More than anything, they should be studying math, including statistics and probability, and programming. No matter what the subject, we will have huge amounts of data about it, and will need these tools to get meaning from the data. The areas I’m thinking of include medicine, genetics, nutrition, and neuroscience; human behavior; energy management and consumption; materials science (so that we can use our personal 3D printers more effectively); aerospace and cosmology (so we can find asteroids, whether to deflect them from an earth-bound path, to mine them of valuable minerals or terraform them for human habitation); and of course biology, so that we can enjoy the company of animals, grow food, and ultimately create human-friendly living conditions on other planets and asteroids. It would also be great to get better at modeling and managing economic fluctuations!

But in the meantime, don’t forget to read world literature so you can understand your place in history and know how to be a human being.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

While some tech companies said last week that they are expanding their operations, fresh concerns are emerging about San Diego’s ability to attract and retain the young entrepreneurs driving the next generation of innovation. We’ve got all that and more in our summary of last week’s tech news.

—Intel Capital was the lead investor in a $13 million Series C round for SweetLabs, a San Diego-based startup developing Web 2.0 products and services. Founded in 2007, SweetLabs first created a website that enabled software companies to advertise their products while users downloaded open software from the site. More recently, the company has developed Pokki, a platform for creating mobile-style apps that enable users to easily and quickly access apps without launching their Web browser.

—Portland, OR, economist Joe Cortright talked with me about his demographic studies of young, educated, and entrepreneurial-minded adults and how they are closely linked to the economic prosperity of the cities were they congregate. Increasingly, young adults are shunning the suburbs to live within a three-mile radius of the urban core. They want to live in diverse, urban neighborhoods with different types of housing, and a nearby mix of local shops, restaurants, and bars. In a 2010-11 survey, young adults preferred 10 cities to San Diego. They are Austin, Boston, Seattle, Washington, DC, Houston, New York City, Denver, Dallas, Portland, OR, and Salt Lake City.

—San Diego’s Entropic Communications (NASDAQ: ENTR) said it formed a strategic partnership with microchip designer Zenverge of Cupertino, CA, to work together on the next generation of multimedia products for home entertainment systems. Entropic also made a $10 million investment in Zenverge, leading the company’s $20.5 million Series D round.

—San Diego’s Qualcomm [NASDAQ: QCOM) said it is continuing to work with India’s telecommunications agency, after regulators there declared earlier this month that Qualcomm and its Indian partners had not submitted proper wireless operations applications, according to a report by Mike Freeman of The San Diego Union-Tribune. Qualcomm paid about $1 billion to acquire rights to parts of India’s wireless spectrum last year.

—I had an opportunity last week to talk with Eset marketing vice president Dan Clark about the software developer’s updated security program. Eset, which maintains its North American headquarters in San Diego, debuted the fifth generation of its flagship computer security and anti-virus software earlier this month. As computer security evolves, Clark said Eset has moved to provide online security training. Combining Eset’s technology with user education is now seen as the best way to help protect consumers from malicious attacks.

—San Diego’s Connect, the nonprofit group that supports innovation and entrepreneurship, named 24 finalists for its annual most innovative products awards. In cleantech, the finalists are Genomatica, Noble Environmental Technologies, and Wildcat Discovery Technologies. In communications and IT, the finalists are Ethertronics, Kyocera, and Swarmology. The software finalists are FICO, MOGL, and SwoopThat. The finalists in general technology are Aculon, LifeProof, and Memjet. The finalists in aerospace and security are Geodetics, Langford & Carmichael, and MicroPower Technologies.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Carlsbad, CA-based ViaSat is delaying its revised launch of the ViaSat-1 satellite by a few weeks, until August or September, according to the website Satellite Today. ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg confirmed to the online news provider that Space Systems/Loral discovered a malfunction in a solar panel aboard a previous satellite, the Telstar 14R, which prompted the satellite maker to conduct a failure review analysis of ViaSat-1. The Ka-band satellite, which is designed to provide high-speed Internet service, was set for launch this month. It was initially scheduled for launch in May.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Oak Hill Capital Partners said today that it will sell Bellevue, WA-based aerospace components manufacturer Primus International to Precision Castparts of Portland, OR, for $900 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2011. Oak Hill acquired Primus in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. Primus employs 1,500 people across seven sites, including three in the Seattle area, to manufacture metallic and composite parts, kits, and assemblies for such aircraft as Boeing’s 737, 777 and 787 and Airbus’s A320, A330 and A350. Mark Donegan, chairman and CEO of Precision Castparts, said the Primus management team, led by current chief Jim Hoover, will remain with the company.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

When I was in elementary school, we played kickball during recess. There weren’t any umpires, so we had to police ourselves. If there was an intractable dispute, we would yell “Do Over!” and simply repeated the play. No harm, no foul.

