Look out, Silicon Valley! One day Lorain County could be the MEMS capitol of the world, thanks to the new
SMART Commercialization Center for Microsystems on the campus of
Lorain County Community College (LCCC).
MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) employ mechanical and electrical properties that can measure or actuate a response that is easily managed by conventional electronics.
The Richard Desich SMART center -- named for the Lorain native, serial entrepreneur and philanthropist -- is a multi-user, shared-source facility for commercializing sensor products, including packaging, reliability testing and inspection of Microsystems and sensors.
Scheduled to open in January of 2013, the center will offer business opportunities and job creation in high-growth industries, as well as training for LCCC students. Worldwide, MEMS constitutes a $100-billion industry. Sensors and the Microsystems incorporating them enable technology in the biomedical, alternative energy, manufacturing, aerospace and defense industries.
The center is the result of economic development initiatives and partnerships, including GLIDE, which was created by the Lorain County Commissioners, Lorain County Chamber and LCCC, and the Innovation Fund. Last fall the college received a $5.5 million
Ohio Third Frontier grant through Cleveland State University’s Wright Center for Sensor Systems Engineering.
“The college [LCCC] created something called GLIDE, the
Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise, which is a suite of services for small businesses and startups . . . In the high-tech sector you often get people with great ideas who lack the business savvy to wrap the correct structure around those ideas,” says Daniel Ereditario; operations coordinator for the SMART Center.
The three-story, 46,000-square-foot facility will offer class 100, class 1,000 and class 10,000 clean rooms, general lab space and customer incubation areas. It will be connected to LCCC’s Entrepreneurship Innovation Center.
So far, fifteen companies have plans to utilize the center.
Source: Daniel Ereditario; Operations Coordinator
Writer: Patrick G. Mahoney