Ed note: In honor of Small Business Week, StartUp America is highlighting success stories and advice from American entrepreneurs
It is not always obvious what will come of a federal research grant. Would you expect that a federal research grant from the National Institutes of Health for “Image Slicing Spectrometer for High Resolution Sub-Cellular Microscopy” would eventually revolutionize oil rig and refinery safety? The researchers themselves could not have guessed how far their invention would go.
Two years ago, Robert Kester and I founded Rebellion Photonics around technology he and his colleagues at Rice University created with support from a federal grant for basic bioengineering research. Since then, we have created seven jobs, raised $1.1 million in venture funding, become cash flow positive, and created products that truly make the world a safer place.
At Rebellion Photonics, we produce video cameras that can identify and quantify chemicals — essentially our video cameras “see” chemicals, not just colors. While this type of technology, called hyperspectral imaging, has been around since the 1980s, researchers were forced to wait minutes, even hours to see results. Our cameras take milliseconds, allowing the first true real-time chemical imaging video.
The technology was initially invented to see live chemical reactions within cells for medical research. We do sell cameras for researchers, but with the help of additional grant funding for basic R&D we have been able to expand our product range.
Rebellion Photonics CTO Robert Kester at work on the company’s the medical imaging device, which uses hyperspectral imaging to identify and quantify chemicals.
Fonte: White House