Mapped: Tucson Tech 2013

It’s turning out to be a record year for Tucson-based SynCardia Systems, which has reached a milestone for implants of its temporary artificial heart.

Today, SynCardia expects the 125th implant of its Total Artificial Heart, which is used to keep heart-transplant patients alive until they receive donor hearts.

The number of implants so far this year equals all implants performed worldwide in 2012, SynCardia said. And for all of 2013, SynCardia projects a single-year record of 180 Total Artificial Heart implants, more than double the number in 2011.

The increase in implants is being driven by increased use of portable heart drivers — pneumatic power sources — and by expanded availability of the artificial heart, the company said.

SynCardia’s Total Artificial Heart replaces the two blood-pumping ventricles and four heart valves, to treat heart failure affecting both sides of the heart (biventricular failure) until a donor heart becomes available.

SynCardia said its implant capacity has grown 300 percent due to its Companion 2 portable driver, which is about the size of a carry-on suitcase and is used after an implant to provide patient mobility around the hospital.

The company is still awaiting final U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of its smaller Freedom portable driver, which can be worn in a small backpack to allow patients to leave the hospital. In use under an investigational drug exemption, the Freedom portable driver has supported more than 145 patients for the equivalent of more than 75 years, the company says.

The privately held company also is working on a smaller version of the artificial heart for smaller adults and adolescent children, and to allow people who aren’t candidates for transplants to use the heart for ongoing, end-of-life support.

SynCardia’s Total Artificial Heart is now available at 87 certified implant centers worldwide, with an additional 33 heart centers pursuing certification, the company said.

The artificial heart allows stable patients to be discharged from the hospital to wait for a matching donor heart at home, providing robust blood circulation that helps prepare patients for transplant, the company says.

“They are sleeping in their own beds, exercising, eating out and socializing, and some even return to work. They are getting their bodies in better shape for living life and their transplant,” SynCardia CEO and President Michael Garippa said in announcing the implants milestone.

PLUG-IN DAY

In other local technology news, Tucson electric-vehicle enthusiasts will gather this weekend for Tucson Plugs In, part of the National Plug In Day series of events.

The free event is set for 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at Bookmans Sports Exchange, 3330 E. Speedway, where the city’s first so-called Level 3 “fast charger” was recently installed.

Tucson Plug In is presented by the Tucson Electric Vehicle Association, with sponsorship by Plug In America, the Electric Auto Association and the Sierra Club.

The event will feature plug-ins owned by local EVers and displayed by local auto dealers, along with a variety of exhibits on sustainable technologies. Among the cars on display, organizers expect one of BMW’s new i3 plug-ins to be on hand.

For more information, see the event website at tucsonplugsin.blogspot.com.

The treasurer of the nonprofit Xerocraft Hackerspace, Jeremy Briddle, was excited about the group’s planned move into the old Steinfeld Warehouse downtown from its cramped space in South Tucson.

Until he saw the place.

The space at 101 W. Sixth St. had been unused for several years, and thieves had stripped out all of the wiring for its copper, Briddle recalled.

About six months and untold gallons of sweat later, new wiring and lighting has been installed; interior spaces have been outfitted with benches and storage space; a restroom was redone, and much of the group’s machinery has been installed — just in time for a grand-opening event this weekend.

“I was dreading all the work that needed to be done. … Now, I feel a lot better about it,” said Briddle, who was installing slat board for tool storage during a recent evening work session.

Like other places known as hackerspaces or makerspaces, the nonprofit Xerocraft provides the space, equipment, training and collaborative support to so-called “hackers” or “makers” — terms for people who adapt existing technologies to new uses — or those who want to gain new skills, learn about new technologies or perhaps perfect an invention.

“I just like to build things — I was considering becoming an architect or an engineer,” said Briddle, 31, who works as a sound engineer for a local TV station.

Xerocraft is part of the recently formed Downtown Innovation District, which also includes Maker House, an artisan-focused cooperative makerspace just across the block from Xerocraft, along with the Gangplank Tucson, the Toole Avenue Hive and soon-to-open Connect co-workspaces.

Xerocraft recently achieved 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and raised more than $6,000 from a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, which will be used to buy supplies and equipment.

Xerocraft has an array of mostly donated wood- and metalworking tools, along with equipment like a laser etcher, 3-D printers and metal-casting crucibles. The group will soon install a laser cutter and is looking to buy a special table saw that stops instantaneously when the blade comes in contact with flesh.

The group holds regular classes on subjects ranging from welding to computer coding for 3-D printing, and it now has plenty of room.

The main space is 3,300 square feet, with about 1,000 square feet of loft space for storage and other uses, Xerocraft secretary Dale Tersey said.

The good news is, Xerocraft has found a home. The bad news is, it won’t last forever.

Xerocraft is renting its space under a two-year lease from the Warehouse Arts Management Organization, which bought the property from the city for $1 in 2010 with a $250,000 payment due by 2014. The city had acquired the warehouse and other properties for a proposed extension of the Barraza-Aviation Parkway that was later dropped. The city spent nearly $1 million in grant funds to stabilize the building.

WAMO’s plan is to turn the property into a work and gallery space for artists and arts organizations as part of the Warehouse Arts District — at which point Xerocraft will need to find a new home, Tersey said.

“We’ll be going gangbusters by then, so we hope that at that point we can find more of a permanent home,” he said.

More to come

While Xerocraft is settling in, Maker House is planning an open-house art show Saturday, Sept. 14, at its new digs in the historic Bates Mansion, a stone’s throw from Xerocraft at 283 N. Stone Ave.

The for-profit venture, which also houses the artisan e-commerce website Artfire.com, recently raised nearly $54,000 in a crowdfunding campaign. For more information, see makerhouse.org.

Meanwhile, Connect Coworking (connectcoworking.com), a co-working space under development in the historic Rialto Block, recently opened a temporary office space called Connect Beta at 245 E. Congress St., Suite 171.

Connect Coworking is scheduled to open in December at 33 S. Fifth Ave.

The University of Arizona Science and Technology Park is home to several massive solar-energy projects as part of its Solar Zone demonstration project.

But one recent addition there isn’t part of the Solar Zone — it’s a small test array tucked away behind IBM Corp.’s building in the tech park.

IBM’s research arm recently announced that it has developed new technology for so-called concentrating photovoltaics, with test systems installed recently at IBM sites in Tucson and in Boulder, Colo.

IBM’s research chops in computing are well-known, but solar?

It’s not such a big leap for Big Blue, says Tim Dalton, manager of IBM’s Nano-Science and Technology Partnership Program, noting that the company has long designed and built its own computer chips and systems.

“The technology to do photovoltaics, be it PV chips or systems, is not that much different,” said Dalton, an IBM “master inventor” based in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Concentrating photovoltaics involve the use of lenses or mirrors to gather sunlight and concentrate it on PV cells. The idea is to focus the concentrated sunlight on super-high-efficiency cells, to achieve maximum power output with minimal PV material.

It’s not an entirely new idea; in fact, the UA Tech Park’s Solar Zone includes a big example in a large concentrating PV array made by California-based Amonix, which pioneered the technology more than 20 years ago but last year shut down a new plant amid a financial restructuring.

The UA Tech park also is the site of a concentrating PV demonstration array invented by UA astronomy professor Roger Angel that uses mirrors to focus sunlight on a ball-shaped lens surrounded by high-efficiency PV cells.

Using mainly off-the-shelf components — including so-called multijunction PV cells and Fresnel lenses — IBM says the concentrating PV system it has developed can convert sunlight to DC electricity at a rate of 30 percent, compared with about 20 percent for typical silicon PV cells.

(While some PV cell makers, including Boeing’s Spectrolab, have cited conversion efficiencies of more than 40 percent at the cell level, claimed system-level efficiencies peak at about 30 percent.)

IBM’s PV research grew out of a wide-ranging technology brainstorming event called Innovation Jam in 2006. During the three-day, global event, participants asked what IBM could do to boost renewable energy, Dalton said.

Focusing on concentrating PV, IBM built and refined systems using multifunction cells from Spectrolab and others, Fresnel lenses and a lightweight dual-axis tracking system to keep the cells pointed toward the sun.

IBM researchers then tackled one of the biggest problems with concentrating PV — excessive heat that can degrade system efficiency.

With initial prototype systems installed in New York and in Saudi Arabia, IBM developed a proprietary passive-cooling system based on its work to keep supercomputer components from overheating, Dalton said.

While some concentrating PV designs feature cooling fans or even liquid radiator systems for cooling, Dalton said IBM’s solution involves the finned assemblies commonly used as heat sinks in computers and other electronics.

“It’s a simple fin assembly, but it’s not just the fins: You have to think about the entire packaging,” he said.

Together with cells made for relatively high heat tolerance, the system can keep delivering power efficiently at temperatures up to about 90 to 100 degrees Celsius (194 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit), Dalton said.

The grid-tied test rigs were installed in Tucson in April and in Boulder in March to test their efficiency in temperature extremes, and they’re being monitored to gather test data.

While Dalton’s excited about the technology, he notes IBM doesn’t plan on opening a PV plant anytime soon. IBM — the perennial world leader in patenting — has about 25 patent applications for concentrating PV inventions pending, he said, and plans to make the technology available for licensing.

Dalton said the IBM design wouldn’t be appropriate for every application but could find a niche where compact, high-energy solar arrays are needed.

It’s also a tough market in general for advanced solar technologies — just ask Amonix. A flood of cheap silicon-based solar panels from China has led to U.S. tariffs on Chinese products, but many companies pushing thin-film semiconductor alternatives are still struggling.

In its current state of development, the IBM system’s main competitive advantage is in places like Tucson and Boulder, which have mostly sunny skies and high solar radiation, or insolation.

But IBM is working to optimize the system for cloudier climes, Dalton said.

Looking to international markets, Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems is teaming up with a British company to develop a naval missile system for smaller ships.

Raytheon has signed an agreement to adapt some of its smaller missiles to a multipurpose naval launcher developed by Chemring Group. The companies are spending their own money on development and plan a proof-of-concept, live-fire demonstration in October.

Chemring, a longtime supplier of systems that deploy defensive countermeasures like metallic chaff and flares, has designed its Centurion launcher to fire munitions as well.

Its relatively compact size would allow the Centurion to be mounted aboard military vessels as small as patrol boats - opening up a big market among foreign navies that lack big platforms like cruisers and aircraft carriers.

"We were looking for opportunities to grow in the small-ship market, and Chemring had the Centurion launcher, which would be a perfect fit for some of those," said Ed Thomas, senior manager of business development for Raytheon's Naval and Area Mission Defense product line.

Raytheon already makes weapons such as the Standard Missile-6, the Evolved SeaSparrow and the Rolling Airframe Missile for defense of larger ships.

Thomas said Raytheon officials met up with Chemring at a trade show about two years ago.

Initially the companies are focusing on adapting Raytheon's Griffin small guided missile and its wireless TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wireless-guided) guided missile to the Centurion, he said.

The missiles could be mounted together in the 12-tube, carousel-like Centurion, or they could be mixed with other "effectors," including countermeasures such as radar-garbling metallic chaff or flare-like projectiles that fool heat-seeking missiles.

Developed by Raytheon as a speculative program and initially used as a special-operations weapon, the 43-inch-long Griffin is in production and deployed on the Marine Corps' C-130 Harvest Hawk gunship.

About 5.5 inches in diameter, the laser- and GPS-guided Griffin has a reported surface-launched range of 3 1/2 miles. The TOW is about six inches in diameter, with a range of about 2 1/2 miles.

"The brilliant part of this is the diameter of the cells or tubes for this launcher match almost identically to the diameter of our current effectors, within reason," said Thomas, who has been with Raytheon and predecessor Hughes Aircraft for 29 years.

Raytheon should have no trouble adapting the launcher to existing ship fire-control systems, Thomas said, noting that the company's engineers are very familiar with systems used by allied nations.

Any sales of the systems would have to be approved by the State Department, which regulates foreign weapons sales.

Cost figures were not available, but Thomas noted that the size of the vessels for which the Centurion is designed limits what navies are willing to spend to outfit them.

Steve Kerchey, senior business manager for naval products at Chemring Countermeasures, said the Centurion saves both space and money by combining countermeasures with defensive weapons on a common launcher.

"Instead of needing a launcher for each one of those solutions, you have a single launcher, so you're cutting your costs right there," Kerchey said in an interview from England.

The Centurion system is intended to for use against enemies attacking at relatively close quarters, such as swarming boats, Thomas said.

The Navy sees swarms of small boats as a major threat to multibillion-dollar aircraft carriers and other major warships. In 2000, a suicide bomber in a small boat punched a hole in the destroyer USS Cole while it was docked at Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors.

There haven't been any coordinated swarming-boat attacks against U.S. ships, but the tactic is still being used by pirates off Somalia, Thomas said.