However, things are little more complicated–and expensive– in the adult world. For manufacturers of big ticket items like cars and airplanes, a do-over means production delays, angry customers, and millions of dollars in losses.

That’s where Delmia, a unit of European software giant Dassault Systemes, comes in. The company, based in Auburn Hills, MI, is one of the world’s biggest players in digital manufacturing–the use of sophisticated 3D software that simulates the working of manufacturing plant before it goes into operation. Delmia’s customer list is literally a global Who’s Who, including Toyota, Nissan, Boeing, Airbus, the U.S. Defense Department, and NASA.

With digital manufacturing, companies essentially perform a virtual dry run on a planned production facility, allowing engineers to figure out where to best position workers, equipment, supplies and tools and in what order. The goal is to maximize efficiency and reduce potential errors that lead to defective products. To prevent accidents and workplace injuries, the software can also factor in detailed demographic information on workers, including gender, height, weight, and languages.

“The virtual factory runs in concert with the real factory,” says Delmia vice president Patrick Michel. “It focuses on the ‘what if?’ scenarios. Starting with a product, how are we going to build and engineer the manufacturing process?”

“The manufacturing point of view is different from the engineering view,” he continues. We’re looking to find patterns that are not obvious. It’s amazing the stuff you find that you hadn’t anticipated.”

The stakes are pretty high, Michel says. Boosting production time by 10 to 20 percent can mean three extra cars a year, he says. On the flip side, any delay can cost a company $1 million to $5 million a day. Just ask Boeing about the pain it has felt from manufacturing delays for its next-generation composite material airplane, the 787.

“Manufacturing productivity must be ever increased and producers must constantly look for ways to meet the faster, better, cheaper mantra of today’s economy,” according to a report by CIMdata, a research firm in Ann Arbor, MI. “To meet these pressures and remain competitive, leading manufacturers are going digital.”

In the report, CIMdata estimates that a company that annually invests $5 million to $10 million in digital manufacturing can save it $50 million to $100 million a year.

Nevertheless, demand for such software dipped in 2009 as manufacturers struggled to cope with the global economic downturn. But “there are signs that business is starting to pick up,” Michel says.

Delmia wants to be prepared for an upswing, especially by expanding beyond its core automobile and aerospace customers and into more highly regulated products like vaccines, drugs, and medical devices. Digital manufacturing can help those customers meet regulatory requirements set by the Food and Drug Administration, Michel says.

In March, Dassault paid $36.5 million to acquire Intercim, based in St. Paul, MN, a manufacturing software maker that specializes in life sciences. Last month, Dassault purchased Enginuity, which makes research and development software for regulated formula-based industries like cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals.

Delmia is also courting energy customers, including nuclear power plants.

The $500 million or so digital manufacturing industry is highly fragmented, with Delmia and Siemens accounting for 20 percent of the market. But Michel made clear that Dassault is not buying companies simply to boost sales.

“We don’t do it for market share,” Michel says. “We’re interested in strategic value. We’re always looking for one plus one equals three.”

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

NASA has halted work on an advanced zoom 3D camera system under development in San Diego for the SUV-sized Mars Science Laboratory rover—to the disappointment of Avatar filmmaker James Cameron.

In a statement Friday, privately held Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) of San Diego said there wasn’t enough time remaining to finish testing and integrating the advanced 3D zoom instruments for the scheduled launch of the spacecraft this November. The cameras were supposed to be mounted to the top of a mast on Curiosity, the name NASA has given the newest Mars rover.

“While Curiosity won’t benefit from the 3D motion imaging that the zooms enable, I’m certain that this technology will play an important role in future missions,” Cameron says in a statement from the company. MSSS lists the filmmaker in its credits as “Mastcam Co-Investigator.”

As I reported in 2008, the San Diego company had enlisted Cameron’s help years ago, with the idea of combining its scientific mission with imaging capabilities that could be used to create a stunning movie about Mars. “We proposed this integrated camera system that could do the science imaging that NASA wanted, but also had this zoom capability,” Michael Ravine, MSSS advanced project manager, told me at the time.

Cameron had used a pair of Russian deep-diving research submarines in a similar way to obtain footage from the bottom of the Atlantic for his 1997 film Titanic.

NASA had halted previous development of an HD zoom lens system in 2007, and MSSS delivered two fixed focal length cameras last April. With the two completed and delivered fixed focal length cameras in hand, NASA then decided to fund completion of zoom cameras, with the possibility of swapping out the old cameras for the new ones if they could be assembled and tested in time. The move, which followed the boffo success of Cameron’s 3D film Avatar, included a decision to make stereoscopic 3D zoom camera systems for the spacecraft.

Curiosity on a tilt table at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA

While MSSS finished work on the cameras by the December deadline, subsequent optical analysis of the images showed irregularities due to unexpected and extremely small variations in the fabrication of some pieces. “At the end of the day there just wasn’t enough time to disassemble the units, make the changes, put them back together, and get the instruments to JPL in time,” Ravine said.

