. It also supplies innovative glass colors and coatings, which add value to automotive, flat and container glass in the global market.

Ferro's Pfanstaiehl Laboratories produce high purity chemistry for health and beauty products. Polymer additives by Ferro improve the characteristics of plastics. Ferro is one of the world's largest suppliers of porcelain enamel, which protects cookware, small and large appliances, and building panels.

Ferro also makes liquid colors, dispersions, gelcoats and CordoBond plastic colorants for filled and reinforced plastics. Finally, Ferro is the world's leading supplier of ceramic glaze coating and a major supplier of ceramic color.

The company has grown to 5,200 employees around the world.

Source: Ferro
Writer: Lynne Meyer

The Cleveland HeartLab is taking its life-saving technology to heart. A real heart, that is.

The company � affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic � has developed a profile of tests focused on managing and reducing inflammation, a root cause of heart disease.

Using an enzyme immunoassay (a biochemical technique used to detect the presence of an antibody in a sample), CHL uses its CardioMPO technology to test for myeloperoxidase in human plasma.

The product received its FDA approval in May of 2005 for use on the market. Cleveland HeartLab purchased that technology in Nov. 2009 from Cleveland-based PrognostiX.

Cleveland HeartLab, located on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic, bills itself as a specialty clinical laboratory and disease management company focused on novel molecular biomarker technologies and the creation of proprietary diagnostic tests.
But the company doesn't stop there. CHL also runs a research and development laboratory where next-generation cardiovascular disease biomarkers are being developed for use in the clinical community.

CHL has a significant pipeline of tests protected by exclusive intellectual property and target large, under-addressed markets. In addition, an agreement with the Cleveland Clinic provides the company access to intellectual property developed at the Clinic in the areas of cardiovascular and inflammatory biomarkers.

The company is keeping itself busy. In August 2010, the HeartLab hosted the summer symposium "Where Inflammation Meets Lipids," with doctors attending from all over the world.

"Things are going great," says CHL spokeswoman Rachele Rhea. "We are super swamped right now."
 
Source: Rachele Rhea, Cleveland HeartLab 
Writer: Colin McEwen

You don't have to be a meteorologist to know which way the wind turbine business is blowing.  You just have to know that better models are on the way, thanks to companies like ADI Wind in Sheffield Village.

Basically, the parts of a wind turbine gearbox have to be lightweight and long-lasting. About two years ago, while developing automation equipment for a major wind turbine manufacturer, leaders of Advanced Design Industries Inc. realized they had a way to overcome some problems known in the industry.

Support from a Lorain County Community College Innovation Grant and the Defense Metals Technology Center helped the company design and build a 125 kW prototype gearbox as well as a test bed. ADI Wind now is an offshoot of Advanced Design specializing in the new unit.

"Many gearless wind turbines weigh even more than their geared counterpart. Our gearbox is six times or more lighter than conventional units. This is accomplished by the unique gearing and reaction configuration which allows us to reach high gear ratios with significantly fewer parts and a much smaller size. With room to spare on the weight side, we can 'beef-up' our components and increase the safety factor," according to Kurt Lauer, ADI vice president.

ADI Wind is also developing an integrated generator, which will be placed directly with the same gearbox housing. The company foresees a mobile wind turbine � one that can be transported by semi or helicopter anywhere in the world, erected and producing 100 kW in hours.

"�We see these mobile units going up at schools, shopping malls, county fairs, on farms and everywhere that people want to make electricity," Lauer says.

ADI Wind is finalizing designs and working on a demonstration model to show potential investors.

Source: Kurt Lauer, ADI Wind
Writer: Gabriella Jacobs

A nonprofit corporation leading efforts to establish a 20-MW offshore wind project in Lake Erie says the new wind farm could result in 600 new jobs by 2012.

But that's just a short-term scenario. Expanding the wind farm to 1,500 MW of wind energy would create or maintain 3,000 jobs in Ohio -- and increasing it to 5,000 MW would generate as many as 8,000 new jobs.

The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo) released the numbers Aug. 5 as part of an economic impact study commissioned by NorTech, a nonprofit technology-based economic development organization.

The study examined the economic effects of two scenarios for deploying wind turbines in Lake Erie. Both scenarios assume an initial offshore installation of 20 MW by 2012 and are based on the estimated costs for installation, operations and maintenance of hypothetical 5-MW turbines as well as estimated costs of specialized vessels necessary to install them.

Besides the creation of jobs, the study projected that:

-- Expenditures through 2014 for deployment and operation of the 20-MW project would total $63.4 million. Sales are estimated at $81.6 million, with $34.2 million in wages and $47.7 million in public revenues.

-- Installing 5,000 MW of offshore wind energy would generate $7.8 billion in wages and salaries, $22.6 billion in sales, and $586.5 million in public revenues by 2030.

-- Deploying 1,500 MW of wind energy would generate $2.2 billion in wages, $6.5 billion in sales, and $171.5 million in public revenue (state and local) by 2030.

LEEDCO is part of a four-year effort to explore the potential for offshore wind energy on Lake Erie. NorTech created LEEDCo late last year in partnership with the Great Lakes Energy Task Force and the Cleveland Foundation.

Source: LEEDCo.
Writer: Gene Monteith