Nations in the Middle East and Asia are expected to be interested in the defensive system, he added.

"We have many interested navies, but we don't have a contract as such," Kerchey said, declining to name specific nations.

The test in October will take place on the Salisbury Plain, near Chemring's headquarters in southeast England.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@astarnet.com or 573-4181.

Tucson-based audio Internet company AudioEye Inc. has gone public on the over-the-counter stock market and is looking to grow, a year after spinning off from another company.

Founded in 2003 and located at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park, AudioEye has developed patented Internet software that converts any media into audio for instant delivery to users on any Net-connected device.

In a letter to shareholders last week, AudioEye CEO Nathaniel Bradley formally announced that AudioEye had became an independent, publicly traded company. AudioEye spun off from its parent, CMG Holdings Group, last August, about two years after CMG acquired the Tucson company.

AudioEye now trades on the OTCQB, an over-the-counter stock market, under the ticker symbol "AEYE."

Bradley was formerly chief technology officer for New York-based Augme Technologies, a provider of mobile-marketing and advertising technology that divested its Tucson operations at the UA tech park in March. Bradley's brother, University of Arizona alumnus Sean Bradley, is AudioEye's chief technology officer.

Bradley said AudioEye figures to benefit from a 2010 law that requires Internet sites to be accessible to people with disabilities - a sort of cyber-American With Disabilities Act.

Compliance with that law, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, became mandatory for government agencies and contractors in October 2012, Bradley said.

And companies including Target Corp. and, more recently, H&R Block have been hit by lawsuits by the National Federation of the Blind for failing to make their websites accessible to the visually impaired, he noted.

In June, AudioEye announced that it had signed a partnership agreement with Maryland-based Affinity Networks to use the local company's audio Web-browsing software for its extensive clientele of government websites.

AudioEye's technology, which uses voice-recognition features to allow users to navigate the Internet, was developed partly with the help of the University of Arizona's nationally ranked Management Information Systems Department.

In April, AudioEye's audio-browsing technology was awarded a Gold Edison Award in the social-impact category.

The UA's MIS department has added the company's audio-browsing feature to its website, mis.eller.arizona.edu

For more information, go to www.audioeye.com

ASCENT TO ADD A320

In other recent local tech news, Ascent Aviation is awaiting final approval to perform maintenance on Airbus A320 jetliners, adding to the array of narrow-body jets the company can work on.

Ascent President Michael Melvin said the company anticipates winning A320 maintenance certification from the Federal Aviation Administration sometime this fall.

The FAA-approved repair station at Tucson International Airport now specializes in maintenance of Boeing 737 and 717, McDonnell Douglas MD80/90, and Bombardier CRJ 100/200 series aircraft.

Ascent already has experience in teardowns of A320s, work that doesn't require specific FAA certification, Melvin noted.

The new certification is seen as a key to growth in business from Latin America, where A320s are prevalent, the company said.

Startup weekend set

Startup Weekend Tucson is set for Sept. 20-22 at Gangplank Tucson, 100 N. Stone Ave. Suite 110.

Startup Weekend is a weekend-long, hands-on experience where entrepreneurs collaborate to find out if their ideas for startup businesses are viable and polish pitches to potential investors.

Startup Weekends are part of a movement organized nationally in 2007.

The Tucson event is organized by Startup Tucson, which plans to start holding the weekend events twice a year.

Even though the main Tucson event is nearly two months away, a series of pre-events starts Aug. 1 with the introductory "What is Startup Weekend?"

For more information or to register, go to startuptucson.com

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Everyone's heard of AM and FM. Are you ready for TM?

A Tucson-based company is working to commercialize a new communications technology - called Transpositional Modulation - that promises to multiply data-transmission rates for things like satellite and cellphone communications.

TM Technologies Inc., a spinoff of Tucson-based Medusa Scientific, said it has successfully demonstrated its "breakthrough" modulation technology after three years of intensive research and engineering.

The company says its technology can at least double data throughput by simply adding a signal in the same frequency band or by adapting it to existing communications technologies.

Medusa Scientific Chairman Dan Hodges said the technology could catch on quickly, as satellite and cell-phone carriers seek to slake their insatiable thirst for bandwidth.

"The idea behind it is, they're limited in bandwidth," Hodges said. "We saw that coming, so we said 'how can you make this work where you can pack more data right up to the theoretical limit?' "

While enabling high-bandwidth technologies like streamed high-definition TV, boosting data throughput can also save money, Hodges said, noting that renting a single satellite data transponder can cost upward of $150,000 a month.

While TM technology is new, it comes with a pedigree.

The inventor, Medusa chief scientist Rick Gerdes, initially developed the concept in the 1980s, when he came up with the idea as a standard for digital television. That technology - which was tested at KMSB-TV Channel 11 in Tucson - showed promise, but the company withdrew its proposal when it became apparent the Federal Communications Commission favored other industry technologies, Gerdes said.

The idea was later incorporated into a software-based system that used part of the TV broadcast signal to rapidly download selected Web data to a computer via a TV tuner card.

Gerdes, who joined Medusa about three years ago, said the old DTV technology formed the foundation for the new TM technology, which is far more sophisticated.

He said the patents-pending TM system works by allowing two "carrier" signals to be carried on the same frequency, using time information to separate out the data.

In contrast, AM (amplitude modulation) carries information such as music audio by varying the amplitude, or strength, of a transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent. With FM (frequency modulation), the frequency of the carrier signal is varied.

Other researchers continue efforts to pack more information into the same bandwidth, using advanced data-compression schemes, for example.

"This is a whole new concept," Gerdes said. "Even an engineer at FCC headquarters said that it was the first new form of modulation since FM," said Gerdes, who started his electrical engineering career building his own ham-radio equipment at age 13.

While you won't see "TM radios" anytime soon - the initial system works at the network level - the technology can greatly augment current communications systems.

TM is separately more efficient than either AM or FM, and it's "mutually transparent" to AM or FM so it can be added or overlaid without disrupting accompanying signals, Gerdes said.

At the least, the technology allows at least double the throughput, but in some cases four or five times more, and in some extreme cases 30 times more data, he said.

Medusa is talking with several major telecom companies about TM technology, Hodges said, though he declined to identify them.

However, the company expects to complete a prototype satellite modem for testing by a prospective customer in August. A major wireless phone carrier is planning to test the TM system in the third week of August, as it looks to overhaul its wired back-haul networks, Hodges said.

And Medusa's scientists are completing, for demonstration in early September, a capability to stream ultra-high-definition video for 4KTV via a single-signal transmission. Also known as 4K UHD, 4KTV boasts four times the resolution by pixel count as today's top-end high-definition TV.

Ultimately, Hodges said, the company's business model is to license the TM technology for free to device makers like set-top box manufacturers, and reap fees based on subscribers.

Though the 13-employee company is building its own circuit-board prototypes incorporating some 700 separate components, the TM technology will eventually be put on microchips for integration in devices, Hodges said. The company intends to stay focused on research and development rather than manufacturing.

TM Technologies represents an about-face for Medusa, a seven-year-old company that up to now has mainly worked on intelligence analytics projects for military and government agencies.

The company plans to sell its fleet of seven jet aircraft and a dozen helicopters to finance its new R&D programs, said Hodges, a former military pilot who still serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Arizona Air National Guard.

Other areas of research at Medusa, Hodges said, include development of ultra-sensitive electrical field sensors and hyperspectral imaging, which spans the infrared and ultraviolet frequencies.

At the center of those research efforts is Gerdes, who at 74 isn't thinking about slowing down anytime soon.

"The 'R' word is not in my vocabulary," Gerdes said.

Did you know?

The name Rick Gerdes may be familiar to Tucson techies.

Gerdes, now chief scientist at Medusa Scientific and TM Technologies, was one of the first employees of the former Burr-Brown Corp. in 1959.

He left to finish his electrical engineering degree at the University of Arizona in 1962. In 1964, he co-founded Optical Electronics Inc. in Tucson with his then-wife, Suzanne. Following the couple's divorce in 1979, Suzanne Gerdes ran Optical Electronics and was leader of the local optics industry cluster group until her death from cancer in 2010.

"This is a whole new concept. Even an engineer at FCC headquarters said that it was the first new form of modulation since FM."

Rick Gerdes, Medusa Scientific chief scientist

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Science Foundation Arizona's boost to the state's tech sector is still rippling out into the economy, even as it has turned its focus to technology education, according to the most recent annual report card on the nonprofit tech foundation.

SFAz hasn't awarded any research grants since the Legislature dropped state funding in 2010.

But a report by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice shows that SFAz grant awardees are still attracting new investment, filing for patents and hiring workers.

According to Battelle, for each dollar invested in mainly state-funded research grants, an additional $4.83 was raised in support of grant-related work, up from an estimate of $4.40 last year.

The report said the cumulative economic impact of the grant-supported work since 2007 has reached nearly $600 million.

In other findings, the report said SFAz grants have resulted in:

• 1,865 jobs directly related to cumulative grant activities (up 89 from fiscal year 2012);

• 207 patents filed and/or issued (up 28 from 2012);

• 24 technology companies formed in Arizona (up two from 2012);

• 23 technology licenses (up seven from 2012).

Southern Arizona has been a major beneficiary of SFAz grants, with major grants including some $4 million for University of Arizona solar research and some $13 million in support of the Tucson-based Critical Path Institute, which is working with federal regulators and drug companies to boost drug development.

Among the local SFAz grant projects that are still attracting investments is REhnu Inc., which is developing new utility-scale photovoltaic energy technology based on the work of UA astronomer Roger Angel.

REhnu, which was formed by Angel with the help of a SFAz grant to the UA, has attracted more than $500,000 in new capital from individual, angel investors since January, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The investments were made as part of a bridge note that can be converted to equity as part of REhnu's next major round of financing, REhnu CEO Justin Elliott said.

Boosting STEM program

The Legislature cut back on funding to SFAz beginning in 2009 as the state faced the recession and a fiscal crisis.

Since losing most of its state funding, SFAz has focused on boosting so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and workforce development.

Since 2007, SFAz's STEM education programs have reached nearly 385,000 students and 10,656 teachers at the K-12 and community college levels across 61 grant awards.

The nonprofit also has supported 263 graduate research fellowships for Ph.D. students in STEM fields at Arizona universities, with 38 percent of the graduates working in post-doctoral positions still in-state and 50 percent of the graduates with permanent jobs remaining in Arizona.

SFAz President and CEO William Harris said SFAz "continues to provide a strong return on investment for Arizona's economic future."

Concerns remain

But familiar, critical concerns remain, the Battelle report said:

• Nonexistent venture capital in Arizona in the critical seed and early stages for technology companies, while the nation saw continued gains;

• Lower-than-average concentrations of technology industry employment and growth, and R&D expenditures that lag behind the nation across both university and industry;

• "Achievement deficits" in middle-school math and science and fewer post-secondary degrees in key science and engineering fields.

legislation dies

While Harris and other SFAz supporters have argued that such state-funded grants represent investments, critics including the conservative Goldwater Institute have opposed them as costly taxpayer giveaways with dubious returns.

And such proposals remain a tough sell at the Capitol.

Two bills designed to boost high-tech development attracted bipartisan support at the Legislature this year - only to die short of the finish line.

Legislation that would have created a new, dollar-for-dollar credit on premium taxes paid by insurers who contribute to a proposed state-supervised, high-tech investment fund passed the House but died in the Senate amid budget talks.

A bill to increase the state research and development tax credit was passed by the Legislature, but was vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer in late June.

In her veto message, Brewer cited the need to scrutinize the refundable credit - which draws from general state funds when a company has no excess tax liability - in the context of other tax and spending changes in the budget she signed the week before.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Tucson is home to a new unmanned aircraft technology company, but it's been here all along.

The new company, Sensintel Inc., was formed by Tucson businessman Matthew Pobloske, who closed Friday on a stock-purchase agreement to acquire BAE Systems' Unmanned Aircraft Programs business in Tucson. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

By buying the local drone operation from British defense giant BAE for an undisclosed amount, Pobloske essentially reacquired the operations of Advanced Ceramics Research Inc. - which BAE had acquired in 2009 in a stock deal worth $14.7 million.

Sensintel will operate independently as a provider of small unmanned aerial systems (UAS), sensors and related services. That includes the Silver Fox UAS, the precursor of which Advanced Ceramics Research originally developed a decade ago for the Navy; the Manta UAS for geoscience research; and the Coyote, an air-launched drone.

BAE will continue to run its U.K.-based UAS division, which focuses on larger tactical and strategic drones. Those include the Mantis and stealthy Taranis combat drones, which are in the flight demonstration phase of development for the U.K.

BAE had bought Advanced Ceramics Research - almost exactly four years ago - saying that its small-craft technology would complement BAE's existing programs.

