Pittsburgh : Innovation & Job News

Hear that buzz? It's news about robotics and engineering innovation in Pennsylvania.
 
In recent weeks:
 
A robotic paint-stripping system, being developed for the Air Force by Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center  and Concurrent Technologies Corporation of Johnstown, was named gold winner in the material science category of the 2013 Edison Awards. The system uses high-powered lasers mounted on mobile robotic platforms to remove paint and coatings from aircraft.
 
NREC is building six autonomous mobile robots, each equipped with a high-power-laser coating remover developed by CTC. As part of a two-year project, the robots will be deployed in teams to remove paint and other coatings from aircraft at Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah. The lasers eliminate the needs for abrasives or chemical paint removers; the robots make it possible to automate and precisely control the stripping process.
 
Carnegie Mellon researchers are also at work on the Lifelong Robotic Object Discovery Process, which helps robots augment their "vision" with other information – an object's location, size, and shape and even whether it can be lifted – to recognize and understand objects. The team enabled a two-armed, mobile robot to use color video, a Kinect depth camera and non-visual information to discover more than 100 objects in a home-like laboratory, such as computer monitors, plants and food items. Eventually the technology could help people accomplish tasks of daily living as part of the Home-Exploring Robot Butler, with the quaint acronym HERB, being developed in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh.
 
Thirteen Penn State teams took honors in semester-long, industry-sponsored engineering projects. Altogether, 163 projects by engineering undergraduates were judged at the 2013 Student Design Project Showcase. Three teams won first place in the Lockheed Martin Design Awards: "Project Assignment/Algorithm," "Maximum Allowable Gasket Seating Surface Degradation Before Seal Failure" and "Robotic Parallel Bars Walking Device." Six other teams took second and third-place honors. The Boeing Systems Engineering Award went to "Rotor Wake Survey."
 
Sources: Carnegie Mellon; Penn State
Writer: Elise Vider
 
 
 

Shale gas is as old as the earth, but three high-tech innovations have won their companies $25,000 each in the 2013 Ben Franklin Shale Gas Innovation Competition. 
 
"Innovation, research and technological advancements have been and continue to be the catalyst for shale gas development's sustained success," said Kathryn Klaber, CEO of the Marcellus Shale Coalition in a statement. "Without forward-looing thinkers and companies willing to invest in new technologies, the natural gas revolution that we're witnessing today would not have been possible."
 
The winners, chosen from more than 70 applicants, are:
 
Pyrochem Catalyst, New Brighton, which has developed a catalyst technology, known as "Reformer," for converting natural gas and carbon dioxide to hydrogen-rich synthesis gas for use in fuel cells and processes for making chemicals and transportation fuels. The company is the early stages of commercializing its technology for its initial target markets -- fuel cells and refining applications.
 
REV LNG in Ulysses is a full-service, distribution company for liquid natural gas (LNG) as an alternative to traditional diesel fuel. The company is one of the first in the U.S.  to deploy small-scale, mobile liquefaction units that can be hooked up to existing gas pipelines to create LNG.
 
Atlantis Technologies in Richboro has developed a "Radial Deionization System," which is 10 times the speed, 15 times the range and less than half the price of previous technologies that deionize wastewater from oil, gas and mining operations.
 
Sources: Bill Hall, Shale Gas Innovation and Commercialization Center; Jeffrey Harrison, Pyrochem Catalyst; David Kailbourne, REV LNG
Writer: Elise Vider

Along with two other Carnegie Mellon grad students, Juergen Fritsch founded MultiModal Technologies in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh in 2001. Three had grown to over 100 by 2011 when MultiModal merged with MedQuist to form M*Modal,  which today counts 12,000 employees in five countries.
 
But M*Modal, the largest provider of medical transcription services in the U.S., hasn't abandoned its Pittsburgh roots. Fritsch, who serves M*Modal as chief scientist, reports that in the last 12 months, the company has made 50 hires – a 44% increase -- bringing its Squirrel Hill workforce to 160, with more hiring possible.
 