In the statement issued by the company, the director renowned for his determination sounded an upbeat note about the setback. He’s quoted as saying, “We’re certainly going to make the most of our cameras that are working so well on Curiosity right now,” but you know, it’s a press release.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Connect, the San Diego non-profit group dedicated to supporting technology innovation and entrepreneurism, named the winners of its “Most Innovative New Product” awards at a luncheon ceremony Friday. This year, San Diego’s innovation community nominated more than 100 new products—a record number of nominees—which prompted Connect CEO Duane Roth to note in a statement that “the true measure of an innovation economy is the volume of research that translates into successful products.”

The group also named TurboTax as the recipient of this year’s Otterson Award, which Connect describes as the highlight of its ceremony. The award, created in memory of Connect’s founding executive director, Bill Otterson, recognizes technologies or products developed in San Diego that have demonstrated a “significant positive impact on quality of life.” San Diego’s ChipSoft developed TurboTax during the early 1980s and Mountain View, CA-based Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) acquired ChipSoft in 1993. Since its launch in 1984, TurboTax has grown to become the nation’s best-selling tax preparation software.

Connect also surprised two people, life sciences consultant Julia Brown and Provide Commerce CEO Bill Strauss, with its Distinguished Contribution Award, which recognizes individuals who have supported the advancement of local entrepreneurs.

The 2010 MIP Award winners in each of eight categories are:

—Action and Sport Technologies: Solana Beach, CA-based ElliptiGO for the ElliptiGO 8S, a low-impact fitness training machine that is part bicycle, part elliptical cross-trainer.

ElliptiGo Trainer

—Aerospace and Security Technologies: San Diego’s Trex Aviation Systems (part of Trex Enterprises) for the FOD Finder, a millimeter band radar and related technology that is mounted on a vehicle and used to automatically detect … Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

OK, a flying Humvee doesn’t sound like a very green vehicle—but the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency isn’t interested in green.

DARPA is interested in improving the safety and lethality of U.S. troops in dangerous environments. And it is willing to pay handsomely for it—to the tune of a five-year, $65 million research program to develop what it calls a “Transformer” vehicle that works like a Humvee on land, but can also fly.

No, this isn’t an Onion article. The goal is to be able to carry four troops and their gear (1,000 pounds) over a distance of 280 miles on one tank of fuel, by any combination of air and land, the agency says. The vehicle must be able to take off and land vertically—meaning it will fly like a cross between a helicopter and a plane (see drawing above). And, oh yeah, it has to be piloted by an average Marine Corps soldier without any flight experience. In other words, it needs to fly mostly by itself.

If it works—a big if, indeed—such a vehicle could swoop over obstacles or tough terrain, and potentially could help troops avoid ambushes and improvised explosive devices in roads. It could also be used for evacuation or rescue missions where it would be very useful to scan the situation from the air and then drop in at the right spot—in urban combat operations, say—while maintaining some mobility on the ground after landing. (You can read more details and speculation in this Popular Mechanics article.)

A key participant in the DARPA program is Woburn, MA-based Terrafugia. You might know it as the “flying car” company, though the firm much prefers the drier term “roadable aircraft.” Terrafugia was founded in 2006 by five MIT-educated pilots, and has been developing a light sport plane, called the Transition, that can be driven on roads and is slated for testing and production next year. The company declined to comment on its involvement in the DARPA program beyond the information in its press release this week. But it’s clear that Terrafugia’s expertise in combining flying and driving vehicles is valuable here.

Indeed, Terrafugia is “one of the few companies that has experience blending the disparate ground vehicle and aircraft requirements into a single functional concept,” says Stephen Waller, the program manager for the DARPA project, in an e-mail. “This is the primary challenge to successfully develop the Transformer vehicle.”

Terrafugia is one of several companies participating in the program—and a few have connections to the Boston area. Virginia-based aerospace firm Aurora Flight Sciences, which has a research and development office in Cambridge, MA, and technical consulting firm Metis Design, based in Cambridge, both have received small-business research grants to work on the project. For its part, Terrafugia is the largest subcontractor to AAI, a Maryland-based aerospace and defense company owned by Textron, a multi-industry conglomerate headquartered in Rhode Island. AAI is one of the two main contractors on the DARPA project; defense tech giant Lockheed Martin is the other (see drawing on left for Lockheed’s competing design concept).

Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has been awarded $988,000 to develop an autonomous control system for the vehicle. Sanjiv Singh, a professor in CMU’s Robotics Institute, is leading that effort. And rocket engine company Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is working on the engine and propulsion technology for the … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Oasys Technology, a Manchester, NH-based company specializing in electronics and optical systems, is being acquired by BAE Systems, the U.K.-based defense and aerospace company. Financial terms weren’t given in the press release, but outlets including Automated Trader and Mass High Tech have reported the deal is worth $25 million upon closing plus an earnout of up to $30 million over time. Oasys was founded in 2004 and has 65 employees at its design and manufacturing center in Manchester. BAE, which has a strong presence in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, says it will integrate Oasys’s operations with BAE’s offices in Nashua, NH.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

A future replete with flying cars inched a bit closer today. At the AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, WI, aerospace startup Terrafugia of Woburn, MA, took the wraps off the latest prototype for its Transition “roadable aircraft,” which has folding wings that make the vehicle compact enough to drive right off the tarmac and onto the street.

The new design, a scale model of which was unveiled at AirVenture, moves Terrafugia one step closer to actually manufacturing and selling its radical street-legal airplane. The four-year-old company, which raised $2 million in Series B funding in May, had always described its first aircraft—successfully flight-tested in March 2009—as the proof-of-concept version. The version shown today is a “beta prototype” that incorporates modifications based on lessons learned during last year’s test flights.

The beta version looks similar to the first prototype overall, though it bears distinctive blue racing stripes along the sides and wings. (Click on the images in this story to see larger versions.) The craft has a somewhat narrower wingspan than the proof-of-concept vehicle (26.5 feet as opposed to 27.5 feet) but is slightly heavier (1430 pounds at takeoff, versus 1320 for the original version). Given the extra weight, the new craft will burn 5 gallons of fuel per hour at cruising speed, an increase from the first prototype’s 4.5 gallons per hour.

Perhaps most important, the new design features an “improved wing with an optimized airfoil,” according to the company’s announcement, as well as automotive-style crash safety features such as an impact-absorbing nose structure and a rigid safety cage. There’s a new touch-screen interface in the cockpit, and independent suspension in the wheels for smoother driving.

There’s no word yet on how soon a flyable version of Terrafugia’s beta prototype will be finished, or when it will be tested, or how soon a third, production version of the craft might be ready. Founder and CEO Carl Dietrich said after last year’s maiden flight that the company planned to deliver its first production vehicles in 2011.

The Transition is designed to be flown by pilots with a new class of pilot’s credential known as a Sport Pilot license, obtainable after as little as 20 hours of flight time. Prospective buyers can reserve a Terrafugia vehicle for a refundable deposit of $10,000. As of the March 2009 test flight, more than 40 people had put down deposits.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

At Northrop Grumman’s unmanned systems development center in suburban San Diego, some folks are describing a $33 million contract that was announced today as “DARPA hard.”

DARPA is an acronym for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the two-year contract awarded to Northrop Grumman calls for demonstrating the feasibility of using one high-altitude unmanned Global Hawk aircraft to refuel another. The UAV-to-UAV in-flight refueling is to be completely autonomous, with the robotic aircraft using GPS navigation and optical tracking systems to approach, link up, and complete the refueling procedure. If successful, the first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) air-to-air refueling will mark a historic milestone—for both aviation and robotics.

UAV-UAV aerial refueling (photo illustration)

While mid-air refueling has been done with piloted aircraft since 1923, it remains a tricky and hazardous maneuver that requires extensive pilot training. In the case of two robotic aircraft, both UAVs must automatically adjust to turbulence and other environmental uncertainties while maneuvering in the thin air of high altitude (the Global Hawk’s cruising altitude is 65,000 feet).

“So this one definitely fits” the category of DARPA hard, says Mark Gamache, the San Diego-based director of advanced concepts for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. In a telephone interview, Gamache tells me DARPA hard “means they only like to work on projects that nobody else would do.”

The Global Hawk was itself the product of DARPA-funded development during the 1990s, with the first seven aircraft built in … Next Page »

Comments (4) | Reprints | Share:          

Mark Russell spent 13 years commuting the 50-odd miles from Graham, WA, to Kirkland and back. Driving alone, he couldn’t use the carpool lane, so he spent countless hours sitting in traffic. Now he is channeling years of pent-up frustration to help solve the broader ride-sharing problem, using a confluence of social networks, mobile applications, and smart optimization algorithms.

Russell’s company, Zebigo, is introducing its new service in Seattle later this week, when it will begin signing up customers. The Web-based service will start in earnest on June 17 in Seattle, Bellevue, and Tacoma. It works sort of like a cross between Zipcar and eBay, without the bidding. Customers set up accounts with Zebigo, and the software and Web interface matches up riders trying to go from A to B at a certain time with drivers already heading there or planning to go—all within a minute or two. If both parties agree to the rideshare, then the rider will pay the driver after they carpool together (much less than a taxi fare), with Zebigo taking a flat fee of 49 cents from each transaction. The whole thing can be done with smartphones; Zebigo sends information to the rider and driver by e-mail and text message.