But BAE was having trouble seeing where its Tucson programs fit in with the company's strategic plans, Pobloske said.

"Over the last couple of years, they had been trying to come to grips on where strategically our little tactical UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) fit into their product portfolio, and they ultimately decided that they didn't," said Pobloske, who was business development director for BAE's unmanned aircraft programs.

The idea was that the combination would result in business and technology "synergy" that would advance BAE's UAV programs, big and small.

"A lot of that synergy didn't really materialize internally for them," Pobloske said. "We were able to enjoy some benefit from that, in that we were able to kind of spin ourselves back out."

Pobloske is now sole owner of Sensintel, which has about 30 employees at 3292 E. Hemisphere Loop, the same site where Advanced Ceramics Research operated.

By becoming a smaller company, Pobloske said he hopes to foster a more entrepreneurial approach to business and product development, as well as a more empowered and self-reliant work environment.

At the same time, being part of BAE left the operation with some sophisticated engineering, manufacturing, program management and administrative capabilities for a small company, Pobloske said.

The Defense Department remains Sensintel's biggest customer, Pobloske said. The company's long-flying Silver Fox was deployed to Iraq in the early 2000s and some are still flying, Pobloske said, though he declined to name the operators involved.

While Pobloske said he can't divulge all of Sensintel's customers, he said the company has had, or currently has, contracts with all of the armed services.

The company also continues to develop its Manta UAV for geosurveying, and it recently won a couple of new contracts for its Coyote air-launched UAS.

The head of a local UAS engineering firm that has worked with Sensintel said the spinoff will help keep local jobs and allow Sensintel to grow.

"They've got a good starting point to go out and grow from there," said Jason Douglas, owner of Tucson-based Latitude Engineering and a former Advanced Ceramics Research engineer. "Obviously, as a big company it sort of limits the number of avenues they could go down."

Latitude makes UAS components including sensors, antennas, airframes and ground-control systems, and offers systems integration, training and product-development services.

DID YOU KNOW?

Advanced Ceramics Research did drones before drones were cool.

Founded in 1989 by University of Arizona engineering alumnus Tony Mulligan, the company originally developed drones for the Navy for whale monitoring, while keeping its hand in materials research with a proprietary bone-replacement material.

By the mid-2000s, Advanced Ceramics Research's Silver Fox UAS was being used by the Navy river patrols in Iraq.

After BAE acquired Advanced Ceramics Research in 2009, Mulligan went on to found Sahuarita-based Hydronalix Inc., a developer of unmanned watercraft for rescue and research.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

While many college students will spend this summer catching some waves, some University of Arizona students are catching the next wave in medicine.

Thirteen students from across campus are among 23 students who recently started paid summer internships at Ventana Medical Systems/Roche, which makes instruments that automate tissue analysis primarily for cancer.

Twenty-one of those interns are working at Ventana's Oro Valley headquarters for the 12-week program; two others are at the company's site in Mountain View, Calif.

It's an opportunity for students in a diverse range of disciplines to earn while they learn about career paths they never envisioned, said Jim Godsey, senior vice president of product and technology development for Ventana.

"It's an opportunity to bring these young people in, let them be exposed to the hundreds of career paths that they could pursue, and let them see how they can use their skills, to apply those, to improve the lives of patients afflicted with cancer," he said.

Besides the 13 UA undergraduate and grad students, four interns are from Arizona State University, and there are one each from six other schools, including UCLA, Case-Western Reserve in Cleveland and a university in Lorrach, Germany.

It's a very competitive gig: About 600 students applied for the full-time internships, which generally pay $18 to $22 an hour.

Once they arrive on Ventana's campus in Oro Valley, the interns aren't sent to the mailroom. The students - including several returning summer interns - work on many of Ventana's latest projects, Godsey said.

"They get to work on something that's relevant to the company, that's current, and we get to evaluate new talent," he said.

The company was founded in the mid-1980s by UA pathologist Dr. Thomas Grogan, who designed an automated tissue slide-staining device to speed cancer diagnoses.

Ventana, which was acquired by Swiss drug giant Roche in 2008, still makes its slide-prep devices and related products, but it is moving into creating so-called "companion tests" to screen patients for their potential to respond to specific therapies.

"That approach has revolutionized the pharma industry and made us that much more valuable to the Roche group," Godsey said, noting that its companion tests are designed to be used with Ventana's installed base of thousands of slide-staining instruments worldwide.

One of the UA interns, doctorate candidate Reza Riahi, is helping to evaluate a third-party company's technology to identify and analyze cancer tumor cells that circulate in the blood in small numbers.

Riahi, 33, earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering in Iran and applied for the Ventana internship through Bio5, the UA's interdisciplinary biotech institute.

Riahi worked on creating microscopic channels to trap the so-called circulating tumor cells at the UA. At Ventana, he's working out a method to remove the trapped cancer cells and transfer them to a Ventana instrument for analysis of cell behavior.

"Part of it, I can apply my experience and skills and part of it I learn from people here, so it's real-world," said Riahi, who was interested in a medical career but admits to a history of fainting at the sight of blood.

Returning intern Anna Lueck, a 20-year-old senior majoring in chemical engineering, is working to help move Ventana's developmental products to the manufacturing phase by analyzing test results from chemical test fluids known as reagents.

"I'm collecting data to see how well the tests that are used to make the final products are performing so the processes can be improved upon," Lueck said.

While she enjoyed doing academic research on protein structures, Lueck says she finds Ventana's focus more rewarding.

"I wanted there to be a deeper purpose to the research I was going for, something a little more obvious," the Catalina Foothills High School graduate said.

Returning Ventana intern Tam Nguyen, 21, a UA senior in biomedical engineering, helped write a program to detect defects in slides last year.

This year, she's assessing staining on tissue to help pathologists develop more consistent readings of test results, seeking to automate the process with computer algorithms that take into account where pathologists look and the levels of colors used to stain samples.

"It's exciting to get an answer to homework problems, but here, I feel like I'm really making a difference," Nguyen said.

Ventana's only finance intern, Ryan Compton, 23, a second-year Eller College MBA student, said his work analyzing budgets, pricing and forecasting could be done at any company.

But the medical field interested Compton because his father was a doctor, and Ventana's mission is personal since two of his relatives died of cancer.

"It's just a little more rewarding when you know you're working with a group of people who have a common goal of making the world a better place and striving to improve the lives of those with cancer," he said.

While the interns get invaluable work experience and stipends from Ventana, they contribute more than their skills, Godsey said.

"I think what they bring is what I call 'fresh young minds' approaches," he said. "They challenge us in ways we often never expect, and by challenging the status quo, by looking at it with a fresh set of eyes, they open up opportunities for more innovation."

Finding internships

• University of Arizona students seeking internships should consult their college academic advisors or use UA Career Services, which hosts a list of internships (paid and unpaid) and jobs on its website, career.arizona.edu

The Wildcat Job Listing can be sorted for internship attributes, including location and type of position. Students pay a $5 annual fee to use Career Services programs.

• Internship programs are available to students of other local schools, including Pima Community College.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Since 2010, Xerocraft "hackerspace" has welcomed frustrated engineers, curious tinkerers and do-it-yourselfers of all stripes to share ideas and equipment in a beat-up commercial building on South Sixth Avenue.

Now, Tucson's original cooperative "hackerspace" is moving downtown, where it will join other collaborative workspaces to help form a new "innovation district."

Like other places known as hackerspaces or makerspaces, the nonprofit Xerocraft provides the space, equipment, training and collaborative support to so-called "hackers" or "makers" who want to gain new skills or perfect a new invention.

After occupying a cramped, 900-square-foot former space at 1301 S. Sixth Ave. - site of a former Miller's Surplus store - for nearly three years, Xerocraft is moving uptown by moving downtown, so to speak.

Xerocraft is preparing a new space at the historic Steinfeld Warehouse, 101 W. Sixth St., that will more than triple the group's space on the ground floor alone, said Dale Tersey, secretary of Xerocraft.

"It's going to give us a lot more space," said Tersey, noting that the new site will have 3,300 square feet on the main floor plus a 1,400-square-foot mezzanine area.

Judging by the rather cramped quarters at Xerocraft's current home, the new space will come in handy when the group moves in by mid-July.

During Xerocraft's "open hack" night last Thursday, equipment including a radial arm saw spilled out in the parking lot. The front room houses workbenches, metal machining equipment and 3-D printer setups, with walls lined with parts drawers and technical manuals.

A second room holds a computer-operated laser etcher-cutter that the group recently rehabilitated, along with a refrigerator and stove. Out back, a narrow yard is used for metal castings and assorted large parts.

Besides the open-hack nights, Xerocraft holds classes on subjects including welding, machining, lasers and robotics. Full membership in Xerocraft - which recently became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization - is $40 per month and includes full use of tools and free workshops. But any donation is accepted, and no one is turned away, Tersey said.

Xerocraft has about 25 regular members, but as many as 150 drop in over the course of a month, said Tersey, a hydrologist who is the group's elder statesman at 62.

"The mix is really out there," Tersey said, adding that the average age is in the 20s. "We get a lot of scientists who maybe in their early years worked on machinery, but they're in jobs now where they really don't get out and touch the equipment they way they used to."

Others are looking to learn new skills, or to work on a specific project - like the guy who turned an 1870s revolver into a semiautomatic pistol, with the help of a certified gunsmith.

Alex Barton, a 27-year-old electronics technician and Xerocraft board member, said his aim is to learn and teach others skills, such as 3-D printing.

"The hope is to be the place to come if they want to learn something," said Barton. "Personally, I love nothing more than showing somebody that they can, in fact, fix the things they own and make them better, and they can do all the cool things they see online. I want to show people they can do anything they want and make it accessible to people."

The 3-D printing technology - which takes digitally rendered three-dimensional objects and "prints" them by building up layers of material - is a good example. The technology has hit the masses in recent years with consumer-level printers that can make small items in minutes.

Xerocraft has two 3-D printers the group has used to print objects to create molds, which are used in turn to cast parts in metal or other material - in one case helping a local man create a hard-to-find part.

On the recent open-hack night, Barton was printing up small mustache combs with the 3-D printer while chatting with Marcus Amshoff, a sculptor who had come to check out Xerocraft.

"I will be back," Amshoff said. "These guys are up to speed on areas that I need access to and knowledge of for my career - I live off my work as an artist."

While a lot of what goes on at Xerocraft is just plain cool, it is also an important part of Tucson's rapidly coalescing technology entrepreneurship community, said Justin Williams, founder and CEO of the entrepreneurial group Startup Tucson.

Williams said "makerspaces" like Xerocraft are part of a tech-oriented entrepreneurial ecosystem that can nurture innovation from idea stage to funding a company.

Shared workspaces like Gangplank Tucson, Spoke6 and Xerocraft can foster collaborative innovation, while Startup Tucson can help innovators form companies and court investors at local events like IdeaFunding.

"What we've been trying to do the last couple of years is create a pipeline of new venture creation that grows from ideas to funding," said Williams.

And while much of what goes on at Xerocraft seems just for fun, Williams noted that a team of Xerocraft members won Startup Tucson's latest "Hackathon," a 24-hour event in which teams produce a working prototype in a day, with a robotic "BarBot" that can pour mixed drinks on command via a smartphone.

With several other collaborative workspaces recently opened or planned for downtown, Williams and others are discussing the formation of a "downtown innovation district" linking the sites.

Besides Xerocraft, Spoke 6, the city's first collaborative workspace at 439 N. Sixth Ave., and Gangplank, which recently moved downtown to 100 N. Stone Ave., Williams cited:

• Maker House, an "artisan-focused maker space" planned by the founders of the locally based website ArtFire.com, is expected to open this summer at the Bates Mansion, 283 N. Stone Ave.

• The Hive will open July 1 a shared workspace at 1 E. Toole Ave., headquarters of Sinfonia, a new health-care company headed by downtown booster Fletcher McCusker.

• Connect is a shared workspace expected to open this fall above the Rialto Theater downtown.

MORE INFORMATION

• For more information on Xerocraft, see xerocraft.org

• Keep up with all the co-workspace and hackerspace developments at Startup Tucson, startuptucson.com

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Any mention of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) evokes images of engineers fiddling with sophisticated machinery or research scientists peering into microscopes.

But a new study argues that you don't need a Ph.D., or even a bachelor's degree, to be part of the STEM economy.

The report issued Monday by the Brookings Institution contends that any job that requires specialized knowledge in STEM areas - including health care, manufacturing and construction trades - could be considered a STEM job.

That means the STEM economy is far deeper than previously imagined, said Jonathan Rothwell, an associate fellow at Washington, D.C.-based Brookings who authored the study.

