Work
From a mechanism, to an instrument, to a business.
We take on technologies that are still a question rather than a product, and we carry them to the point where a customer can buy one.
Method
The claim is measured before it is made.
Early technology work fails in a predictable way. A mechanism is assumed to hold at the concentrations, temperatures, and timescales the product will actually see, and nobody checks until the hardware is built. We check first.
Establish the mechanism
Simulation and bench measurement are used together to find out whether the physical effect is large enough to be useful, and what it costs to get at it.
Design the measurement
Sampling, front-end hardware, and signal analysis are designed as one system, since a sensor is only as good as what is put in front of it and what reads it out.
Build the instrument
Mechanical, electronic, and chemical work proceed in parallel toward an instrument that a person who is not one of us can operate.
Validate against the real use
Validation is designed with the study and quality practice the eventual market requires, rather than retrofitted after the fact.
Release and sell
Production release, regulated where the market is regulated, and a business with a product owner accountable for the result.
Fields
Where the work sits today.
The programs are unrelated by subject. They are related by the process above and by the people who run it.
Electrochemical measurement of complex mixtures
Separating chemically similar species in a single measurement, on electrodes, with the recognition chemistry and the waveform doing the work that a large instrument would otherwise do.
Portable instruments for measurements that used to need a laboratory
Embedded electronics, low-noise front ends, and signal analysis that make a bench measurement possible outside the bench.
Federally funded research and development
Competitive research and development programs of the United States Government are one of the routes we use to carry a technology through the stage where it is too early to sell.