“Our goal is to turn your mobile phone into a set of keys,” Russell says.

Although the service is meant for strangers to be able to share rides—more on this social barrier below—repeat carpoolers might drive a lot of business, and build their own network of people they get to know. “I feel like I am the customer for this system. I wasted three and a half hours a day in traffic,” Russell says. “I want to amalgamate all these technologies into something that really has an impact on society and the environment.”

Russell is no stranger to high-impact work. He’s a veteran of Boeing, Intel, and Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s aerospace firm. Perhaps what’s most intriguing about Zebigo is that its team of seven full-timers (and about a dozen people in all) comes largely from the aerospace industry, where they solved technical problems ranging from flight routing to intelligent database programming to spacecraft separation for launching satellites.

But it isn’t too surprising that they’ve turned their efforts to a big transportation problem. There seems to be renewed interest in sharing cars, exemplified by Cambridge, MA-based Zipcar’s plans for an initial public offering, as we reported just yesterday. And online ride-sharing services, such as Zimride, PickupPal, and GoLoco, have been sprouting up around the U.S. and Canada in the … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Adriane Brown was the CEO of Honeywell Transportation Systems, based in the Los Angeles area, when she got a call from a headhunter last year. The next thing she knew, she was talking with Intellectual Ventures, the Bellevue, WA, company focused on the business of invention. One thing led to another, and Brown is now the president and chief operating officer at Intellectual Ventures, helping run the daily operations of the 600-strong firm led by co-founder and CEO Nathan Myhrvold.

Brown admits she was an outsider to the company, and new to its whole concept of supporting inventors, and investing in both new and existing inventions and patents. In fact, her outside perspective is probably one of her strengths. Brown says that when she first looked into Intellectual Ventures as a place to work, she thought, “This company has done something unique and could have a huge impact on the world.”

In her new role, Brown has responsibilities in “all of the key functions across the company,” she told me recently. She has about 10 direct reports, and the biggest adjustment for her has probably been the transition to a smaller, private company. But that transition seems to be going fine. “I just love this job. It is exactly as advertised,” Brown says. “It is a neat addition to my career.”

Brown’s experience is both broad and deep. She spent 19 years at Corning (NYSE: GLW), the materials and manufacturing giant, where she rose from the rank of shift supervisor to vice president and general manager of environmental products, and became an expert in the automotive industry. She then moved to AlliedSignal, which acquired Honeywell (NYSE: HON) in 1999 (the merged company is called Honeywell). There, she distinguished herself in the aerospace sector, becoming president and chief executive of Honeywell Transportation Systems, a $5 billion business unit. Before all of that, Brown studied environmental health at Old Dominion University (where she later received an honorary doctorate in humane letters) and got a master’s degree in management at the MIT Sloan School of Management as a Sloan Fellow.

I recently had a chance to speak with Brown and hear about her first 100 days on the job. She started on January 1, and this was, to my knowledge, her first media interview since joining. We didn’t have time to drill down into new details of the company’s strategy, but I got the sense that she is both a process person and a people person, and that she brings a unique worldview to Intellectual Ventures’ leadership. Here are some condensed and edited highlights from our conversation:

Xconomy: You talked about having impact on the world. Can you give some examples of how your background fits with Intellectual Ventures’ broad vision?

Adriane Brown: My undergraduate degree was in environmental health. Over time, as I spent a number of years at Corning, I rose to lead the catalytic converter business. While it was the automotive industry, we were incorporating a technology that makes a difference in the world. When I traveled to Third World countries, the first thing I noticed was the pollution.

After Corning, I was looking to be uncomfortable. I find it exciting to step into a situation … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Seattle-based Modumetal is taking an important step forward today in its quest to reinvent the metals industry. The nanotech and advanced materials company is announcing a partnership with Steel Dynamics (SDI), based in Fort Wayne, IN, which will put its nanolaminated coating technology into industrial-scale steel applications.

Financial terms of the partnership weren’t given. But SDI (NASDAQ: STLD) is one of the largest steel producers and metals recyclers in the U.S. Its primary focus is on big construction projects like buildings and bridges. Some other prominent steelmakers include U.S. Steel, Nucor, and European giant ArcelorMittal.

“It’s a big deal for us,” says Christina Lomasney, Modumetal’s co-founder and CEO. She says that working with a large steel company like SDI “represents such a huge opportunity,” and that it “validates the scalability of the nanotechnologies we’re working on.”

Modumetal grows what it calls “nanolaminated structures” in vats using a patented chemical and electrical process. These materials are new kinds of metals that are stronger and lighter than steel and have other advantages as well. For example, the company’s materials can be used to make high-tech coatings that resist rust and corrosion much better than the zinc coatings of traditional galvanized steel. Most of the steel produced in the world is galvanized, Lomasney says, so this is one of Modumetal’s first big markets to tackle.