While previous estimates have pegged STEM employment at 4 to 5 percent of total workers, STEM employment under Brookings' expanded definition is about 20 percent of all jobs nationally, and slightly higher in the Tucson area.

"There's actually a whole diverse array of occupations that require STEM knowledge," Rothwell said.

Rothwell said he and his colleagues originally set out to study the STEM economy. But they quickly realized that the usual definition of STEM left out many workers whose jobs require deep knowledge in one or more STEM fields.

While there is no uniform definition of "STEM," the term's origins have been traced to use by the National Science Foundation starting in the early 2000s (early on, the agency apparently used the less-elegant acronym "SMET").

The NSF definition - used in guidelines for scholarships and grants - is fairly broad, including areas like education and social and economic sciences in addition to the obvious categories like the biological sciences, engineering and computer sciences.

But the definition leaves out many technical jobs - notably including many health-care professionals (the NSF supports fundamental science and engineering but not "medical science").

"It's not just the engineers and scientists, it's also the health-care workers, particularly doctors and nurses and lab technicians," Rothwell said.

Beyond health care, the Brookings report found that non-degreed jobs requiring significant STEM knowledge include many nonprofessional jobs in manufacturing, health care, construction and mining.

In individual analysis of 100 metropolitan areas, Tucson ranked higher than average in the proportion of STEM jobs to overall employment in 2011, with a 20.3 percent STEM job share in the area and a rank of 42nd among surveyed metro areas.

The Phoenix metro area had a somewhat smaller proportion of STEM jobs, 19.9 percent. It ranked 54th among the metro areas studied, according to the Brookings report.

Brookings' Rothwell said many STEM jobs requiring less than a college education go begging.

"There is evidence to suggest that demand has outstripped supply for some of these technical blue-collar and otherwise sub-bachelor STEM jobs," Rothwell said.

Recognizing shortages or looming worker shortfalls in certain key local industries, the Pima County Workforce Reinvestment Board recently adopted a sector strategy to tailor educational and training programs to specific local needs.

For example, a new local industry internship program was recently launched to address a shortfall particularly in operators of computerized machining equipment.

Gregg Johnson, Tucson campus director of the University of Phoenix and chairman of the county Workforce Investment Board, said technology has become a major part of many occupations, from machining to logistics.

"A lot of those jobs, they're going to have some STEM education coming in," Johnson said. "And a lot of the best jobs are STEM-related."

Community colleges can play an important role in training STEM workers, but they receive far less funding from federal, state and local governments than research universities, Brookings' Rothwell said.

"It's worth taking another look at the role of community colleges, because they are not only bringing up workers through the community-college system and into four-year programs, but they are also preparing students immediately for jobs in the STEM economy," he said.

Alex Rodriguez, Southern Arizona director of the Arizona Technology Council, said the Brookings report confirms what he hears from the group's members: More needs to be done to educate and train workers, particularly for non-degreed technical jobs.

"Clearly, the age of the knowledge worker has arrived," Rodriguez said. "It's a race for talent in the new economy, and I'm not surprised (by the report) in light of what I see in our growing technology companies in Southern Arizona."

Rodriguez said he views the Brookings report as a "clarion call" for policymakers to boost support for community colleges and programs like the Joint Technical Education District, which offers high school students vocational training in technical fields.

View the report

To view or download the report "The Hidden STEM Economy," go to the Brookings Institution website at brookings.edu or for a direct link go to tinyurl.com/ker2mhq

By the numbers

$64,403

Average annual wages for all STEM jobs in Tucson area

$50,104

Average annual wages for Tucson-area STEM jobs requiring an associate's degree or less

$30,506

Average annual wages for non-STEM jobs requiring associate's degree or less

63,550

STEM jobs in the Tucson metro area, 2011

20.3

Percentage of STEM jobs in Tucson area

Source: Brookings Institution

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Technology that helps miners around the globe figure out when and where to dig has helped a Tucson company land national honors.

Mintec Inc., a maker of mining management software founded in Tucson more than 40 years ago, recently won a President's E-Award for Exports, the highest honor any U.S. company can get for "making a significant contribution to the expansion of exports." Mintec was the only Arizona company to win the award this year, among 57 awardees in 22 states.

Helped by a worldwide mining boom, Mintec (minesight.com) has been on a steep growth curve in recent years, Mintec President John Davies said.

The privately held company doesn't share revenue figures, but Davies said Mintec has increased revenues from sales and service of its MineSight software about 30 percent annually for the past seven years.

And though the company has seven offices outside the U.S., including one opened in Hermosillo, Sonora, last year, the company's heart is in the Old Pueblo.

"We author all of the software based out of Tucson, so the entire product base, the design, all the intellectual property is housed in Tucson," said Davies, who's been with Mintec since 1986.

The company, with corporate headquarters at 3544 E. Fort Lowell Road, expanded into an adjacent building in 2011. It has increased its local staff to about 125, roughly double the staff of five years ago, Davies said, noting that Mintec workers now own about 30 percent of the company under an employee stock ownership plan.

With major mining customers around the world, including Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Canada's Teck Coal, Rio Tinto, Codelco and Tucson-based Asarco, Mintec counts about 80 percent of its sales outside the U.S., Davies said.

"Just about every mining house in the world uses our product, to a greater or lesser extent," he said.

The company, co-founded by Mintec Chairman Fred Banfield in his Tucson home in 1970, provides a comprehensive suite of modeling and mine-planning software under the flagship MineSight brand.

The modular software includes programs that help geologists, engineers and miners manage exploration tasks, create efficient mine designs, plan short-term and long-term operations and monitor production.

A key feature of MineSight software is its 3-D modeling capabilities, which allow mine managers to calculate and visualize what's underground and figure out the best way to get it out of the ground.

"There's a lot of science and mathematics behind predicting the grade and the tonnages underground - you don't see it until you mine it," Davies said.

Though Mintec's software is proprietary, it's made to work with systems sold by more than a dozen other companies, Davies said.

"We sit in the middle - we own a lot of awfully important data that everybody else needs, but we do need feeds from other companies as well," he said.

Mintec is just one of a small but strong cadre of homegrown mining technology companies based in Tucson.

Others include Modular Mining, a major maker of fleet-management systems; Leica Geosystems, a fleet-management provider founded in Tucson as Jigsaw Technologies; Guardvant Inc., a maker of mining safety software such as driver fatigue detection systems; and Zonge International, which makes geophysical scanning systems.

About a year ago, Davies noted, Mintec and Modular Mining signed a technology-sharing agreement allowing each company's software to communicate automatically with the other's.

Other Arizona companies that have won the E-Award include Modular Mining and Flagstaff-based wind-turbine maker Southwest Windpower.

Eric Nielsen, the Tucson-based director of the U.S. Commercial Service in Arizona, said the award shows the strength of the area's mining technology firms.

Though most are private companies that don't share revenue figures, Nielsen agreed that the industry likely brings tens of millions of dollars annually into the local economy.

Nielsen said Mintec's aggressive global business expansion is "an outstanding example of a local company taking 21st-century technology and applying it to one of Arizona's traditional 5 C's (copper)."

"I think part of what makes their story compelling is, these are good, high-tech jobs they are adding," he said.

Though the mining industry is very cyclical and there are signs the boom is flattening with metal prices, Davies said Mintec is well-positioned to weather all but the deepest of industry downturns.

The export award was a nice recognition of the hard work Mintec's staff has done in recent years, but the company's growing reach is perhaps equally satisfying, Davies said.

"You can go to a mine in the mountaintops of Peru and run into our software, and our people - it's gratifying to see that."

"We author all of the software based out of Tucson, so the entire product base, the design, all the intellectual property is housed in Tucson."

John Davies, president, Mintec

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

The Arizona Center for Innovation, the University of Arizona's high-tech business incubator, recently held its fourth annual PitchDay, a chance for tech startups to pitch their ventures to an audience of potential investors, business mentors and partners.

The event, hosted by the center at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park, featured entrepreneurs representing 22 companies.

Notably, this year's event was opened to the whole state for the first time.

Each of the companies is supported by various business incubators and entrepreneurial mentorship programs around the state; locally, besides the AzCI, including the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship in the UA Eller College of Management; the Tucson tech-development firm AzTera; and Gangplank Tucson, a nonprofit collaborative workspace.

Outside of the Tucson area, the presenters included startups from Arizona State University's SkySong; Tallwave, a Phoenix-based venture accelerator; the Northern Arizona Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (NACET); and the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation (CEI) at Gateway Community College in Phoenix.

Here's a quick look at the breadth of technologies addressed by the 22 companies that presented at PitchDay:

• Acomni LLC (AzTera, www.acomni.com), which pitched a sophisticated thermostat that lets users track usage and change settings remotely;

• Arbsource (CEI, www.arbsource.us), which focuses on compact bioreactors for water treatment and power generation;

• Colloidal Gen (AzCI), with proprietary technology involving the use of ferrite iron oxides to magnetically separate biological material;

• Convrrt (Tallwave, convrrt.com), apps to help website managers easily build "landing pages" to drive traffic;

• Creative Allies (Tallwave, creativeallies.com), which hosts online design contests linking artists and bands who need designs for albums and merchandise;

• Crowd Audio (McGuire, crowdaudio.com) connects musicians and audio engineers through community and "crowdsourcing" activities;

• DNA on a Shirt (CEI, dnaonashirt.blogspot.com), maker of custom T-shirts imprinted with personal DNA test images;

• Exchange Meds (Tallwave, exchangemeds.com), an online medication-exchange program for pharmacies;

• Grafted Growers (McGuire, www.graftedgrowers.com) provides grafted vegetable plants for commercial growers and gardeners;

• Howdy (McGuire), online marketplace for student-internship information;

• Local Work (Tallwave), which helps local talent find local work through Web-based tools;

• Metropia (AzCI), which uses proprietary models to predict vehicular traffic flows and influence motorist choices to relieve congestion;

• Nest Energy (NACET), developer of mobile, solar-powered generating stations;

• Obelus Media (Tallwave, obelusmedia.com), developer of mobile advertising technology;

• Property Management EZ (AzCI), online property-management software for landlords;

• Quantified Resistance (Gangplank), developing a wearable device that provides muscle feedback for weightlifting training;

• RallyUp (AzCI, www.rallyup.com), website that offers discounts and free merchandise in exchange for product feedback;

• Rarus Innovations (SkySong, www.rarusinnovations.com), education technology using mobile apps and games-based Internet platform;

• Save on Couriers (Tallwave), a same-day courier-exchange;

• Ufree (AzCI, www.ufreeapp.com) developed an app to identify and schedule when friends are free to interact;

• Vive (McGuire), technology to reduce hospital-acquired infections by real-time pathogen detection;

• YourLabs LLC (AzCI, www.yourlabs.com), an e-learning software and services provider that makes test and assessment data available on any device.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Twenty years ago, scientists at the University of Arizona began studying guayule, a small desert shrub farmed as a source of natural rubber.

The research helped one Arizona company commercialize guayule on a limited scale, producing a virtually allergy-free latex used in medical gloves.

Now, the UA is studying guayule - pronounced "why-YOU-lee") - again as the plant is poised for wide-scale commercialization, and tire makers and others look to address a projected shortage of natural rubber.

The UA recently was awarded a $3 million, five-year grant by Phoenix-based Yulex Corp. focused on breeding and developing guayule for the production of "biorubber" for medical, consumer and industrial applications.

While the UA has worked on guayule research mainly through federally funded research grants, the Yulex contract is the first from the company and signals a trend toward advanced commercialization of guayule, said Dennis Ray, a distinguished professor in the UA School of Plant Sciences.

"We always thought this would become an industry, and it has," said Ray, who has been working on guayule research on and off since he arrived at the UA in the mid-1980s.

Leading a reporter through a small plot of guayule bushes at the UA agriculture center west of Interstate 10 near Miracle Mile, Ray rattles off the advantages of the scruffy-looking shrub.

Guayule thrives in arid climates, so it doesn't need much water, and it doesn't compete with food or fiber crops, he said. The latex produced in guayule's bark doesn't contain the proteins that makes people allergic to common natural latex, which is made from the tropical hevea tree. And it produces other useful compounds, including pest-resistant resins.

During the Yulex project, the UA researchers will initially work to isolate guayule strains that will make the plant more productive.

"We want to make more rubber, sooner," Ray said.

While Yulex already has begun providing guayule-based latex for some products, the UA's breeding program will be instrumental in helping the company ramp up production for bigger markets, Yulex CEO Jeff Martin said.

"There's never been a very all-inclusive breeding program in place of this scope, really in the history of guayule," Martin said.

Yulex has been producing latex from guayule since last year at a plant in Chandler, using raw plant material from farms in Marana and scattered around the state.

