Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501260001
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: NRV-23 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
The question isn't meant to put him on the spot, but granted, it's a loaded one. If he says no, he risks being perceived as a tad pompous. But if he says yes, he misses a legitimate opportunity to tout the high-tech, cutting-edge nature of the firms located there.
Around the New River Valley, plenty of businesses make their profit through the production of fiber optics, computer software and other, quote-unquote "high tech" products. But with tenants like the National Weather Service, advanced software-producing firms, and fledgling businesses spun off from Tech research projects, the research center undoubtedly boasts the highest concentration of firms per acre doing work that pushes the limits of modern technology.
Admittedly, "what you see here is mostly offices and labs," Meredith says of his "industrial" park's companies. "Ninety-nine percent of them will not manufacture something in the classical sense of manufacturing."
A few of those include:
Spatial Positioning Systems Inc. - or SPSi. A 41/2-year-old, 15-employee company, it has designed a computerized, laser-based device used in surveying that allows engineers and surveyors to take measurements and directly enter them into a hand-held computer-aided design version of the construction site.
Meredith called the company "the success story of the year" at the CRC. Quite an accomplishment for a firm whose cramped "hardware/software development room" still bears a resemblance to a college lab, with circuit boards strewn across a splintered desk, a Mr. Coffee and a microwave in one corner, and a 8x11 sheet of paper used as a sign marking another corner as the "Advanced Technology Division."
The company was founded by Tech professors Tim Pratt and Yvan Beliveau and graduate student Eric Lundberg in 1990, and has since become part of a consortium that includes such giants as the Bechtel Group, Intergraph Corp. and DuPont, as well as Jacobus Technology Inc. - companies whose know-how and financial strength have allowed SPSi to further advance their product.
"We see hundreds of productsthat we'll be able to sell world-wide," said Chief Executive Officer Michael Miller. The "laser-based position measurement technology" has applications in the fields of construction, manufacturing, medicine, even virtual reality.
"Measurement, where you are, positioning, is fundamental," Miller said. "What you can do with that is left to your imagination."
VTLS Inc. Ray Smoot, Tech's vice-president for finance, has called this company "our greatest success story." Formed in 1985, VTLS designs software for cataloging libraries, and its clients include the National Gallery of Art, Russia's state library and Kuwait University.
"When I first started on it, it was just something to play around with," VTLS's president Vinod Chachra, said a year ago just after the company purchased the remaining portion of it that was owned by Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, a non-profit corporation that helped VTLS start up.
The company also has developed multi-media software, and spends a third of its resources on research and development. Perhaps significantly, it was the first company to have its name on one of the CRC's seven buildings.
Recognition Research Inc. Its founders, Pat Bixler and Chris Thompson, have devised software that goes further in scanning - the process of entering text on pages directly into a computer - than anything in the past two decades.
Their "recognition-processing technology" allows computers to decipher the information typed or printed on a form such as a health insurance benefits application, separating the new information from the lines and words that make up the form itself.
Before, the scanned in version would've turned up as gibberish on a computer.
Like Miller at SPSi, Bixler described the process of developing Recognition Research's technology as one that goes along simultaneously with the developing technology that are pieces of his company's product. Simply put, the technology can only develop as fast as do the pieces that go into it.
"That's the definition of 'cutting edge,'" Bixler said. "You're working with other tools on the cutting edge. As everybody advances together, suddenly you've got a very viable system."
Recognition Research works with customers like the FBI, the IRS, Unisys and the U.S. Army. For Thompson and Bixler, any company that processes forms is a potential customer.
"We unveiled this market," Thompson said. "It's now just starting to be accepted by the industry."
Said Bixler: "Between health care and [tax] revenues, we have enough [business] for a company six times our size."
Others like TechLab Inc., a biotechnology firm that designs medical diagnostic kits and originated out of Tech research; Biznet Technologies Inc., a start-up firm aimed at assisting businesses in their effort to utilize the Internet and the Blacksburg Electronic Village; Ceram - Virginia Inc., which uses ceramic material to store computer data in a much smaller space and delivern faster than conventional computer chips, and more.
All of which go a long way toward placing the CRC outiside the realm of traditional industrial parks. No smokestacks, no assembly lines here. All the same, Meredith won't be caught making a statement that seems high-falutin.'
Is the CRC an industrial park? After some thought, he says matter-of-factly, "we're zoned industrial."
by CNB