By Candace Stuart
Small Times Senior Staff Writer
June 1, 2001 — Engineering-management types like Walter Merrill and Keith Ritala may be improbable matchmakers. But these small tech specialists are doing a lot of pairing of partners these days to create profitable unions.
Their goal: to introduce industries in need of small tech solutions to university researchers who excel in MEMS and microsystems. If all goes well, the two sides become collaborators, combining their expertise and resources to forge a new destiny.
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| Source: Washington Technology Center’s 2000 annual report |
Many states have programs to encourage emerging technologies and entrepreneurial efforts. But Ohio and Washington are among the few to put state funds directly into projects earmarked for MEMS and microsystems.
Ohio has committed $4.5 million over five years to fund the Glennan Microsystems Initiative through 2003. Washington invested about $1.5 million in the Washington Technology Center’s (WTC) MEMS Initiative, which was launched in 1995.
“The growth has been phenomenal,” said Ritala, director of the MEMS Initiative and manager of its Microfabrication Laboratory. The initiative led to at least 15 collaborations between university researchers and industries, and helped establish promising start-ups such as Micronics Inc., which makes lab-on-a-chip devices for analyzing blood, cells or chemicals.
The Microfabrication Laboratory, which includes a 15,000-square-foot clean room, has 130 registered users from 17 companies and 31 academic research groups. The MEMS Initiative earned almost $374,000 in lab fees and other revenue in 2000, funds that can be used to support more staff, materials and equipment.
WTC, buoyed by the success of the MEMS Initiative, has launched another four-year project to promote collaboration in the optical field. “The MEMS Initiative clearly has been a real bright spot,” said R. Lee Cheatham, WTC’s executive director.
Merrill, who is the Glennan Initiative’s executive director, said his goal is to get researchers and industry collaborating to produce marketable and useful microsystems, “technologies that would really distinguish us,” he said. Now at its midway point, the initiative has brought together 15 companies, four universities and four nonprofits, as well as two federal organizations that have a presence in Ohio – NASA and the U.S. Air Force.
The program has narrowed its mission to exploit the region’s strengths, focusing on silicon carbide MEMS and microsystems that can be used in harsh environments such as blood or smoke stacks. Case Western Reserve University and the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center, both in Cleveland, have expertise in silicon carbide.
“We’re looking at those areas where we have an advantage,” Merrill said.
The initiative already has created one start-up, FiberLead Inc., which designs fiber bundles for optical uses. But FiberLead’s second project, a novel process for commercially producing micromolded parts on silicon carbide chips, could give the Cleveland-based company and the Glennan Initiative both a major boost. Batch fabrication already exists for a number of devices made of silicon, the most common MEMS material, but not for silicon’s sturdier cousin, silicon carbide.
For Ritala and Merrill, the challenge has been linking up people who can turn good ideas into commercial products that may have an economic impact on the state. “It’s a matchmaking function,” said Ritala, who worked for 20 years in the semiconductor industry before joining WTC as a market manager almost 10 years ago.
Workshops and lecture series organized through the initiatives helped bring people together, too, the directors said.
Other states support fledgling MEMS and microsystems work through a variety of programs. For instance:
* Michigan has several grant programs to promote new technology, including its Life Sciences Corridor initiative. Award recipients include Integrated Sensing Systems Inc., which received $1.9 million this year to start a Bio-MEMS Commercialization Center, and Advanced Sensor Technologies, which makes sensors, actuators and MEMS-based microfluidic systems.
The state plans to give MEMS an even higher profile this September with the creation of a MEMS consortium, according to Michigan Economic Development Corporation spokesperson Jennifer Kopp. “We want to make Michigan a MEMS leader,” she said.
* North Carolina helped launch optical switch maker Cronos Integrated Microsystems through the state-supported Microelectronics Center of North Carolina. The state opened the center in 1980 to attract semiconductor companies to the Research Triangle Park region, and provided funding through 1999. JDS Uniphase Corp. bought Cronos for $750 million in 2000.
State involvement — whether through state-funded programs, investment of state pension funds or simply a strong public policy that favors entrepreneurship – is critical for launching new technologies, according to Perry Wong, an economist at the Milken Institute who specializes in high technology and its role in regional economic development.
Wong sees state funding alone as ineffective. “They need a policy to encourage state institutions to create an atmosphere and culture to deliver what they research to the marketplace,” he said. “They need to encourage a culture that promotes entrepreneurship…. High-tech growth in any region is converting ideas in the lab into products.”
Both the Glennan Initiative and WTC owe their existence to visionaries such as NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin and Case Western Reserve University President Agnar Pytte in Ohio, and entrepreneur John Fluke and University of Washington engineering dean Ray Bowen in Washington.
“Goldin wanted to infuse technology into companies, to take advantage of the technology being built at NASA,” Merrill said. Goldin challenged the state, industry and universities to find a way to work together. When he had sufficient support, he put out a call for proposals. Merrill, then a chief of a NASA division that handled microsystems and other technologies, offered the winning plan.
Washington’s program started with discussions between Fluke and Bowen, who insisted there should be more interaction between business and academic researchers, Cheatham said. They convinced state legislators to underwrite the idea, and launched WTC in 1983 as part the University of Washington.
In order to serve the entire state, WTC became independent of the university in 1991. “We expanded to ensure that all universities and cities had access,” Cheatham said. WTC now has satellite offices with headquarters still on campus. It augments its state funding with grants, gifts and in-kind services.
But public funding has its drawbacks. The sluggish economy is forcing state and federal agencies to trim their budgets. The Glennan Initiative, which gets money from NASA as well as the state, is bracing for federal cuts and possibly less state support, too. The State of Washington has called for belt tightening across the board.
Both Merrill and Ritala expect to get by despite cuts. Merrill, who is on unpaid leave from NASA, has begun to convert his initiative to a nonprofit agency, subsisting on membership and licensing fees instead of state and federal money. “I’d like to see this through, to see it become a self-sustaining organization,” he said.
WTC’s MEMS program has evolved beyond the initiative phase, Cheatham said. It is now considered a developing industry. WTC will continue to support its existing MEMS enterprises and the Microfabrication Laboratory, he said. And the lab is on sound fiscal footing.
“Actually, we’re at the point where we’re matching operating cost and revenue,” Ritala said.
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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Candace Stuart at [email protected] or call 734-994-1106, ext. 233.