The plant has produced latex for use in medical gloves marketed by Australia-based Ansell Ltd., a major provider of medical and industrial gloves and condoms that acquired a minority stake in Yulex in 2011. Yulex also has provided biorubber for outdoor apparel giant Patagonia, which has created guayule-rubber-based wet suits set to roll out in the U.S. this fall.

The main selling point for the guayule rubber so far has been its nonallergenic nature - a trait that prompted Martin to quit his job at a major latex-glove maker to pursue guayule and co-found Yulex in 1997.

But guayule biorubber can be used in any application where the traditional source of natural rubber - the tropical hevea tree - has long dominated.

Guayule rubber isn't new - production was briefly ramped up in the U.S. during World War II, after Japan took over much of the world's rubber-producing region. The energy crisis of the late 1970s led to a resurgence in guayule research, but the plant never gained the traction to become a major industrial crop.

Now, major tire makers have stepped up research on guayule rubber. Bridgestone Corp. broke ground on a guayule biorubber process research center in Mesa in mid-May, and the company expects its first rubber samples for tire evaluations by mid-2015. Cooper Tire is partner with Yulex on a $6.9 million federal grant issued last year to study guayule rubber processing and use of byproducts as a biofuel.

Natural rubber is used in tires in varying amounts, but it's a commodity that is prone to big price swings.

"It is a material that is essential for use in tires, but it is a wildly price-sensitive commodity," said Chuck Yurkovich, Cooper Tire's vice president of global technology.

It will be awhile until Yulex can satisfy the tire industry's needs.

Martin noted that Yulex's production capacity of some 500 metric tons of biorubber annually is a tiny fraction of the world market of about 25 million metric tons.

"Even though it's commercial scale, it's still very small," he said.

Plans are afoot to expand that production exponentially.

Yulex has licensed the technology to Versalis, a major European chemical company, which plans to build a processing plant in southern Europe with a production capacity of 5,000 metric tons a year, Martin said. And talks are underway with undisclosed parties to build a 50,000-metric-ton plant, he added.

All that production will be needed particularly if the biggest rubber users - including the tire industry - jump into guayule in a big way.

With the UA's help, Yulex expects to boost its yield to about 1 metric ton per acre per year, about the same as hevea rubber-tree production. Current plantings yield about 50 percent to 75 percent of that goal, Martin said.

Ray said he's looking to use traditional plant-breeding techniques to boost the rubber content of guayule from about 8 percent now to a range of 10 to 15 percent.

Martin and Ray noted that guayule is a perennial plant that is ready for initial cutting in two years. The roots are left to regrow, and each plant can be cut three more times, giving farmers four harvests every five years.

Cooper's Yurkovich noted that other companies are working to commercialize guayule, but Yulex has a good head start.

And while the industry isn't facing a natural-rubber shortage now, some analysts predict a global shortfall by 2020 as China and other developing nations buy more cars.

"Big picture: The amount of natural rubber is declining, and the demand is going up," Yurkovich said.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Reasoning that necessity is the mother of invention, a Phoenix-based group is offering up medical and health-care problems - and giving entrepreneurs statewide a chance at investment money for providing solutions.

And that could be a critical boost to bio companies in Tucson, a fertile ground for innovation that can go fallow for want of early-stage funding.

BioAccel, a nonprofit bioscience business-development group founded in 2009, recently announced the BioAccel Solutions Challenge, which offers a chance for startup companies to get $100,000 in seed investment funding.

BioAccel will soon issue a list of key health-care problems, or "needs," identified by industry practitioners and leaders, and challenge entrepreneurs to create innovative solutions.

The needs are expected to focus on improving patient care and health outcomes by using medical devices, molecular diagnostics and possibly health information technology.

Qualified applicants will receive a $50,000 investment from BioAccel if they succeed in receiving matching funds from investors during a competitive "Investment Day" event, tentatively planned for the fall.

With the matching funding, entrepreneurs will have $100,000 to prove their concepts and form companies, BioAccel CEO MaryAnn Guerra said.

And though BioAccel has focused its efforts mainly in the Valley of the Sun, the group is eager to get the rest of the state involved, she said.

"We're statewide, and now that we have a couple of years under our belt, we are trying to get into and work with the folks in Tucson on a more regular basis," said Guerra, who served as chief business officer for the Phoenix-based Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) before co-founding BioAccel.

BioAccel is no stranger to Tucson, though, as it has supported two tech startups with origins in the Old Pueblo.

Kulira Technologies, which is commercializing a system that encases tissue samples in special gel for stabilization and analysis, is a member of BioInspire, BioAccel's medical-device business incubator in Peoria. The company is headed by CEO Xenia Kachur, a University of Arizona biomedical engineering graduate. Mark Banister, founder of Medipacs LLC, is the gel technology's inventor and Kulira's research and development director.

BioAccel also has supported Rx Vigil LLC, a Tucson company co-founded by Kevin Boesen, an assistant professor in the UA College of Pharmacy. The company has developed a system for medication management, using sophisticated software and customer-service call centers to prevent medication problems and improve patient care.

Local investor and economic-development activist Harry George said he welcomes the new source of potential seed funding.

George, a longtime venture capitalist and tech investor, noted that an "entrepreneurial blueprint" he co-authored for Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc. last year found that boosting such funding is critical to launching tech startups.

George said that Tucson's Desert Angels, a group of affluent, qualified private-equity investors, has been the main source of local seed funding for several years. The state's few venture-capital funds, which typically invest millions of dollars in startups further along, currently are fully invested, he noted.

"Having another group willing to put in $50,000 is excellent," George said. "It's a fresh pair of eyes that's looked at a deal, and they want to put money in."

The UA's new technology-transfer agency, Tech Launch Arizona, also has identified the proof-of-concept stage as a key piece of the startup puzzle. In January, the agency awarded 19 UA faculty members proof-of-concept grants ranging from $10,000 to $40,000.

BioAccel isn't out to compete with the universities, but rather to complement their efforts, Guerra said.

"They've got so many areas they have to fund, not just bio," she said.

BioAccel plans to issue its needs list by the Fourth of July, and to hold its Investment Day event before Thanksgiving.

TO APPLY

Interested entrepreneurs can register on BioAccel's website, bioaccel.org, to receive updates on the needs release and funding event.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has led to a boom in U.S. natural gas and oil production, but it remains controversial because of the potential harm it can cause to the environment.

A Tucson company is working to make fracking more efficient and cleaner with technology developed for the aerospace industry.

Tucson Embedded Systems Inc. has adapted engine controls originally developed for aircraft turbine engines to run turbines used by a Louisiana-based company to power the massive pumps used in fracking.

Fracking involves pumping fluids underground to fracture layers of rock, allowing gas or oil to flow for recovery. The practice, which is banned in some countries, has the U.S. on track to become the world's biggest oil and gas producer in a few years.

But fracking has been assailed by environmental groups who say fracking can lead to contamination of groundwater, soil and air, including methane leaks and emissions from pumping equipment.

Tucson Embedded's industrial digital engine controls, or IDECs, allow the turbines to quickly change from using diesel fuel to cleaner-burning natural gas.

And soon, the turbines will be able to use "field gas" - a waste product of drilling often burned off at the wellhead.

The local company is working with Green Field Energy Services, a Lafayette, La., company that began offering turbine-powered fracking equipment in 2010 as a less costly and cleaner alternative to diesel-powered pumping equipment generally used by the industry.

Around the same time, Tucson Embedded decided to develop new turbine engine controls, building on its experience working with jet engine maker Honeywell Aerospace.

The local company had lost business when Honeywell and other aerospace companies started offshoring engineering work, said David Crowe, president and co-founder of Tucson Embedded Systems.

"We've lost a lot of aerospace engineering to India and China, but my philosophy and gamble in 2010 was that small business could actually do this, too," said Crowe, a University of Arizona electrical and computer engineering grad.

"So instead of trying to wait for the work to come back, we decided to start to invest in turbine control and developed our own product and service."

Tucson Embedded had further developed nonaerospace turbine engine controls in projects for the U.S. and Swedish navies, when Green Field discovered the company through industry contacts.

The company first tested its engine controls with Green Field in April 2012 in Louisiana. In October, Green Field announced it had picked Tucson Embedded to supply 25 engine control units.

The digital controls allow operators to switch between burning natural gas and burning diesel, literally with the flip of a switch, Crowe said.

The ultimate aim is to power the fracking turbines with field gas, using a resource that might otherwise be burned off and reducing many airborne pollutants.

Green Field President Rick Fontova said that when used with gas, the turbine rigs produce 86 percent less nitrogen oxide and about 85 percent less carbon monoxide than typical diesel-fired fracking pumps.

But perhaps equally important, the turbine fracking rigs take up half the space of comparably powered diesel rigs, cutting space needs and installation and operating costs, Fontova said.

"We don't need as big of a footprint, and of course because it's a turbine, our emissions are substantially lower than a reciprocating (diesel) engine," Fontova said.

Tucson Embedded is a valuable partner to Green Field, whose annual revenues approach $150 million, Fontova said.

"We found them to be very customer-oriented and very high-tech, and they've proven to be good partners for us, because we're both basically trailblazers, doing new things," Fontova said.

The company has already demonstrated its turbines can run on liquefied natural gas and compressed natural gas, he said.

In January, the company successfully tested a turbine running exclusively on field gas in a trial at an oil field in the Texas Panhandle. In the next couple of weeks, the company plans to use a turbine fueled with field gas in an actual fracking operation in Pennsylvania, Fontova said.

Meanwhile, Crowe said, Tucson Embedded is working with Green Field on the next generation engine-control technology: systems to allow fracking rigs to essentially run on "cruise control," eliminating the need for constant human adjustment.

While the rigs would still require human supervision, "cruise fracking" could improve safety by eliminating human error in making constant adjustments.

"They're still monitoring it, but they're not having to push a button every second," Crowe said. "It's all about safety and efficiency."

The fracking projects have opened up a whole new market for Tucson Embedded, which had long relied on defense business.

"This is a big deal, getting into the energy sector, because with the program budgeting, the military is a risk to be in solely, so this is a diversification," Crowe said.

DID YOU KNOW?

Tucson Embedded Systems Inc. was founded in 1996 by University of Arizona engineering graduate David Crowe, along with fellow UA alumni Dennis Kenman, Sean Mulholland and Antonio Procopio, who are all still with the company.

The company, which employs about 90 people, provides engineering, software, specialty manufacturing and related services, for customers including the U.S. Army and Raytheon Missile Systems.

In March, Crowe was selected as a winner of the 2013 Manufacturing Leadership 100 Award, given by a division of the research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan in the manufacturing entrepreneur category.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

A year after its insolvent German parent was saved from possible oblivion by a buyout, Tucson-based solar-energy provider Solon Corp. is expanding into new markets outside of Arizona.

Solon - which shut down its local solar-panel manufacturing line here in 2011 amid a flood of cheap solar panels from China - says it has added some 15 staffers since last summer to broaden its reach beyond Arizona.

While a few of the new hires are based in Tucson, most are spread around the nation as Solon seeks to expand its presence nationwide.

The company has set up regional directors in California, New Jersey, Florida and Puerto Rico, and it added a Southwest regional director in Phoenix, where Solon has had engineering and sales offices. Solon now employs about 60 people companywide, including 25 in Tucson.

The recent expansion is a good sign for Solon, which saw its German parent, now known as Solon Energy GmbH, file for the equivalent of bankruptcy in December 2011. The company was given a new lease on life a few months later, when its assets were snapped up by a United Arab Emirates solar company, Microsol.

Solon's move to expand outside of Arizona is partly a natural progression and partly a reflection of local politics.

Solon President and CEO Dan Alcombright noted that of the roughly 100 megawatts (DC) worth of photovoltaic systems the company has installed, 65 MW are in Arizona.

"We built up our skills in Arizona, and that's been very good to us," Alcombright said.

On the other hand, Arizona has become less supportive of solar politically.

The new, all-Republican Arizona Corporation Commission has cut ratepayer-funded incentives for rooftop home and business solar installations, as major utilities including Tucson Electric Power Co. reached incremental goals for such "distributed" renewable energy projects mandated under the state's renewable-energy standard.

And, expressing concerns over costs to ratepayers, one commissioner floated the idea of reducing the renewable-energy mandate, which calls for state-regulated utilities to get power equaling 15 percent of their retail power sales from renewables by 2025.

"The Arizona market is going to kind of flatten out here, and maybe 'flatten out' is even an optimistic view," Alcombright said, adding that Solon remains committed to expanding solar in Arizona.

Despite the well-publicized collapse of a number of solar technology companies, Solon and others remain strong, Alcombright said.

And the cost of solar has dropped so far - despite a steep tariff imposed on Chinese solar panels - that solar is reaching cost-competitive status in some areas where traditional grid power is expensive, he said.

"We're really at that crossover point in the industry where we can do projects without incentives," Alcombright said, citing a project under planning in New Mexico without state incentives.

