Ralph Russo is a Silicon Valley veteran who was on the frontlines of the dawn of the personal computer working for Apple. Russo still lives thereone week every month, even though he works in State College as president and CEO of Strategic Polymer Sciences. Russo may want to consider making the move to PA permanent, considering the company's recent growth and accomplishments.

The company, a Penn State University spinout founded by Russo and PSU professor of electrical engineering and material science engineering Qiming Zhang in 2006, develops new materials and device technologies that it believes will revolutionize energy storage and generation and medical therapeutics. Applications include lowering the cost and increasing the efficiency of hybrid electric vehicle engines and implantable cardiac defibrillators.

Strategic Polymers completed a successful Series A funding round of $3 million in 2008 and commercialized its capacitor line and will now look to do the same with its actuator line. Its actuators are placed in medical devices like catheters and also energy harvesting devices, giving SPS two big targets.

The company started with high-energy density pulse power capacitors that are used in weapons systems or other applications that demand a very high energy burst or large energy storage released in milliseconds. 2010 was a huge year for the company, earning $3 million in National Institutes of Health grants for medical device development and $1 million from the Department of Energy to advance high performance energy storage for electric vehicles. The company was hiring four new engineers/scientists as of early 2011.

Long-term, Russo has a small team working his partner's invention of polymers that can transfer heat out of one area and make that area cool, or vice-versa. The hope is to do preliminary proof-of-concept on the technology, which may still be years away.