The company is now headquartered in Tennessee, but the Pittsburgh office, says Fritsch, maintains "pretty much the same focus, developing software … for physicians and nurses to use in their daily operations." Fritsch attributes the fast growth of the last two years to M*Modal's global reach, providing more resources to support expansion into new products and markets.
 
Right now, Pittsburgh is focused on two particular products. One is a further refinement of software that uses advanced natural language understanding and voice recognition technologies to turn dictation into written clinical documentation, "a major productivity driver," says Fritsch, to speed compliance with complex new health records rules.

The other is a set of "tools to find information in a vast sea of documentation," Fritsch says, concerning everything from individual patients to vast patient populations.
 
 
Source: Juergen Fritsch, M*Modal
Writer: Elise Vider

With a new moniker, the Technology Council of Pennsylvania (the trade group formerly known as TechQuest Pennsylvania) shined a spotlight on technological innovation earlier this month, honoring companies, individuals and one government entity with its 21st annual PA Tech Awards.
 
The Mechanicsburg office of GL Noble Denton,  a global technical service provider for the oil and gas industry, was named innovation company of the year. David Bonsick, the Technology's Council's president and CEO, says the award recognizes the company's technological advances in drilling, refining and delivery of both natural gas and water.
 
Harrisburg's Red Privet, with its emphasis on optimizing customer and online interaction, was named startup company of the year. "They knocked the ball out of the park," says Bonsick.
 
Concurrent Technologies Corporation in Johnstown, a nonprofit, applied science research and development professional services organization, was named technology provider of the year and WebPageFX in Carlisle an Internet marketing firm, was technology company of the year.
 
Also honored were Ken Moscone of QBC Diagnostics in Port Matilda, Chuck Davis of Harrisburg University and David Zinn of the Southwestern School District as, respectively, post-secondary and K-12 technology educators, and the PA Department of Labor and Industry as public service innovator.
 
From more than 75 nominations, "the diversity of the winners, everything from web design companies to medical and defense technologies, really demonstrates the tremendous scope and breadth of the Commonwealth's technology industry," Bonsick said.
 
The organization says it adopted its new name as a rebranding to emphasize the diversity of its 200-plus members and the fact that it represents technology companies statewide.
 
Source: David Bonsick, Technology Council of Pennsylvania
Writer: Elise Vider

Tired of digging through backpacks and messenger bags for their student IDs and debit cards, four Carnegie Mellon seniors started to investigate ways to consolidate all the cards in their wallets and pay with a swipe of a finger.
 
They knew they were onto something when, recalls Brian Groudan, "we heard gasps" while demonstrating at a University of Pennsylvania hackathon last fall.
 
Groudan, Kelly Lau-Kee, Umang Patel and Christian Reyes are all graduating this spring and are partners in PayTango,  a fingerprint-based identification and payment system.
 
In only a few months, PayTango is dancing as fast as it can. Inc. magazine recently named it among America's coolest college start-ups for 2013. Three of the partners spent the first three months of this year at the Silicon Valley Y Combinator accelerator in Mountain View, California, and PayTango has begun to attract serious investor interest. "We didn't plan for this," muses Groudan. "It just sort of happened."
 
The students developed the technology, which marries biometric and card data, in CMU's inaugural Tech Startup Lab Course last fall, taught by Luis von Ahn, known as one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing.
 
PayTango's registration process takes about 20 seconds. Users place two fingers on the terminal's fingerpad, swipe the card they want to register and type in a phone number. Any card with a magnetic strip can be registered – credit, debit, gift, loyalty or ID. On repeat visits, users simply place their fingers on the fingerpad to make payment. The service is paid for through contracts with merchants, and is free for users.
 
The system is being tested at CMU dining locations and Groudan expects to continue to expand its testing there and at other campuses and local businesses, such as gyms. Investor interest is coming from Silicon Valley, but, he adds, "our first customer is CMU and we have very close ties to Carnegie Mellon."
 