While Solon Energy GmbH makes solar panels at a plant in Berlin, and Microsol makes panels at a plant in Fujairah, UAE, for now all that product is being sold in the European market, Alcombright said.

Solon Corp. is buying third-party panels for now but expects to begin using panels made by its German affiliate and parent company by 2014, he said.

Soon, the company expects to announce new projects in New Mexico, California and other new markets.

Solon also is working on a new version of its SOLquick panel, which features an integrated, slanted mount for flat roofs. The product was tested with a pilot installation at the University of Arizona's Biosphere 2 near Oracle.

"We've been able to continue to sell the product, and we're moving ahead with a new version of the product," Alcombright said, declining to elaborate.

Recently completed Solon projects in Arizona include the 10 MW Black Mountain project near Kingman, the 5 MW Prairie Fire array on Tucson's southeast side and a 1.15 MW, multicampus system for the Tanque Verde Unified School District.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Like most facilities of its type, it doesn't look like much on the outside. Or on the inside either, for that matter.

The real business of the data center Iowa-based Involta LLC recently built out on Tucson's south side goes on sight-unseen, as billions upon billions of bits of data pulse through racks of servers and switches to reach their ultimate destination on the Internet or private networks.

The Cedar Rapids-based company is ready to show off its new data center on Wednesday, when Involta is inviting the local business community to attend its grand opening.

Involta says it has invested more than $10 million in the 38,000-square-foot facility, which features redundant and backup power, advanced climate controls and high security, including wireless badge and eye-scanning biometric access systems.

The company bought the building at 1215 E. Pennsylvania St. (formerly 4400 S. Santa Rita Ave.) from Aurora Optical Inc., which closed its camera-component manufacturing line there in 2008.

The multitenant data center offers custom services including hosting client data on its own servers, or co-location of customers' own equipment. Involta offers constant 24-hour, seven-day monitoring and customer access. So far, the company has built out one of four planned, 5,000-square-foot data "modules," with empty racks ready for customer equipment.

By co-locating with other tenants, clients can reap the benefits of a first-class data center while actually reducing operating costs, Involta says.

The company says its new facility is built to so-called "Tier III" data center requirements, the second-highest level under industry standards. Tier III centers feature multiple redundant power and cooling systems (though only one path needs be continually active) and requires overall network availability of 99.982 percent.

Though the Phoenix area is home to several high-level data centers, Involta says its facility is the first Tier III data center in Tucson.

Other Tucson data-center providers include TW Telecom (formerly Time Warner Telecom), and homegrown providers Simply Bits LLC and Login Inc.

"I think it was just overlooked," Troy Ward, Involta regional sales director, said of Tucson.

"Generally, the big data centers are in NFL cities" - cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Phoenix that have National Football League teams, Ward said.

But Involta found a warm welcome in Tucson from local economic-development and business officials.

And it found a willing partner in Tucson Electric Power Co., which helped hook the company up with the redundant power lines it needed.

"We're connected to three substations in a ring, so we shouldn't have any problems," Ward said, noting that diesel generators will kick in during any major grid outage.

TEP, which has seen demand for power go flat since the Great Recession, was glad to help Involta set up shop. TEP President Dave Hutchens said the project is a great example of private-sector investment here.

"Involta's investment revitalizes an existing facility, adds high-paying job opportunities and enhances our community's network connectivity and technology infrastructure," Hutchens said in prepared remarks.

Ward declined to discuss how many people the data center employs or will employ, though he acknowledged the center is not yet fully staffed.

Likewise, the company doesn't talk about pay levels. But Ward noted that the company hires experienced information-technology professionals and has had no trouble finding such talent in the Old Pueblo.

Before joining Involta, Ward himself spent seven years in Tucson working a traveling job for a national data-management company.

Higher-level IT jobs can pay well. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, network and system administrators in Pima County earned an average annual salary of $63,790 in 2012, while the average salary for all computer- and math-related jobs was $74,260.

As a data service provider, Involta often serves competing companies, but that's not a problem, Ward said.

"We're like Switzerland - we're carrier neutral," he said.

The company so far is partnering with three Internet providers: Cox Communications, TW Telecom and CenturyLink.

A senior Cox official said teaming up with Involta provides the cable provider's customers with an expanded level of connectivity and increased security options.

"This alliance caters to businesses, especially those in health care, government and education, by providing robust data connections combined with security and managed services," Pam Crim, Cox Business regional sales director, said in an email response.

IF YOU GO

Involta LLC will host a grand opening celebration for its newest data center at 1 p.m. Wednesday onsite at 1215 E. Pennsylvania St. R.S.V.P. by calling 1-855-364-3061 (select option 2).

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

The future of electronics may be up, instead of out. And that's a good direction for a local company vying to be part of perhaps the next big thing in electronics: so-called 3-D circuit design.

Last week, local tech startup nMode Solutions announced that it had teamed up with Tokyo-based Asahi Glass Co. Ltd. and invested $2.1 million to co-found a subsidiary business, Triton Micro Technologies.

The new company will develop technology to form connections, called interposers, through thin glass to help drive a new generation of vertically stacked, 2.5-D and 3-D semiconductor chips and integrated circuits (think "three-dimensional").

Interposers allow the creation of a high number of electrical connections between a silicon chip and a printed circuit board - a key to new space-saving, stacked semiconductor designs, the companies say.

A few companies already are making memory and other integrated circuits with 3-D technology, and Intel Corp. has developed 3-D transistors for some of its Core series of central-processor chips.

Stacked, 3-D designs offer a way to pack more processing power into a smaller package - a key driver of technology and even more vital in today's world of smartphones and tablets, said Tim Mobley, CEO of Triton and nMode.

"You can basically put new capability into the same area," said Mobley, who founded nMode in 2010 after spending three years working as an electrical engineer at Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems.

The 3-D designs also can save a lot of power because signal pathways are shorter. (So-called 2.5-D designs involve integration of circuits in more of a side-by-side architecture, but they share some of the same advantages of 3-D designs.)

Mobley, who prior to working at Raytheon spent a decade as a design engineer at chemicals giant DuPont, felt it was time to pursue his passion for circuit design on his own, even as 3-D chips started to emerge.

"It was something that was just a calling, I guess," Mobley said.

nMode launched successfully in 2010 as a tenant at the Arizona Center for Innovation, a high-tech business incubator at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park.

nMode has built a clientele in advanced circuit design including automotive electronics supplier Bosch, as well as offering custom circuit substrate material and glass interposers.

The company wanted to refine and pursue its glass interposer technology, and it found an eager partner in Asahi Glass, Mobley said.

Asahi - part of the Mitsubishi group of Japanese industrial giants - is one of the world's biggest makers of high-tech glass for displays. Asahi, Corning and other major technical glass companies are looking to extend their reach beyond displays, Mobley said.

While most of the companies pursuing 3-D designs are using silicon as their interposer material, Triton is focused on glass.

Glass is much cheaper than silicon and can be used the same way as an interposer material, Mobley said.

"The cost difference is significant," Mobley said.

""When you get to that level, you don't need silicon. It's overkill."

The transparency of glass is also a plus for certain applications, such as biometric fingerprint sensors, he said.

But glass is a tricky material to work with.

"We needed to put a hole in glass, which turns out not to be that easy," Mobley said.

With Asahi's help, Triton has developed a process of drilling holes in thin glass with lasers and filling those holes, known as vias, with conductive material like copper for eventual circuit connections.

The company can make custom glass interposers in standard silicon wafer sizes. Those layers are then mated up to wafers and "diced" along with other layers into individual chips.

An electronics industry consultant said Triton's offering should find some takers.

"The most exciting part of this is, there are a lot of people who are very interested in looking at a glass interposer for various applications," said Jan Vardaman, president and founder of Austin-based TechSearch International Inc. "But they haven't found a place to purchase those, so I think it's a great first step in that direction."

Triton may have a tough time making inroads among major semiconductor fabricators, or foundries, Vardaman said.

But glass interposers offer an exciting new option for many applications, said Vardaman, who estimated the market for such products could reach tens of millions of dollars by 2016.

Up to now, work with glass interposers has been "more R&D-type projects, university research, so this is a very good commercial step, and I expect they'll be getting a lot of calls," Vardaman said.

The company uses labs at the UA's Micro/Nano Fabrication Center for research and has headquarters with nMode at 1840 E. River Road. Mobley said Triton could quickly ramp up to produce 6,000 to 8,000 wafer-sized interposers per month.

Mobley, who studied for an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, said the potential cost savings of the glass interposers have already attracted interest of some major companies.

"It's forcing them to look at this. It's so attractive," he said.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Falling asleep at work is never a good thing.

Nodding off at the wheel of a 200-ton mining truck is downright dangerous.

With that in mind, a Tucson-based company is carving a niche for itself in the growing mining technology sector.

Guardvant Inc. makes sophisticated systems to improve the safety of mining operations, including a product that monitors worker fatigue and alertness, and proximity-awareness systems.

Last week, the three-year-old company announced a major order from Chilean copper mining giant Codelco for its OpGuard fatigue-alert system and its ProxGuard proximity-awareness system.

Codelco (Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile) plans to install more than 500 of Guardvant's systems at two of its mines in Chile.

"They had some trial systems for awhile, so this is them making the decision to go forward. It's pretty significant, and we're pretty excited about it," said Erich Smidt, director of sales and marketing for Guardvant.

The systems add to previous installations in Africa, South America, North America and Australia, by mining companies including South African gold miner Gold Fields Ltd., diamond miner DeBeers, Anglo American Plc and BHP Billiton.

The company's OpGuard monitoring system uses infrared cameras and illumination, along with facial-recognition and video-processing technology, to track and evaluate an operator's eye and facial movements.

"We are able to look at aspects like the percent of eye closure. We look for signs of possibly building up to overfatigue. We also look at the pitch and yaw of the face, for distraction events," Smidt said.

How often people blink and how long they keep their eyes closed can tell a lot about their fatigue level, Smidt said. That includes spotting so-called incidences of "microsleep" - a sort of involuntary catnap lasting perhaps a couple of seconds.

The OpGuard system can be set up to set off an alarm when a person is detected nodding off, and the video can be replayed for an accident investigation, for example.

Such constant surveillance might make civil libertarians squirm.

But the cameras are not monitored constantly, Smidt said, noting that the company works with customers on "face-saving" ways to address on-the-job napping with employees.

Such technology is important in an industry where 12-hour shifts are common, Smidt noted.

A few other companies market fatigue-monitoring systems, including Australia-based Seeing Machines, which also uses facial-recognition technology and has an office in Tucson.

A United Kingdom company uses software that predicts fatigue based on data inputs like hours worked and vehicle steering, while another Australian company has a system that measures a person's brain waves with a special cap.

Besides OpGuard - Guardvant's biggest seller - Guardvant also markets its ProxGuard proximity monitoring system, which combines radar, video cameras and GPS satellite navigation to eliminate driver blind spots and pinpoint approaching hazards. A third product, SecurityGuard, is a security-camera and alert system tailored to mining operations.

A mining expert said he isn't surprised that Codelco decided to install Guardvant's high-tech fatigue system.

"I worked in Chile, and it's my impression they want to be at the forefront of technology," said George Leaming, a local mining industry economist.

In fact, Codelco has been using remote-control mining trucks at one mine in Chile since 2008.

Leaming said it's part of a movement by mine operators to automate operations, but it hasn't always worked out.

"There's been a number of companies who have been trying to automate or robotize the mining industry - some with success, some not so successful," Leaming said.

Guardvant is just one of several mining-technology companies that call Tucson home.

In fact, the company's founders include several former employees of Tucson-based Modular Mining Systems, which makes sophisticated mining dispatch and fleet-management systems.

Other local mining technology companies include Mintec Inc., which makes modeling and mine planning software; and Zonge International, which makes sensing equipment for geophysical research.

Guardvant founder Sergio Blacutt left Modular and formed a new company, Jigsaw Technologies, a maker of mining fleet-management systems that was acquired by Leica Geosystems in 2007.

Guardvant employs 14 people at its Tucson headquarters, and has two sales and service offices in Africa and one in South America.

The company performs final assembly and testing of its systems in Tucson, using local vendors including Yarbrough Electronics Sales for circuit boards, Smidt said.

Smidt said most of Guardvant's sales so far have been overseas, but that could change.

"We've really been focusing overseas, and now we're starting to really focus here in North America as well," he said.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Even as deep defense budget cuts loom, Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems is poised to start a new production line for precision-guided artillery shells.

Raytheon recently announced it will start low-rate-initial production of the Excalibur Ib precision-guided artillery projectile, a 155mm, GPS satellite-guided shell that can strike within about 13 feet of its target at a range of more than 20 miles.