The idea is that the company’s nanolaminates can provide better performance than conventional zinc, so steel producers can use a lot less material to achieve the same anti-corrosion specifications. “For the steel industry, it’s a cost savings advantage,” Lomasney says. “We think we can save [at least] half the cost of conventional galvanizing.” That could ultimately translate into cheaper manufacturing costs for things like cars, buildings, and bridges.

Lomasney says her company will provide the “entire production line” of machines and equipment to help SDI produce nanolaminated steel in the next six months. “We take steel and turn it into ‘Modu-galvanized’ steel,” Lomasney says. “The actual operation is going to be a joint collaboration. The initial scale-up is probably going to be in Seattle.” To that end, Modumetal has expanded into a large warehouse next to its headquarters at a shipyard on Lake Union. The company now has just over 20 employees.

“This is going to be our first scale-up application,” Lomasney says. She adds that the Steel Dynamics deal is one of several partnerships to be announced in the future: “We’re looking at applications in aerospace, automotive, oil and gas, and consumer products.” (She declined to give any specific examples of the latter.)

Last week, Modumetal won a national innovation award from the Angel Capital Association. It has also won a number of defense contracts and government grants in the past few years. The company was founded in late 2006, and its investors include Seattle-based Alliance of Angels, Second Avenue Partners, and WRF Capital. Its competitors include firms like Xtalic, Integran Technologies, and The NanoSteel Company.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Engineers are not salespeople. They are certainly not sound-bite machines either. If they were either of the above, there would have been a flurry of media stories coming out of Seattle this week centered around the National Academy of Engineering’s “grand challenges” summit held here on Sunday and Monday. Maybe that’s why it took me longer than usual to synthesize what I heard into a coherent wrap-up.

Alas, the meeting was probably disappointing to most journalists. But if you are a scientist or a savvy businessperson interested in the future of technology, you should have been there. Its goal was to inspire students, researchers, and entrepreneurs to solve some of society’s most important problems—and it did. But it did so in a unique way—with some very high-level, thought-provoking talks and discussions that went far beyond what I was expecting as a casual observer. (OK, I’ll admit I’m an engineer by training, and still think like an engineer in many ways.)

It’s not exaggerating to say engineers have created the world we live in, and that they hold the future of the planet in their hands. They can also make you a lot of money if you work with them in the right way. A lot of tech entrepreneurs have other ideas, but I think the gap between technology researchers and startups needs to be bridged, for the good of society. This week, local summit organizers Matt O’Donnell, Ed Lazowska, and Bonnie Dunbar took a step in that direction, and got a lot of people buzzing about the future of technology and society.

Without further ado, here is my top 10 countdown of highlights from the summit, which focused on engineering better medicines and advancing tools for scientific discovery in computing and aerospace:

10. Eat broccoli.

During the medicine panel, Buddy Ratner, a University of Washington professor of bioengineering, raised an issue from the audience. “What’s the business model for preventive medicine?” he asked. His point was that companies pour billions of dollars into new drugs, but some of the advances that have had the most impact on improving overall health in society are low-tech things like washing hands before doing surgery, providing people with clean drinking water, and eating broccoli to help prevent cancer.

9. The new drug pipeline is broken—except when it’s not.

This was a point of contention on the panel. Lonnie Edelheit, former senior vice president of R&D at General Electric, argued that “if we don’t worry about cost, it’ll stay confusing until the system breaks completely.” Nicholas Peppas, chair of biomedical engineering at University of Texas at Austin, countered, “I don’t think the system is broken. It is still an excellent system, it works relatively well. This country has produced most of the great drugs and made them available at relatively low cost.”

8. Not everyone loves Dendreon.

Seattle’s biotech darling, which just made history by winning FDA approval for a new kind of prostate cancer drug, has its share of detractors. In discussing how to fix the drug pipeline, Bruce Montgomery, senior vice president at Gilead Sciences, said, “The problem is the reward system for … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

You want some real tech? Here’s some real tech: LaserMotive, the Kent, WA-based startup founded by physicists Jordin Kare and Tom Nugent, has published a white paper on how to beam power to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) so they don’t have to land and refuel, or change batteries. The idea is to recharge UAVs while they’re in the air using a laser power source from the ground. Presumably such “eternal” UAVs that never need to land would be very useful for military and reconnaissance operations.

In San Diego, which is a regional hub of UAV expertise, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that defense contractors like Predator manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrop Grumman’s unmanned systems business are hustling to develop a new generation of relatively inexpensive UAVs. Most larger UAVs, like the Predator and Fire Scout, a robotic helicopter made by Northrop Grumman, run on gasoline, but smaller ones can run on electricity and are quieter.

