NASA Glenn gives expertise to small firms Thomas W. Gerdel, Plain Dealer Reporter

A small firm in Middleburg Heights is getting help from NASA Glenn Research Center scientists in its quest for increased sales of infrared surveillance systems.

And it’s also getting $50,000 in cash.

The firm, Innovative Engineering & Consulting Inc., will use the cash and technical assistance to develop improved infrared systems that can distinguish between, say, a fire in a burning building and a person in that building. Both the fire and person give off heat, but the bright signals from the fire currently make it difficult to detect any other objects when using conventional infrared technology.

“We’ll be able to see a wider range of temperatures,” said Richard Pettegrew, chief executive officer of the Middleburg Heights firm that provides infrared surveillance systems for military and security purposes. It has about 15 workers, including part-time employees.

The cash and technical help are part of a new program aimed at boosting the region’s economy by helping small firms turn NASA Glenn technology into commercial products.

Similar $100,000 awards of cash and technical assistance also were presented on Monday at the Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI) in Brook Park to three other Northeast Ohio firms: Iten Industries, Thekan Disc LLC and H-Cubed Inc.

The awards grew out of a partnership called the Glenn Alliance for Technology Exchange, or GATE, that includes OAI, NASA Glenn and Battelle Memorial Institute’s Great Lakes Industrial Technology Center.

Bill Seelbach, OAI chief executive and project manager for GATE, said the idea is to open doors for small firms interested in getting access to some homegrown space technology. He said the four firms were selected from 26 Ohio companies that submitted proposals. Officials looked at how big an impact the new technology would have on the company, he said. They also looked at how the firms planned to use the money and how they planned to commercialize the technology. In addition to infrared, the technologies involve polymers and medical products.

Iten Industries in Ashtabula is working with NASA Glenn to provide manufacturing support for a strengthening process of a fragile, open-structured, silane foam.

In Akron, Theken Disc is getting NASA help to develop a modified version of an artificial spinal disc. H-Cubed is an Olmsted Falls company working with NASA Glenn and the BioMEMS group at the Cleveland Clinic to further develop an intravenous ultrasound imager that can produce clearer images in detecting signs of coronary artery blockages.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: tgerdel@plaind.com, 216-999-4114