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