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By DON DODSON Copyright 2001 The News-Gazette CHAMPAIGN – A state grant program proved so popular this year that it attracted the interest of more than a dozen local companies. Roughly two-thirds of those firms remain in the running for Technology Challenge Grants, offered by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. The grant program, now in its third year, awards no-strings grants to entrepreneurs, universities and research labs developing promising technologies. The goal is to encourage the ventures to stay in the state and generate jobs for Illinois residents. Local companies contending for the grants include: Argus Systems Group, Caviton, CU Aerospace, Chem Sensing, Cytometry Services, Iguana Robotics, PowerWorld and Isotech Laboratories. Pam McDonough, director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, says the program provides seed capital to fledgling companies that want to commercialize their technology. “There’s not a requirement to pay back, and we don’t take any part of the company,” she said. “It’s not limited to information technology or biotech. We get the breadth of technology initiatives, from one end to the other.” During the first year of the program, the state made $2.4 million in grants to eight projects, including a fluorescence analysis program at the University of Illinois. The second year, $4.2 million was awarded to 18 projects, including $292,287 to Vision Technology, a venture of UI electrical engineering professor Narendra Ahuja. McDonough said the state expects to award a like amount this fiscal year, though perhaps to a greater number of companies. The state received 124 “pre-applications” for the grants this year, and those have been whittled down by about half, with finalists being invited to submit a lengthier application. The winners are expected to be announced in February, McDonough said. “The way the process works, we work in conjunction with the Illinois Coalition. They have certain technical expertise, and they make recommendations to us,” she said. Applicants say they’re enthusiastic about the program. “For a small company, it’s a wonderful opportunity,” said Chris Mangun of EKOS Materials Corp. in Savoy, which applied for a grant this year. “You don’t have to pay it back; you don’t have to assign away rights to intellectual property. It’s a way to develop the technology before bringing it to outside investors.” Mangun said his company sought about $250,000 for a joint program to be conducted by EKOS and the Illinois Waste Management and Research Center. The project was not selected as a finalist, however. Kenneth Suslick, whose company Chem Sensing would like to land a Technology Challenge Grant, said he’s not surprised the grants are so popular. “Free money is like that,” he said. “For startup companies that are in the early stages of development, there’s a very limited number of sources of money available. On the federal level, there are Small Business Innovation Research grants, and Technology Challenge Grants are quite similar to that on a state level.” The government grants are particularly welcome because private funds are hard to come by at the outset. “Venture capitalists don’t normally want to invest in early-stage companies,” he said. Suslick said Chem Sensing needs more capital to bring its “smell-sensing” technology to market. “We’ve established the technology, but the difference between a functioning lab device and a marketable user-friendly product is a nontrivial difference,” Suslick said. “It will take roughly nine months and $1 million (to get there).” SourceGear Corp. president Tim Hoerr worked with Gary Durack of Cytometry Services to help prepare Cytometry Services’ grant application. Hoerr said he likes the Technology Challenge Grant program because it “puts some pretty big bucks behind Illinois companies without having a lot of rigmarole attached to it.” Durack said his company is seeking a $250,000 grant to help develop “micro-fluidic cell-sorting components.” The grant money will help leverage a $1.1 million endeavor with industry support, he said. Here’s what some of the other local companies are seeking: Argus Systems Group Argus Systems Group in Savoy applied for a grant after learning that most of last year’s award winners were from the Chicago area. “Research showed only one private-sector company in downstate Illinois was an award winner, so we figured it was a good place to step in,” said Terry Greene, Argus’ vice president of governmental affairs. Argus, which makes security software, has applied for $344,000 for a program that would be a joint partnership with the University of Illinois. “We’ll use the funds to perfect some security technologies in the Microsoft Windows technology platform,” Greene said. “We have some techniques and technologies that can be brought to bear to allow systems to be protected from the next Code Red virus and the next Nimda virus.” CU Aerospace David Carroll, engineering director for CU Aerospace in Urbana, said his company is seeking about $279,000 from the state to support its development of pulsed plasma thrusters. The company hopes NASA will use the thrusters in its StarLight program. CU Aerospace would like to use that money to help leverage support it has received from a federal Small Business Innovation Research grant. Carroll said Illinois needed a program like the Technology Challenge Grant program. “Illinois has the right idea. They need to promote the development of business in the state or continue to lose all the engineering and high-tech graduates to other states,” he said. Caviton Cy Herring, president of Caviton in Champaign, said he learned about the grants program through techCommUnity, the local high-tech network. He said his company is seeking $300,000 to finish some testing on a product it’s developing. “Our end product is a sensor for continuous emissions monitoring for things like smokestacks and industrial processing plants,” Herring said. Herring said he likes the flexible approach of the grant program. “The Army or Navy may have one task, and they try to fit our technology to that task,” he said. But with the Technology Challenge Grant, applicants simply tell the state “what you want to do,” and the grant is made on the basis of the technology. Iguana Robotics Company president Tony Lewis said Iguana Robotics is seeking $238,000 to help build the company’s infrastructure and protect its intellectual property. The company, which recently moved to the UI’s Technology Commercialization Lab, is developing computer chips with color-recognition capability. Lewis sees possible applications in toys and in devices that can help the blind and those with spinal cord injuries. Isotech Laboratories The Champaign company is seeking $151,000 to help commercialize a process for adding a tracer to natural gas stored in underground storage fields. Company president Dennis Coleman said he hopes to obtain additional money from the federal government to help pay for the field testing. PowerWorld PowerWorld president Mark Laufenberg said his company is seeking $300,000 to develop a real-time visualization tool to complement the PowerWorld Simulator analysis package the company already markets. With the new tool, someone working for an electric utility or regional transmission company could link into a centralized database and get real-time information about flow over the electric grid. “It’s like checking the stock market on a real-time basis, only you’re doing the same thing with the transmission grid,” he said. “The product is very visual and user-friendly.” |
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