The Army awarded Raytheon a $56.6 million fiscal year 2012 production contract for the projectile in December. Contract options through fiscal year 2016 include an undetermined number of additional shells to support U.S. forces' requirements, training and foreign military sales, Raytheon said.

The award followed a competition to develop the next generation of the Excalibur, which was originally developed by Raytheon and rushed into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007.

Co-developed with Swedish defense contractor BAE Systems/Bofors, the weapon proved effective and popular particularly among Marine Corps units in Afghanistan. More than 500 Excalibur rounds have been fired in combat including one shell fired by Marines in Afghanistan last June that hit its target from a record range of 36 kilometers (about 22 miles).

The Excalibur Ib round was designed to improve reliability and lower unit costs while maintaining high precision, Lt. Col. Josh Walsh, the Army's Excalibur program manager, was quoted as saying in a Raytheon news release.

The Excalibur Ib has built-in flexibility to adapt to future needs through software changes and capability upgrades, said Michelle Lohmeier, vice president of Army programs at Raytheon Missile Systems.

Production of the Excalibur Ib will start when the production run for the prior, Excalibur 1a-2 version is completed sometime in the fourth quarter, Raytheon spokeswoman Jackie Gutmann said.

Excalibur is a big program, but it could have been much bigger.

The Army originally planned to buy about 30,000 of the guided shells, but in 2010 those plans were scaled back, and current plans call for buying only about 6,250.

One the goals for the Ib version of Excalibur was to cut the cost from more than $100,000 per shell to around $47,000 each.

The huge cut in expected orders meant the unit cost stayed high - about $80,000 per shell according to the latest Pentagon estimates.

That change triggered a review under what is known as the Nunn-McCurdy Amendment, a 1980s federal law that requires an investigation when defense program costs skyrocket beyond original estimates.

Last year, a study conducted by the Rand Corp. for the Pentagon concluded that the nearly 80 percent production cut was the main reason for the high unit cost of the Excalibur. But the report also cited inaccurate program estimates early on, concept and technology changes, minor technical issues and the "urgent operational need" for the weapon.

First Alabama missile

It was a milestone for Raytheon, but perhaps a bittersweet moment for Tucson.

Raytheon Missile Systems announced last week that it had delivered the first complete Standard Missile-6 to the U.S. Navy from its new integration and testing facility in Huntsville, Ala.

The SM-6 is the latest in Raytheon's Standard Missile series of ship-defense missiles, defending against fixed-wing planes, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles.

Raytheon opened the doors of its $75 million, 70,000-square-foot, "all-up-round" production facility at Redstone Arsenal in November. The facility has the latest processes for missile production, Raytheon says. Raytheon passed over Tucson for the new plant in 2010, citing among other things the lack of adequate buffer zone between the local Raytheon plant at Tucson International Airport and surrounding development.

AudioEye Edison finalist

Tucson-based AudioEye Inc. has been named a 2013 Award Finalist for the Edison Awards.

The company, which has developed an audio Internet content-management system and media player, will be honored by the Edison Awards in Chicago on April 25.

AudioEye is based at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park.

AudioEye CEO Nathaniel Bradley said the company's software offers a better way to access the Internet, not only for mobile, multitasking users, but for those who are vision-impaired.

The Edisons originally were established in 1987 by the American Marketing Association.The award organization has been independent since 2008.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

From a little lagoon in Tucson to raging seas, a tiny unmanned watercraft developed by a Sahuarita company is on course to provide new hurricane-tracking data.

Hydronalix Inc., a company headed by University of Arizona engineering alumnus Tony Mulligan, is conducting pre-delivery testing of 10 unmanned, autonomous boats for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The four-year-old company previously developed the EMILY (EMergency Integrated Lifesaving LanYard) for use as a remote-controlled water rescue craft.

The EMILY Hurricane Tracker version is being developed under a Phase III Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to help NOAA better track hurricanes by going where no watercraft has gone before.

The EMILY hurricane craft is about 5 1/2 feet long and weighs about 90 pounds, give or take depending on its payload. Its small gas engine can generate speeds of up to 16 knots (about 18 mph), but EMILY can cruise on its own for five to 10 days at 7 knots (about 8 mph).

But what the EMILY Hurricane Tracker lacks in speed and brawn, it makes up in brains.

Outfitted with a satellite data link and a variety of sensors, EMILY can be launched and programmed on the fly to steer into storms and continuously collect and transmit data such as barometric pressure, wind and temperature to its operators.

Software developed by Hydronalix, with the help of the UA College of Engineering, allows the craft to operate autonomously or be reprogrammed midcourse.

The craft is designed to be controlled by signals sent via satellite with a computer - or even a smartphone - by means of short text messages that tell EMILY to steer to a new waypoint, or turn itself on or off, for example.

While NOAA collects data from various platforms, including storm-tracking manned aircraft, drones and data-gathering buoys, there is no system yet that can gather and continually transmit the kind of sea-level data EMILY can gather, Hydronalix and NOAA officials said.

While planes can gather point data about storm conditions, they can't chart a storm's ongoing development like EMILY will, said Mark Patterson, vice president of technology for Hydronalix.

"The idea here is, we get a data dump every 10 minutes through the satellite," Patterson said. "That will be the first time people have gathered data of this sort of quality over time."

A major goal is to navigate the EMILY tracker into the eye of a hurricane, where it can become "entrained," or carried along, by the storm, NOAA program manager Justyna Nicinska said.

"Our goal with this technology is to actually have it surface launched, and entrain it into the eye of the storm and have it follow along with the storm for a couple of days and collect boundary layer data, primarily pressure (data)," Nicinska said.

"That is one of the key parameters that's missing in our current observations ... that could be very useful for forecasters to integrate into current numerical models," she said.

Such valuable technology doesn't come cheap: The EMILY Hurricane Tracker model costs about $30,000 each.

But knowing where a hurricane is headed and how big of a punch it will pack on arrival is a key to assuring safe evacuations - or perhaps avoiding multimillion-dollar storm preparations, Patterson noted.

Though a few EMILY trackers were launched during a limited test off the California coast last November, much testing remains to be done before the little craft is hurled into a hurricane.

For now, Mulligan and his Hydronalix crew are testing the finished craft at the small, remote-controlled boat area at Tucson's Silverbell Lake, in Christopher Columbus Park.

On Monday, Mulligan was the literal hands-on CEO, tweaking the boat's fuel mix as company engineer Steve Shemenski gave the craft commands via satellite with laptop computer.

The acceptance testing includes remote starting and stopping, programmed navigation, rerouting the craft midcourse, 24 hours of continuous operation and a rollover test, where the water-tight boat is intentionally capsized, righted and restarted.

The company hopes to finish testing six boats this week and four next week, Mulligan said.

After the acceptance, the boats will go through testing in gradually more demanding weather conditions before they're thrown into a hurricane.

If all goes well, NOAA's Nicinska said, EMILY may be deployed toward the end of summer.

Other NOAA agencies are also interested in using EMILY for jobs such as marine sensing, shallow water mapping, habitat detection and marine debris detection.

"We're also looking to put cameras on it for port security (uses)," Mulligan said.

Meanwhile, Hydronalix has delivered 22 of its EMILY rescue craft to lifeguard departments and first responders, including one delivered to the Tucson area's Northwest Fire District last year for swift-water rescue, Mulligan said.

And the company is still working on other designs for the Navy and other undisclosed government customers.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

What do missiles think about as they're flying through the air?

That may sound like a silly question, but on Monday more than 100 high school students found out the answer to that - and maybe got some career ideas - at "Engineering Is Awesome" at Raytheon Missile Systems' airport plant.

The daylong event, part of National Engineers Week, is one of Raytheon's latest efforts to get kids excited about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

STEM education is vital to Raytheon, Southern Arizona's biggest private employer, as experts bemoan low U.S. student test scores and wonder where the next generation of engineers will come from.

"We want students to meet real-life engineers and see firsthand what engineers do at Raytheon," said Colleen Niccum, director of community and government relations for Raytheon. "Hopefully we will inspire these young people to become the next generation of innovators."

Seniors and juniors from about a dozen schools in the region took part in a variety of hands-on demonstrations of engineering principles at work behind the walls of Raytheon's sprawling plant adjacent to Tucson International Airport.

Unlike some of Raytheon's other STEM programs, including its "MathMovesU" program for middle-schoolers, participants in Monday's event are on the cusp of their careers.

And they've already got a foot in the door to college: Most of the participating students are in the University of Arizona's Engineering 102 HS class, a senior-year high school course that provides college credit.

During the day, participants moved around in teams, listening to Raytheon engineers talk about their careers and hopping from one high-tech demo to another.

In a session on heat transfer, students were asked to feel rods of different materials set in cups of ice water, to compare the conductivity of plastic, wood and metals. That was pretty low-tech but next, the group got to view images through a pricey infrared camera.

Raytheon thermal analyst Chuck Bersbach showed how he could leave handprints from his body heat on a wall. An image of a student's chair showed a yellow heat imprint, except for where his wallet insulated the chair.

In another session, students were treated to "concept of operations," or CONOPS - images and videos created to convey how a system works. Raytheon has a whole department that creates such multimedia simulations, to demonstrate its technology and in some cases to create training tools.

Students got to "fire" a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher using a laser range finder and video simulator similar to an actual training setup.

Other sessions included a workshop on contamination, including a look at a corrosion problem via a scanning electron microscope; and a robotics session that had students answer a set of mathematical problems to prompt a robot to precisely engrave key chains (awarded as prizes for solving the problems).

And just what does a missile think about in midflight? Turns out, quite a lot.

Students learned about "real-time embedded image processing," which helps missiles find and discern their targets, and were able to work with actual missile hardware to observe the effect of changing various parameters.

Devin Thomas, a University High School senior, had fun firing the rocket launcher and was fascinated by the range-finding calculations built into the weapon, which lacks precision guidance.

"It was really interesting to see how there's so much mathematics behind it," Thomas said.

Sabino High School senior Andrew Getman liked the contamination lab, where failed components are analyzed.

"I thought it was pretty cool. I especially liked the electron microscope, because not only could you see what was there, but you could take a spectrograph and actually find out what elements are present," said Getman, who tentatively plans to pursue a mechanical engineering degree at the UA.

Charlotte Mitchell, a Mountain View High School senior, who enjoyed the sessions on missile imaging and robotics, said the event was a great opportunity to quiz engineers on their college paths and how that translated into careers.

"You get a really good idea of what you're looking forward to," she said.

Mitchell also was pleasantly surprised to see so many girls at the event.

"So many of the girls who are good in math don't go on to the higher maths in high school, just because of what they think their friends will think," said Mitchell, who hopes to study chemical engineering at the University of Washington.

"It was really interesting to see how there's so much mathematics behind it."

Devin Thomas, University High School senior

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

One Tucson company is developing a new cancer diagnostics platform based on the defensive systems of tumor cells.

Another is developing advanced systems for unmanned aircraft.

Still another is working on tiny, nano-scale particles to isolate substances like DNA.

These emerging technologies and others are getting some early help to someday reach the marketplace, under a special grant program aimed at helping high-tech entrepreneurs commercialize their discoveries.

The Arizona Commerce Authority recently announced 24 companies statewide - including five in the Tucson area - that will receive grants of between $3,000 and $7,500 each under the Federal and State Technology (FAST) program.

The Tucson awardees are:

• DemeteRx Pharmaceuticals, located in the Arizona Center for Innovation at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park, which was awarded $7,500.

• Colloidal Gen Inc., another Arizona Center for Innovation tenant, awarded $5,000.

• Latitude Engineering, an unmanned aircraft technology company at 744 S. Euclid Ave., which won a FAST grant of $7,500.

• Engineering Science Analysis Corp., a product engineering and prototyping firm that has commercialized vehicle-stopping equipment for law enforcement, awarded $7,500;

• TotalPersona LLC (Worldbyme.com), which was awarded a $3,000 grant. The company, 1518 W. Fort Lowell Road, provides secure software allowing for the exchange of information between schools and student families.

The other grant awardees are mainly in the Phoenix area (for a complete list, see the Commerce Authority's announcement at tinyurl.com/b64r542).

All told, the Commerce Authority awarded $169,230 in FAST grants statewide, including a state match of federal money.

Available to companies with fewer than 30 employees and revenues below $2 million, the FAST grants are meant to be used for third-party technology validation, a commercialization feasibility study, or other commercialization help such as training to compete for federal funding under programs such as the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

Samantha Whitman said her company, DemeteRx Pharmaceuticals, will use about $5,000 of its FAST award to apply for a SBIR grant to advance its diagnostic technology.

Whitman's technology is based on discoveries made while she was working as a postdoctorate student in the lab of Donna Zhang, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology, in the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy.

Zhang has developed cancer therapies based on a plant-based compound that exploits a signaling pathway that cancer cells use to protect themselves from damage.

