WV Businesses to vie for SBIR grants
by Judy Reckart
Over the next 12 months, the federal government's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant program will fund $1.2 billion in early-stage research and development projects conducted at high-tech firms across the country.
Sharon Stratton, business analyst at the Fairmont State College Regional Small Business Development Center (SBDC), wants to see West Virginia's growing number of technological entrepreneurs get a piece of that pie.
SBIR grants underwrite the development of technologies federal agencies need but currently are unable to purchase in the marketplace. SBIR grant moneys are funneled through 14 federal agencies whose unmet technological needs occur in diverse scientific engineering fields from manufacturing process control, environmental monitoring and medical devices and software to avionics, optical computing, aqua culture and education.
"Since the federal government started the SBIR grant program in 1983, West Virginia-based firms have been awarded only 21 Phase I and five Phase II grants," Stratton noted.
And that's not nearly enough, to her way of thinking.
"We need to cultivate more in-state companies capable of performing the research and creating the technologies the SBIR grant projects so often require," Stratton said.
"Quite honestly it's a real challenge for West Virginia to keep recently-graduating engineers, especially those with electrical and computer specialization, in-state."
As an initial step toward boosting the state's number of future SBIR grant recipients, Stratton organized and staged West Virginia's first SBIR Initiative Conference in Morgantown Sept. 19-20. Supporting sponsors included the WVU Extension Service, the National Energy Technology Lab (NETL), the West Virginia Development Office, WV EPSCoR, Computer Companion Inc., the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation and the US Small Business Administration.
Attended by about 100 participants, primarily representing the state's small high-tech firms, the conference brought these entrepreneurs together with federal program executives who actually manage the SBIR funding for their respective agencies.
On both days of the conference, designated sessions encouraged entrepreneurs and bureaucrats to meet for one-on-one discussions concerning agency-specific projects. "The one-on-one sessions also allowed us to showcase West Virginia firms for the federal agencies, " Stratton added.
Conference participants also heard speakers representing three current West Virginia SBIR grant recipients, including Morgantown-based firms Redpoint Controls and Azimuth, Inc., offer accounts of their experiences navigating the program's funding mechanism during a 30-minute "success panel" held the first day of the conference.
"I think the SBIR application process intimidates some potential grant applicants," said 25 year old Redpoint CEO Christopher Garman, "and a lot of firms potentially qualified to apply for funding just aren't aware of the program."
Garman, Redpoint president David Cushing and vice president Jarod King, all WVU engineering graduates, successfully applied for an SBIR grant to fund development of a National Science Foundation (NSF) project titled "A Distributed Sensor Network for Autonomous Management of Small Parts Inventories"...or in layman's terms, an automated bin storage system that accurately counts small parts inventories and communicates to a remote site how many of which parts remain in stock.
That Redpoint's $100,000 Phase I funding for a project feasibility study and prototype development was granted on the three-year-old firm's initial application to SBIR is truly noteworthy, according to Stratton.
"It's not unusual for a firm to make as many as eight grant applications before they're successful," she said.
Before tackling the SBIR's mandatory 25-page proposal format, the Redpoint executives had accumulated previous application experience by successfully completing two six-page West Virginia Promise grant proposals worth $5,000 each.
As Redpoint's current Phase I funding is a fixed six-month grant applicable July 1 - Dec 31, 2001, Garman, Cushing, and King plan to attend an October NSF-sponsored Phase II workshop in Virginia. Redpoint's Phase II proposal addressing issues of cost-effectiveness and the feasibility of their project's sale to commercial users must be completed and submitted to the NSF in January, 2002.
"The NSF received 1400 applications for Phase I SBIR grants this year," Garman said. "The agency approved and funded 230, but only nine were from West Virginia companies."
Azimuth, Inc., another Morgantown SBIR success story highlighted during the September conference, completed Phase II development of a three-year SBIR/Department of Defense (DOD) project, the "Small Craft Vision Enhancement/Situational Awareness System" in May, 2001.
Initially underwritten in 1998 by $99,994 of Phase I SBIR funding, the project subsequently was supplemented by an additional 18-month Phase II grant for $730,000.
"DOD personnel currently are demonstrating our system prototype to potential customers including the US Army Special Forces at a Florida military installation," said Azimuth proposal manager Eric Starn. "They're giving us a hand with some advance Phase III marketing."
Starn has assembled nine DOD/SBIR grant proposals for Azimuth, but only two, for Phases I and II of the vision enhancement system, were approved and received funding.
"We were one-for-one with our SBIR proposals at one time, just like Redpoint is now," Starn said grinning and apparently not in the least discouraged.
With 13 engineers employed at its software and engineering facility in Fairmont, Azimuth houses its corporate offices at the Morgantown Industrial Park.
"Most of our engineers are young and have earned degrees in electrical and computer engineering from WVU," Starn observed. "They stay with us because they prefer a small business atmosphere and they're not just pushing paper or punching keys here."
"And Craig (Azimuth vice president Craig Hartzell) treats them well, too. This is where they want to be."
As Sharon Stratton begins putting together the state's second SBIR Initiative Conference, she's hoping more technologically innovative entrepreneurs like those at Redpoint and Azimuth will decide West Virginia is "where they want to be."
"Of course we're planning additional SBIR workshops and conferences," Stratton said. "There's just so much potential there for West Virginia."