Source: Brian Groudan, PayTango
Writer: Elise Vider
 

Pittsburgh and its environs are expanding. Not like the universe, but in terms of business investment and job creation. 
 
For 2012, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance counted 269 economic development deals -- or "wins" -- worth $3.2 billion in capital investment and expected to create 8,388 new jobs and retain another 3,422 over the next several years. 
 
The Alliance also reports record-high employment levels of 1.16 million. Equally significant: 42.6% of the region's jobs are in high-paying industries with an average wage of at least 110% of the U.S. total. What's more, the Brookings Institution last year identified Pittsburgh as one of only three U.S. metro areas that are fully recovered from the recession in terms of employment and GDP per capita. 
 
What accounts for the prosperity of the 10-county region and its recovery from the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression? "Without question, it's our diverse economy," says Alliance President Dewitt Peart.
 
Access to an educated, highly skilled workforce and a competitive cost of doing business are key factors in the region's continuing success in attracting and retaining business, he adds.
 
In 2012, manufacturing re-emerged as the fastest-growing industry sector, with 59 deals announced. But this is not your grandfather's assembly line. "These days, all manufacturing is advanced manufacturing," says Jim Futrell, VP for market research. High-tech manufacturers, he adds, are reliant on a skilled workforce, "with at minimum some kind of post-secondary education."
 
The other major drivers for 2012 were financial and business services, energy, information and communications technology and healthcare and life sciences, but there is a lot of overlap, says Peart, such as "the law firms that are coming from Texas to set up practices to deal with [energy] growth."
 
About half of the deals counted by the Alliance are located in Allegheny County; the rest are spread among the other nine counties.
 
Source: Dewitt Peart and Jim Futrell, Pittsburgh Regional Alliance
Writer: Elise Vider

Ness Technologies, an Israeli software giant, cut a ribbon Tuesday in Canonsburg, opening its first U.S. development center. With the new facility will come 170 new jobs over the next 12 months.
 
The software development center will join 15 such facilities worldwide in India, Eastern Europe and Israel, says Scott Udell, vice president, delivery. Ness launched an exhaustive study of prospective locations after determining that it needed to better serve its East Coast clients by minimizing cultural differences, geographic barriers and time-zone disparities.
 
After careful study, "New York didn't make a lot of sense and Pittsburgh became quite compelling," he says. The factors included the highly educated talent pool, proximity to major universities with top computer science, information systems and engineering programs and an attractive cost of living.
 
Thirty employees from Ness' nearby shared-services location in Canonsburg, performing back-office functions such as human resources, legal, finance and accounting, are moving to the 20,000-square-foot center, along with about 170 new software development hires.
 
"Ness believes that it will be able to provide regional software engineering talent with a challenging environment with opportunity to work across different clients and industries without having to change jobs," Ness said in a statement. "Typically these types of careers are limited to places such as the Silicon Valley, Boston, New York and Austin. Now talent from the region – or those who have come here for higher education and would like to remain and build a career and a life – can take advantage of the world-class employment opportunities and job security that Ness expects to provide in suburban Pittsburgh."
 
Ness was founded in 1999 from the merger of six companies – the name means "miracle" in Hebrew. Today Ness, whose U.S. headquarters is in Teaneck, NJ, employs 7,000 worldwide and reported nearly $572 million in revenues in 2010.
 
Source: Scott Udell, Ness Technologies
Writer: Elise Vider

We may not mess with Texas, but Pennsylvania ranks third in new facilities and expansions – and first in the Northeast – according to the prestigious annual rankings published last week in Site Selection magazine. 
 
The 2012 Governor's Cup went to the Lone Star State, which led the nation with 761 projects in 2012. (The publication counts private-sector projects that meet one or more of these criteria: a minimum $1 million investment, creation of 50 or more new jobs or construction of new space of at least 20,000 square feet. Equipment upgrades, additions and construction jobs don't count.)
 