That’s where LaserMotive comes into play. This inventive little company, which I first wrote about in-depth last month, has developed power-beaming technology using laser diodes to transmit energy through the air, and specially constructed solar cells to receive the beam and turn it into usable electricity. LaserMotive demonstrated its technology by winning the Level 1 prize of the NASA Power Beaming challenge last fall (part of its Space Elevator Games), in which it powered a robot to climb up a kilometer-long cable using only lasers from the ground. (The company will go for the Level 2 prize later this year.)

But powering UAVs and other practical devices has been the company’s plan for a while, and this is its first big market opportunity. Nugent, LaserMotive’s co-founder and president, said in a statement that his company’s plan is “an important step not only in powering UAVs, but in extending their abilities, improving their endurance and enabling new missions.” He added, “It is especially viable for high-altitude, long endurance unmanned aerial vehicles and other types of aircraft that need power over a long period of time.”

If you want to know the technical specs and capabilities of LaserMotive’s system (things like range, power levels, and efficiency), read the company’s report. But it seems like an intriguing market. The industry research firm Teal Group says the market for UAVs is expected to grow worldwide from $4.9 billion to $11.5 billion annually in the next 10 years.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Engineering has an image problem. Sure, it’s the technical backbone of many things people use every day, from airplanes, cars, and buildings to new medicines, mobile devices, and the Internet. But it doesn’t always attract the best and brightest young people interested in solving society’s biggest problems or changing the world. That’s because people often have a narrow view of what engineering entails, or think it’s too boring, geeky, or technically difficult to pursue.

Enter the “grand challenges summit” organized by the National Academy of Engineering, which is coming to Seattle next week on May 2-3. This is part of an ongoing series of six NAE events around the U.S. this year that are meant to inspire students and rally faculty, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors around some of society’s most important problems. The plan is to concentrate on big ideas like improving healthcare, producing clean energy, providing access to clean water, restoring urban infrastructure, preventing nuclear terror, and making computer systems secure.

The Seattle event features an all-star cast of speakers, including Bruce Montgomery from Gilead Sciences, Larry Smarr from Calit2 and UC San Diego, Ed Crawley from MIT, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin (now at the University of Alabama), and former NASA astronaut Bonnie Dunbar (now CEO of the Museum of Flight). They will be joined by engineers from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and General Electric, as well as prominent scholars from the UW, including Matt O’Donnell, dean of engineering, Ed Lazowska from computer science & engineering, and Suzie Pun from bioengineering. The sessions will focus on how engineers can make better medicines, as well as better tools for scientific discovery in computing and aerospace.

O’Donnell, who helped bring the summit to Seattle, says the number of students interested in engineering has been declining for the past couple of decades—in particular, the percentage of U.S. students (compared with international students) enrolled in the nation’s graduate programs. “Engineering ain’t too sexy in society,” says O’Donnell, a biomedical engineer with expertise in ultrasound and other diagnostic imaging technologies. “A lot of folks in engineering are worried.”

He says the idea behind the grand challenges is, “Let’s excite people about what engineering can do for society. It’s not just about having your startup and making money—which is cool, and we all love that. But it’s not just the next PDA or iPhone app.” The goal, he says, is to “sexify” engineering and show that “it’s a way of thinking and analyzing systems, integrating quantitative [methods] with real-world concerns. You can build a bridge or PDA, but you can also think about sustainable systems, urban development, or how you put markets together.” (The NAE summits strike me as an adult complement to the FIRST Robotics competitions for middle-school and high-school kids, which are also about inspiring a new generation of engineers and changing the popular culture around engineering.)

The first grand challenges summit took place in early 2009 and was the brainchild of Tom Katsouleas, the dean of engineering at Duke University. O’Donnell was invited to moderate a panel on engineering new medicines. “It was absolutely a blast,” he says. “But then the kids and professionals in … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

For those of you interested in Thea’s story yesterday on the effort to bring the land speed record to Washington state, we have another treat for you. KUOW 94.9 FM is doing an interview with the North American Eagle “turbojet car” co-leader and driver, Ed Shadle, in just a few minutes, starting at 12:00 pm PT today (between then and 12:30 pm).

You can listen to it here.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

It was just after 10 a.m. on a hazy spring morning as Ed Shadle drove a trailer the size of a semi-truck to the far end of the Spanaway Airport, a quarter-mile active airstrip located 15 miles south of Tacoma, WA. A handful of his 44-person crew, which includes his son Cam and eight-year-old grandson Alex, had already arrived and were busy setting up for the day—a table of coffee and donut holes for the crew and onlookers, a Subaru converted into a mobile data acquisition center, and several barrels of fuel at the ready.

For Shadle, 68, and his partner and co-owner of the North American Eagle, Keith Zanghi, 55, the day’s engine test was just one stop along a more than 11-year journey to build the fastest land vehicle in the world. The goal: 800 miles per hour.