While development of the drug is years away, Whitman said she's using the research on the signaling pathway to develop so-called companion tests to determine a specific drug's potential efficacy.

Whitman said the rest of the FAST grant will be used to help file patents on the technology.

Joseph Utermohlen, president of Colloidal Gen, said he plans to use the FAST grant money to further commercialization of his company's proprietary technology, which involves the use of ferrite iron oxides as a medium to magnetically separate biological material like DNA and proteins.

For example, Utermohlen said, current DNA extraction methods involve breaking down a sample into a "soup" of material and then extracting DNA by means of filtering or attraction to certain media.

Colloidal Gen's technology uses particles about 50 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size to attract DNA (or other target material) and later separate it using magnetics, said Utermohlen, a former scientist at Ventana Medical Systems who's been involved in several startups.

While many of the FAST grant recipients are startup, early-stage companies, Tucson-based Latitude Engineering has been providing systems and engineering for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) since 2006, serving mainly as a defense subcontractor.

The company intends to use its FAST grant to develop more products for commercial UAV work, even as the Federal Aviation Administration labors to finalize rules to open up the airspace to commercial drone aircraft, Latitude owner and president Jason Douglas said.

"That proposition is risky, because the FAA rules are in flux," said Douglas, who formerly worked with Tucson-based Advanced Ceramics Research, a UAV technology company acquired by defense giant BAE Systems in 2009.

While the FAST grant amounts may not seem like much, they can make a difference.

Successful local FAST grant winners include Paragon Space Development Corp. and Ridgetop Group.

"That early money - it is so critical to early-stage companies," said Larry Hecker, a local corporate attorney, longtime high-tech booster and expert in entreprenuership.

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

What do dry ice and water have to do with economic development?

Not much at first glance, but if you blow away the plume of vaporizing carbon dioxide, you can see the awed faces of children - and perhaps glimpse Arizona's technology future.

Dry-ice experiments, static-electricity generators and other fun, hands-on science demonstrations are all part of Family SciFest, planned for its second run Feb. 16 at Children's Museum Tucson.

The kids' sci-fest, along with the inaugural Tech in Tucson Showcase expo and a tech innovation forum set for the same day, make up the Science in the City program. The events are part of the second annual Arizona SciTech Festival, which kicks off statewide Wednesday.

The aim of the festival, which is co-sponsored by the Arizona Technology Council, is to stimulate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and careers, to assure an ample supply of scientists in the future.

Last year's Family SciFest attracted about 1,200 participants, and organizers expect about 2,000 this year, said Brooke Sanders-Silverman, education director for the Children's Museum.

Such educational events are dear to Alex Rodriguez, a former Tucson Unified School District board president who was named director of the Tech Council's Southern Arizona regional office last September.

"STEM education is a national security and economic security imperative for our country," said Rodriguez, 42, a former Army officer who spent several years as a Pentagon policy adviser. "As a former school board member, I'm concerned we're not doing the things we need to do, fast enough."

The Tech in Tucson Showcase event and forum are part of an effort to expand council offerings in the region, and ultimately, to increase membership, he said.

"It's an undervalued resource that, if strengthened, can make a big impact in terms of Arizona's standing in the global market," Rodriguez said of the council.

The council now has more than 670 members statewide, including about 125 in Southern Arizona, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez plans to increase the numbers of local council events, such as the upcoming tech showcase, luncheon seminars and networking mixers, to around 30 to 35 a year from about 25 last year.

About 25 exhibitors will have booths in the Tech in Tucson Showcase, spanning areas including space exploration, energy, optics, nanotechnology, semiconductors and environmental technologies, coordinator Steve Peters said.

The tech forum, Technology Innovation and Economic Development In Southern Arizona, will feature panelists including Mayor Jonathan Rothschild; Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz.; Bob Breault, chairman of the Arizona Optics Industry Association; Mike Sember, chairman of the BioIndustry Organization of Southern Arizona; and David Allen, executive director of the University of Arizona's Tech Launch Arizona.

Meanwhile, the Tech Council remains a strong voice at the Legislature, Rodriguez said.

This year, the council is pushing legislation to extend and expand the state's research and development tax credit, as well as a state-backed fund to attract private venture-capital investment in tech startups.

"At the end of the day, we want to have a bigger impact in terms of job growth and technology growth," Rodriguez said.

If you go

Science in the City 2013

(all events Feb. 16)

• Family SciFest, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Children's Museum Tucson, 200 S. Sixth Ave. (free).

• Tech in Tucson Showcase, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., UNS Energy building auditorium, 88 E. Broadway (free).

• Forum - Technology Innovation and Economic Development in Southern Arizona, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., UNS Energy auditorium (free but registration required).

• For more information or to register for forum, go to scienceinthecity.tucsonlink.org

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

One of Tucson's newest manufacturers, Integrated Magnetics, started out in 1955 making standard magnets, like the ones stuck to your refrigerator door.

Today, you can find the company's custom magnets, motors and precision assemblies in products ranging from automobiles to guided missiles.

"We make things that have magnetics at the heart of them," said Anil Nanji, president of Integrated Magnetics' parent, Integrated Technologies Group.

Now, some of those products are being made right here in Tucson, at a plant the company opened on the south side.

Integrated Magnetics announced in September that it had purchased the 25,000-square-foot industrial building at 3590 E. Columbia St. from Applied Energetics (which moved nearby) for about $1.5 million. The company said the site could employ up to 200 people over the next five years.

The Culver City, Calif.-based company hit the ground running and has made itself right at home in Tucson.

Nanji said the company got the keys to the new plant Oct. 1 and by month's end was turning out sample products. The company initially employs about 16 people, including assemblers and other technical staff.

At the plant one day last week, a team of assemblers was working on long, cylindrical motors for robotic equipment arms.

But there's more to come, including a large, Class 1000 clean room (with 1,000 denoting the number of half-micrometer or larger particles allowed per cubic foot of air) for assembly and testing of sensitive products. The company already has one small clean room, Nanji noted.

"We will be hiring more people between now and mid-February," Nanji said.

Nanji declined to say what exactly what the factory workers are paid but said it is in the industry range of about $12 to $15 per hour, plus full benefits.

The company has had no trouble finding experienced assemblers, said Gus Rivera, who heads the local site as operations controller.

"They're very smart and they have the experience," said Rivera, noting that some hires had recently been let go by electronics firms that shut local operations.

Employees at the Tucson site are working on an ongoing production line, using parts made at other company locations, including a maquiladora plant Integrated Magnetics opened in Nogales, Sonora, in 2008, said Rivera, a 14-year company veteran.

Boxes of finished precision motor spindles - including tiny magnetic parts - were precision- machined in Nogales to tight tolerances, he noted.

Magnets are machined from raw stock, including rare-earth materials like neodymium iron boron, then shipped to Tucson along with other components for assembly.

"We are a very vertically integrated company, so we start with metal and end up with a finished product," Nanji said.

The success of the Mexican plant, which employs about 180 people, was a major factor in choosing Tucson for the new plant, Nanji said. The company also has a plant in China.

Tucson's strategic location between Los Angeles and the Nogales plant, the optics and engineering strengths of the University of Arizona and a pro-business climate also were cited as pluses.

"The more we looked at Tucson, the more we liked it, and we fell in love with it - it's a great city," Nanji said.

The company was founded in California in 1955 as Magnetic Sales, which sold a variety of standard ferrite magnets and became a leader in flexible magnet material.

In 1981, Nanji and his father, a longtime entrepreneur, bought 50 percent of the company with the aim of expanding into more technical magnetics. Nanji, a native of Kenya who moved with his family when he was 12 to London, studied physics and business at University College London and Malvern College.

The company began making custom magnets, adding advanced engineering and machining capabilities. In 1993, the company delivered a complete magnetic bearing assembly for NASA's Space Shuttle. In 2001, Integrated Magnetics built an actuator motor rotor designed to move in nanometer increments for the Hubble space telescope.

Some of Integrated Magnetics' customers include precision-control supplier Moog Inc.; aerospace and defense giants Honeywell, General Atomics and Alliant Techsystems; semiconductor equipment maker ASML; oil-field services provider Baker Hughes; and medical companies including Bayer and Jarvik Heart.

And the company still sells standard, non-technical magnets - including refrigerator magnets - through Magnetic Sales, now a division of the larger company.

How to apply

Check job openings at Integrated Magnetics at www.intemag.com/career_opportunities

Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.

Nearly two decades ago, University of Arizona radiologist Dr. Evan Unger recognized that an ultrasound imaging contrast agent he pioneered held promise as a way to deliver drugs or therapies to specific areas.

Unger's latest effort: a treatment to make cancer tumors more susceptible to radiation therapy.

His four-year-old Tucson company, NuvOx Pharma, is planning clinical trials of an injectable drug that can infuse tumors with oxygen to make them more susceptible to radiation treatment.

So-called hypoxic, or low-oxygen, tumors are resistant to radiation and in some cases, chemotherapy, said Unger, who in addition to faculty positions at the UA Departments of Medical Imaging and Biomedical Engineering is co-director of the Arizona Cancer Center's Cancer Imaging Program.

NuvOx's technology uses a compound known as dodecafluoropentane, originally developed as an imaging contrast agent, to carry oxygen to tumor cells.

While other so called "oxygen therapeutics" agents have been tested as therapies for stroke, they have required high doses that increase toxicity, Unger said.

The injectable dodecafluoropentane compound NuvOx has developed, known as NVX-108, has a lower boiling point and expands in the bloodstream, allowing a much smaller, safer dose, he said.

"Over a billion dollars was spent studying the other materials, and they all failed because they had high doses and eventually caused side effects in patients," Unger said. "Ours is less than one two-hundredths of the dose (of the others), and we completely reverse radiation resistance in hypoxic tumors."

Though NuvOx's technology is focused on radiation resistance of hypoxic tumors, it also could reverse their resistance to chemotherapy and help prevent DNA instability that can boost unbridled tumor growth, said Dr. Diego Martin, head of the UA Department of Medical Imaging.

"What happens with low oxygen is the tissue becomes more acidic, and the DNA becomes less stable - and that's the most dangerous part of the tumor and also the hardest part to treat," said Martin, whose research work has included tumor monitoring.

Because it was previously tested as an imaging contrast agent on more than 2,000 patients, NVX-108 can move quickly into advanced clinical trials, Unger said, adding that the dodecafluoropentane was approved for use in Europe.

In November, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agreed to allow NuvOx to use the prior clinical data and move ahead to Phase II trials after completing some "bridging" studies, Unger said.

The Phase II trial could start within nine months to a year and last about a year, Unger said.

The company has worked with the Arizona Cancer Center to study the drug's effect on hypoxic tumors, and the UA could be involved in clinical trials as well, he said.

All this research takes a lot of money.

The company has raised about $5 million, including more than $1 million in federal research grants, about $1 million invested by Unger and other founders and family members, and more than $2 million from a group of individual investors.

NuvOx is looking to raise $3.5 million more to complete the Phase II clinical trial in cancer patients and get started on clinical trials for stroke therapy.

NuvOx's technology could tap into drug markets for stroke, heart attack, cancer and bleeding-induced shock, which together represent a total annual market of $8.5 billion in the U.S. alone, Unger noted.

But at least one other company is testing new drugs to overcome hypoxia in tumors, including San Francisco-based Threshold Pharmaceuticals, which is backed by Merck.

And nothing's a sure thing when it comes to drug development.

Unger's first attempt to use contrast agents therapeutically involved an injectable suspension of perfluorocarbon "microbubbles," used with targeted ultrasound to break up blood clots.

The technology showed promise, and his follow-up company, ImaRx Therapeutics, raised about $15 million in an initial public stock offering in 2007.

ImaRx conducted clinical trials for stroke with its SonoLysis microbubble technology with an existing anti-clotting drug. But the company suspended the project in January 2009 after three patients developed serious bleeding.

The company's stock value evaporated, and its assets were sold to investors including ImaRx's former CEO. A successor company, Seattle-based Cerevast Therapeutics, is using ImaRx's original technology to develop an ultrasound device to target clots, though without the microbubbles.

Unger, who along with other investors lost most of his investment in ImaRx, is still dismayed over the failed trial of SonoLysis, which was paired with a drug known to be a bleeding risk.

"I'm glad someone's working on it, but I'm not happy about what happened," Unger said. "It's unfortunate, because the technology works. But I'm more interested in what I'm doing now."

Did you know?

UA radiologist Dr. Evan Unger has a track record of success in imaging technology. He sold one of his first companies, ImaRx Pharmaceuticals, to chemicals giant DuPont for about $40 million in 1999.

Its main product, a contrast agent for sonograms called Definity, was launched in 2001 and has been used to treat more than 3 million patients, according to Massachusetts-based Lantheus Medical Imaging, which now markets the product.

Contact Assistant Business Editor at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.