Ohio was second with 491 projects and Pennsylvania was next with 430 in the national rankings. Ranked by region, the Keystone State's 430 easily beat the number-two state, New York, which came in at 119. In new manufacturing, Pennsylvania had 130 projects, compared to New York's 26; in manufacturing expansion, the Commonwealth's 97 beat the Empire State by 49.
 
Site Selection was also upbeat about Pennsylvania in a January profile assessing the impact of the energy sector on the state's economy. 
 
With such fertile ground for new and expanded commercial ventures, new features on Team PA's SiteSearch website are well timed. The site now includes heat maps that provide a visual representation of demographic statistics. The new business search allows for queries of businesses statewide by geography, type, number of employees and annual revenue.
 
"The enhanced functionalities of PA SiteSearch puts more information at the fingertips of site selectors or company officials looking to locate to, or expand their operations, in PA," says Matt Zeigner of Team PA. 
 
The race is on for 2013.
 
Source: Site Selection magazine
Writer: Elise Vider
 

ShowClix is proud of its in-house cinema, its cereal wall, its pool table, its downtown Pittsburgh location and its extraordinary growth.
 
Founded in 2007 by Joshua Dziabiak and Lynsie Campbell as an online ticketing and live event search engine, ShowClix is today a full-service ticketing platform handling live music, sports, performing arts and other special events for clients including New York's Museum of Modern Art and Pittsburgh's Heinz History Center.  In 2012, ShowClix reported $52 million in gross ticket sales; the 2013 projection is $75 million, says COO Tom Costa.
 
What's more, ShowClix has raised $2.7 million in venture capital, most recently winning a $50,000 investment from Innovation Works. 
 
Costa attributes the company's growth and ability to attract capital to its strong emphasis on customer support and technological innovation. Building on its software platform, introduced in 2008, ShowClix has regularly added features such as "Incentix," a discount for ticket buyers who post the event on social media, mobile ticket purchase and delivery, web-based box office tools, an Apple ticket scanner app to expedite admission at events and more.
 
The most recent Innovation Works investment is targeted to ramping up sales, marketing and lead generation, Costa says, with a larger national sales team.
 
ShowClix already has clients across the country, Australia and Canada and most recently signed with a cricket promoter in India. The company employs 40 – all but three in Pittsburgh – and expects to add 10 more jobs this year, primarily in sales, marketing and customer support.
 
Source: Tom Costa, ShowClix
Writer: Elise Vider

When it comes to heavy industry, the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors you have at home just don’t cut it. To say nothing of monitoring for toxic gases and environmental contaminants.
 
That's where Pittsburgh's SenSevere  is finding its niche as a manufacturer of specialized sensors that operate in the "severe" environments found in heavy industry, chemical and power plants and the like.
 
Jason Gu and Peter Foller founded the company in 2010, around the time that Gu was finishing his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon in material science engineering. Gu had been working on the technology for several years; Foller brought the industrial experience needed to see the possibilities for commercialization, Gu says.
 
Today the company is in limited production of its hardware – sensors that can monitor hydrogen, hydrocarbons, toxic gases like ammonia, environmental contaminants like bromides and more in hazardous industrial environments.
 
SenSevere recently received $200,000 in funding from Innovation Works to develop and commercialize a new hydrogen sensor. Hydrogen, Gu explains, is an undesirable byproduct of certain chemical processes that can cause explosions. But most sensors corrode fast in these harsh environments. SenSevere is pilot testing its sturdy sensor at a West Virginia chemical plant with the expectation of moving to a larger beta test in the spring and a third-quarter commercial release.
 
Several other new products are in the pipeline: a sensor for detecting bromide – a dangerous carcinogen – in water supplies for treatment plants and a new hydrogen sensor for energy generation facilities.
 
With three fulltime employees, the company is shorthanded and expects to add three or four positions within the year, Gu says.
 
Source: Jason Gu, SenSevere
Writer: Elise Vider