| Outcome/Accomplishment:
While many companies are trimming employees or just holding steady, molecular
detection and imaging solutions company “Daylight Solutions” is growing
and expects to double its employee count by late 2011 and relocate to a
larger (35,000 square foot) facility in San Diego. The company is
commercializing an advanced technology, quantum-cascade laser (QCL) systems,
developed by a partnership with the NSF-funded Engineering Research Center
(ERC) Mid-InfraRed Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE).
Impact/Benefit:
The growth indicates that Daylight Solutions sees important commercial
applications for QCL systems. Chemical imaging, such as cancer detection,
pharmaceutical quality control, and materials inspection can use QCL technology.
Others applications include alcohol breath detection and glucose sensing,
marine stack emissions monitoring, atmospheric monitoring, and homeland
security.
Explanation/Background:
MIRTHE, like other NSF-funded ERCs, is a multi-institutional Center that
brings together universities and industries with the goal of advancing
technologies developed in the lab to a point where they can be commercialized
by industry—in the case of MIRTHE’s technologies, this means reduced to
compact, easy-to-use devices that are inexpensive enough to be widely deployed.
MIRTHE is headquartered at Princeton University, with partners City College
New York, Johns Hopkins University, Rice, Texas A&M, and the University
of Maryland Baltimore County. The Center encompasses a world-class
team of engineers, chemists, physicists, environmental and bio-engineers,
and clinicians. MIRTHE specializes in developing mid-infrared (3-30 µm
wavelength) optical precision trace gas sensing systems based on new technologies
such as quantum-cascade lasers or quartz-enhanced photo-acoustic spectroscopy,
with the ability to detect minute amounts of chemicals found in the environment
or atmosphere, emitted from spills, combustion, natural sources, or exhaled.
The partnership between MIRTHE and Daylight Solutions is a perfect example
of how world-class engineering research can be brought to bear on tackling
big problems while fostering economic growth at the same time. Dr. Timothy
Day, CEO and CTO of the company, is a member of the ERC’s Industrial Advisory
Board.
Daylight Solutions uses modular
designs, meaning that any commercially available QCL chips can be deployed
inside its systems. The lasers are based, for the most part, on InGaAs/InP
material systems. Different vendors may be better at different parameters
(e.g. wavelength selection, power, efficiency, etc), and allows the company
to have a great deal of flexibility when designing their laser systems
for a variety of customers and applications. |