Shadle and his crew, all based in Washington state, were busy lowering the Eagle, a 56-foot-long tubular car forged out of the fuselage of a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, from the trailer. The nose and tail cones had been removed for transport, reducing the car to 48 feet in length—just short enough to fit inside the trailer. Other crew members busily prepared the steel cables that would anchor the car to two gravel-filled trucks, weighing 80,000 lbs in all, and to a nearby tree with deep roots—a “safety precaution,” the crew said. This setup procedure was nothing new for them.

“We’ve probably been out to this airport maybe 25 times, and we tie up to our favorite tree back there,” Zanghi said. “Luckily it’s not raining. It could be worse.”

For both Shadle and Zanghi, the thirst for speed was born out of a love of drag racing at an early age. And naturally, like any “typical teenager of that era,” as Shadle calls himself, drag racing led to more racing at higher speeds, and eventually, flight.

“For me, it started back when I was just a kid back in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s. My uncles were all back from World War II and they got into stock car racing—the old jalopies running on dirt tracks. And of course we used to go to the races, so I’d hang out in the pits and watch my hero uncles,” Shadle said. “My first drag race on a real strip was at an airport. We raced on Friday nights for 50 cents and you could race all night.” Later, in his 20s, Shadle joined the Air Force and developed his career as a pilot.

“Just like Ed, we all grew up with the space program. The Mercury astronauts were my heroes—the Gemini and Apollo [as well]. All I did was build model airplanes when I was a kid,” Zanghi said.

The shared passion for flight, speed, and all the machinery behind them brought Shadle and Zanghi together in the 1990s when they both found themselves on a team working to build a vehicle that could break the land speed record. They were beat out, however, by Great Britain’s Richard Noble and Andy Green, who in 1997 achieved the current record of 763.1 mph with the ThrustSSC.

“At that time, the record was 633 mph, which is about 140 mph below the speed of sound, so we were building a car that was designed to go sub-sonic.” Zanghi said. When the British team broke the record, their car went supersonic. “As soon as that happened, we knew our car was obsolete,” he said.

When their project folded, Shadle and Zanghi decided to team up on a brand new endeavor, and in 1999 they bought the Eagle’s junked F-104 fuselage, without wings, for $25,000. The single-engine supersonic interceptor had its heyday flying with the U.S Air Force from the late 1950s to the late 1960s.

According to Zanghi, the F-104 had the ideal shape for land speed racing. The body was … Next Page »

Comments (5) | Reprints | Share:          

Yesterday, we ran the first part of a sit-down interview with Nick Hanauer, a noted entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of Seattle-based Second Avenue Partners. Hanauer, who has been involved in the early stages of such prominent companies as Amazon, aQuantive, and Insitu, spoke about the importance of new metaphors in recognizing and understanding breakthrough ideas; why venture capitalists don’t take enough risks; and the challenges of healthcare reform.

In what follows, Hanauer talks quite a bit more about Amazon, Insitu, and how to think about solving the biggest problems in business and society (hint: don’t conform). He also touches on why he’s generally bored with the online advertising sector (except for Seattle-based Marchex), and the one key area in which he would seek omniscient advice.

Here is part two of our interview:

Xconomy: What are the prospects for another big tech company like Amazon to come out of the Seattle area?

Nick Hanauer: I think the prospects are very good. It’s a very dynamic, creative, and risk-tolerant business culture here. There’s a fabulous ecosystem of people who understand technology in all sorts of ways. There’s software, Internet, biotech, aerospace. Insitu, as an example, is a big company now. And in 10 years, that could be a huge company. I think they employ 600-700 people now. We [Second Avenue Partners] don’t own it anymore, Boeing owns it, sadly. We have as good a shot at creating more big technology companies as almost any place on planet Earth. Probably not as good as Silicon Valley, but better than most places.

X: Tell me more about Second Avenue’s involvement with Bingen, WA-based Insitu, and when you first invested in it. (This company makes unmanned aircraft systems for surveillance and intelligence applications.)

NH: It wasn’t the first round of financing, but they were a teeny tiny company, employed half a dozen people. We looked at it in June or July 2001, and they were like, “Fishing, we’re going to find tuna with cool planes.” We thought it was really interesting technology. [CEO] Steve Sliwa was so good. We got that if they could pull off this technology in this domain, there are an infinite number of applications. And then [September 11, 2001] hit. And we said, oh. The military’s going to buy a lot of these. OK, we’re in. We led that round, and kept on backing them. I’m sad that we sold it, because it was such a civic achievement; it made such a difference in the lives of so many people. It’s maybe the single biggest thing to happen to that region of Washington and Oregon economically in decades. We were very lucky [with the Boeing sale], there was this incredible global bidding war going.

X: How should one learn to think about solving big problems in business and society?

NH: I think the capacity to think creatively isn’t gated by your intellectual abilities so much as your psychological ability to not conform to what other people want you to believe about … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share: