America’s Seed Fund Startup Expo 2023

Welcome everyone to the Second America Seed Fund Startup Expo brought to you by the U.S. small Business Administration. As the head of SBA's Office of Investment and Innovation, I would like to personally thank each one of you for investing your time with us today. We are thrilled to have you joining us as we celebrate America's Seed Fund and the innovative startups supported on their journey from lab to market through this incredible Federal Small business innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, fondly known as SBIR or CBIR and STTR. With over 4 billion awarded each year in over 4000 startups and small businesses, America's Seed Fund is the largest source of non dilutive capital for startups and small businesses. Working day in and day out on the world's greatest scientific and technological challenges and opportunities, this program is the foundation upon which the Federal government's incredible innovation research and development programs are built. In a competitive global innovation environment, America's Seed Fund is table stakes for our country's long term global economic vibrancy and leadership. President Biden likes to say we need great ideas from everywhere and anywhere to help us solve the challenges that we face as a nation today. It's our job at the SBA to ensure that those great ideas get the support that they need from federal programs and innovation ecosystems across the country so that entrepreneurs can commercialize and grow their ideas into resilient businesses. America's Seed Fund targets critical technology areas that are often too high risk, too long duration, too capital intensive or early stage for traditional seed or early venture capital investors. Without America's Seed Fund, many of these startups and their projects would not have adequate funding to pursue transformative innovation. I know our participants and many of our audience members are aware or have been engaged in this incredible program over the years and I am sure all of you will recognize some of the successes. Perhaps you have a Sonicare toothbrush at your home or you've gotten Lasik eye surgery or taken a photo with your cell phone camera. America's Seed Fund supported the development of these technologies to make a difference in our lives. There are so many more technologies out there that we might not be aware of, but they are making our lives better. The entrepreneurs working with America's Seed Fund remind us every day that we have the potential to build the future of America we wish to see. And today we are honored to showcase just a few of the visionary companies and the change agent entrepreneurs supported by America's Seed Fund. Today you will hear directly from several talented, trailblazing entrepreneurs and industry leaders helping to Build a better and brighter America every day. They are role models to us all, and we are inspired by their work in service of humankind. And I want you to note how varied their journeys and the technologies are and hope that you are in a position to see your future self here. Now I'd like to bring on the stage the Dr. Jason Rachi, the director of the Department of Defense's Office of Strategic Capital, a true partner working to innovate within the federal government. Hi, Jason.

Hey, Bailey. Thanks for having us.

Well, thank you so much for joining today. I am really excited because we are going to kick things off with a fireside chat, virtually together today to talk about some of the exciting efforts that our two offices have been working on together. And what a great way to start the day. And so, if I might, I'd love to turn it over to you to give an introduction to the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital.

Well, Bailey, again, we are so honored to be here with the SBA today. My own background running the Air Force's SBIR program, before coming over to help stand up the Office of Strategic Capital, I got to experience firsthand the power of small businesses to support the Department of Defense's strategic priorities. The, the. The capabilities, the technologies that were developed and innovated under the auspices of the SBIC program have made a direct impact on military missions, on personal friends in their missions. As being a former active duty Air Force airmen, I know just how big of an impact these companies can make. As our old acquisition executive used to say, small companies can have big impacts. The incredible opportunity that we have with the Office of Strategic Capital is to help scale those impacts. Because the strategic technologies of the future, the critical technologies that our country will rely on for decades to come, we know are incredibly capital intensive. And at the end of the day, many of these technologies are fundamental to our supply chains. But I'll tell you, from my time working in the Air Force's SBIR program, we could invest in a wide range of critical technologies, but we could only buy those capabilities that directly supported our missions, that directly supported our warfighters. We didn't buy those critical technologies that were fundamental to the future war fighting concepts. And at the end of the day, in order to make sure that we have a secure source of supply, whether that's semiconductors, quantum advanced materials, biotech, we need to make sure that companies in these sectors have access to the capital they need to scale. And as you and I both know, that's not always the case. We know that today's investment markets. These private capital sources aren't always focused on what we consider deep hardware based technologies. In fact, as somebody who's been studying private capital markets for the last seven years, we've noticed a sizable shift. Back in 2006, 45% of all venture capital, for example, was focused on hardware intensive technology areas. Today it's only about 8%. When we look back through our history, when the government has stepped in to help partner with private capital providers to scale technologies vital to national security, we found ways mechanisms through things like the Small Business Investment Company Program, a program that your office has been running since 1958. A program that was started under the auspices of national security. You know, when Sputnik crossed our skies in 1957, the Eisenhower administration did three things. They created DARPA, they created NASA, they created the SPIC program. And it's my opinion that's a shame we don't talk about the SPIC program enough. Because as you know, it funded critical companies like Apple, Intel, Sun Microsystems and Cray Research. The world's first supercomputer company came from the SBIC program. And it wasn't through a contractor or grant. It was through partnered capital that provided patient equity and debt financing to support the scale up of critical technology companies like Cray that not only became an international leader in supercomputers, but also directly supported the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. It's companies like this that are going to be vital to the future of national security. And it's so exciting and we are so grateful for the SBA welcoming the DoD into this incredible historic program to revitalize its focus on national security.

Again, thank you, Jason. I am tremendously excited about the program as are all of the senior leaders within our organization. We do believe that this partnership and taking a one government approach in support of the national security mission is the thing that we need to be doing right now. Frankly, we should have been doing it a long time ago, but I think it brings up an important question of why haven't we been doing it? This incredible program was started 65 years ago in support of the national security mission and was so successful at helping to seed and provide ongoing funding to some of these incredible breakthrough companies. Why aren't we doing it now and why did it work? And so I think I'd love just to address that, you know, right off the bat and say that it is a challenge often to keep incentives aligned and to keep short term and long term behaviors in sync so that way we can meet the mission and intent of Congress with the programs that they have established. What we have found though, in the past couple of years is just there's a great recognition of the need for us to continue to make sure that investment is going into those long duration big ideas in order to keep our nation safe. And not just for contracting opportunities. Right. But technologies that we need more broadly across the country, many of which I imagine will be used by the Department, but other parts of the federal government and private sector as well. Why the program was so successful in the past, I'd say it's simple math. Right. So what is the SBIC program? Well, the SBIC program is essentially the SBA performing due diligence on private funds, monitoring those funds and regulating them. And in exchange, they give them a license as an sbic. And if the fund wants it, capital in the form of a loan to the fund, a very low cost loan to the fund. So it becomes what I'll call a third leg to the stool with the limited partner and the general partner, which shifts the risk return equation so it can make these funds very attractive and compelling from a risk adjusted return standpoint. And when we have a lot of money flowing into private funds that are shorter duration and less capital intensive. Gosh, we need a third leg of the stool to make sure that the returns on more capital intensive investments can be very compelling to private investors and can compete with funds with shorter duration and less capital intensive strategies. And it worked. It worked in the past and we have conviction it will work again, particularly through our partnership and the additional value that the Department will bring to bear on these relationships through their knowledge and expertise of critical technology areas in addition to the private sector investors with their expertise and knowledge. So we're thrilled about the partnership. We currently commit $5 billion worth of capital to private funds interested in SBIC licenses. We're thrilled that that capital, a large portion of it, we're anticipating over a billion dollars of IT funds that we will license aligned with this partnership in the year ahead and hopefully growing. The president's fiscal year 24 budget actually calls for that commitment ceiling to go up to $6 billion with a potential additional 15%. So that would be $6.9 billion. Very exciting. Although I will say, you know, it is a small number compared to the amount that China is committing to investing in private funds today. So it is vital that we partner and we make sure that we are incentivizing and private capital into these areas so we can remain globally competitive and in a position of strength and Security for years to come. So why don't we talk a little bit about how this partnership started? Because you talked a little bit about your history and past, and I think that's a big part of the story and your appreciation for this program and the SBIR program. I think you have been uniquely positioned to step into the role as the leader of the Office of Strategic Capital and to catalyze this partnership.

No, Bailey, I appreciate that. We've been very fortunate to have a long standing relationship with the SBA over many years, collaborating not only on new programs, but research to find ways to better align the interests of the Department of Defense and the growth that we think we can offer to companies who are partnering in support of national security. But I think you hit on a. A really big part of the Office of Strategic Capital, which is that today we are primarily focused on these critical technology areas. That doesn't mean that we're only focused on things that the department is going to buy. You know, we are focused on the strategic technology areas, the critical technology areas, which we define as frontier and enabling technologies that support our national security. And many of these areas absolutely fundamentally rely on private capital. Today, private Capital supports nearly 87% of all research and development for technology. The way private capital markets move is the way that the country's technological direction will grow. And it's vital that we think about ways to partner with private capital providers who are going to be investing in support of national security. And that means that they're going to be investing in our parlance and those things that are going to be fundamental to our future strategic positioning, making sure that we don't have to ground our F35s because all of the magnets came from foreign sources. And that is something that is not only vital to the Department of Defense, but it will be vital to commercial sectors, to other government departments. And the Department of Defense is excited about this partnership, not only with the sba, but multiple parts of the administration are focusing on how to partner with private sector, private capital, private companies, to better align interests around national security. If you look at the work that the Commerce Department is doing, the Department of Energy Development Finance Corporation, I mean, there's a significant number of investment opportunities that are coming to support companies and investors that are focused on ways to not only generate a return, but do it in a way that's going to support the future of. Of national security. The Office of Strategic Capital did start under this auspice that we need to expand, rapidly expand our partnership with the capital markets that we see as our competitive advantage in our current strategic competition, in our global competition over critical technologies. It's not only the equity markets, but the debt markets as well. The United States has the largest and the most liquid capital markets to support technology companies. And we need to find ways that we can align and scale that capital and support these priorities. Because today we don't see investments flooding to metamaterials, to quantum, to non healthcare, biotech to these sectors that we think are so important. Communication standards setting is in no small part due to the fantastic work that the SBI did through the SBIR program partnership with companies like Qualcomm and that set an entire sector up for success. It provided us access to generational leaps forward in communications that were fundamental to the Department's operations over the last 20 years. And we see opportunities like that expanding not only in communications, but through the 14 critical technology areas that the Undersecretary for Research and Engineering has a responsibility to provide for the Department of Defense and critical technology areas that for everyone in the audience are aligned across all of our government departments. If you look at our critical technologies list, you look at the Department of Commerce's Critical technologies list, it's pretty much aligned and opportunities where we can partner to take the available investment capital today to partner with organizations like the Office of Investment and Innovation, who is managing this incredible SBIC program. Bailey talked about. You talked about the $5 billion that you have to commit annually to the SBIC program with growth on the order of nearly 40%, leap to potentially to $7 million. And that is $7 billion. That is incredible. But you're right, it pales in comparison to what we see other countries doing in this space today. And we want to make sure that companies that are supporting national security, companies that are partnering with us through programs like the SBIR program, which works extremely well with the SBIC program. These things were built in coordination with each other. I mean, they're both residing under your office. Provides an opportunity for us to provide capital to companies who are already working in the space. And we hope to do far more in the years to come. So we see our initial partnership here and the generosity and the graciousness that the SBA is leaning forward and the national security mission is a part of a crawl walk run strategy. And this is just the beginning. Opportunities to focus and partnering with investors that are primarily investing in capital intensive deep technology areas is our focus within the Office of Strategic Capital. And through our partnership with the Critical Technologies Initiative, we are going to be providing not only a Partnership around making sure our offices are linked together. But we're also going to be providing access to deep technical bench. What are the resources that the department can provide will access to our scientific and technical expertise of which the Department of Defense is really second to none. It's just the massive bench of technical talent that we have inside of the dod. How do we partner that with private capital providers, with companies to work on things that are going to move the needle for national security is something we are focused on deeply today and it's something that I'm excited to bring to this partnership. So Bailey, I just want to say again, I know we're going to run short on time here. I'm going to pass it back over to you probably the last time I get to speak to this incredible audience. But just wanted to highlight how impactful the SBIR program has been. I've been studying this as an academic and then as a practitioner for years and I cannot speak highly enough about the SBIR program now wading into the SBIC program. Just all of the resources and the focus that the SBA has on national security, on helping small businesses provide capital to under capitalized areas of the economy. It's phenomenal to see. It's a national treasure and we're really excited about this partnership. Thanks so much for having us today.

Well, thank you Jason. I am just so excited about what lays ahead of us. I haven't even spoken about it in great detail, but a lot of what we're working on together right is made possible through our modernizing regulations and policies within the SBIC program as well for an increased focus and better product market fit with longer duration investment funds. So that way we are aligned in our support for companies that we know will take potentially a very long time horizon to get to profitability. It is not about near term profits, it's about our focusing on the investments that we need to see made in this country to support a very bright future for our country and to remain globally competitive. I think it is a very interesting and exciting time with a changing mindset about how we can be a solutions provider at the federal government to support entrepreneurship and innovation investment and taking a whole of government approach to together so there's less friction in the process. So I'd say, you know, we're very open for business and we want to engage and we want to listen and partner. Our programs are only as strong as the capital that is coming in to invest in our fund partnerships and only as strong as the great fund managers that would like to partner with us. And so we're incredibly grateful for those that want to step forward and be a partner with us. And we're really thrilled about the partnership between our offices and helping the DoD achieve its very important mission. So with that, I'll say thank you. And I'm just so thrilled that today we are going to be highlighting amazing companies that have taken part in the SBIR program that are focused on these critical technology areas to give a sense of the amazing ideas that are being brought to light through the program and how they're moving the needle on areas where we need to invest as a country. So again, thank you, Jason. It's always an honor to spend time with you and I would love to turn it now over to my colleagues Jennifer and Katie to take it from here. Thank you so much, Bailey and hi everyone, welcome. My name is Jennifer Shih. I'm the Director of Ecosystem Development here, working with Bailey Devries in the Office of Investment and Innovation and I'm so excited to be here with you today. My name is Katie Sly, Marketing and Communications Specialist here at the SBA Office of Investment Innovation. We look forward to guiding you through Startup Expo 2023. Over the next few hours, you'll be learning about some incredible startup ventures who have all received support from America's Seed Fund and continue to thrive and grow. You'll also hear about the important role and impact that America's Seed Fund and the critical research, development and innovation it supports. The companies showcased today are testament to American ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Innovative companies and leaders who, with support from America's Seed Fund, have been finding solutions to the big challenges facing our nation and the world and building tomorrow's future today. For the investors and potential customers that are here today, we hope that you get a sense of how this non dilutive federal investment has reduced the technical risk and you can see ways that we might be able to partner together to advance these innovations in the marketplace and get them where they're needed. For the innovators in the audience, we hope you'll be inspired by the diversity of entrepreneurial journeys that you're going to see here and know that you too can tap into the nearly $4 billion each year to advance your own journey, keeping ownership of your intellectual property and not giving up equity in your company. Yes, and if you're just getting introduced to America's Seed Fund, be sure to check out the resource booth in the Expo hall where you can download the information and learn more about the federal agencies that fund these incredible companies. Be sure to join us for the next few days of programming so you can connect with the federal agency partners that manage America's seed fund and community partners around the country that can help you navigate the agencies. Welcome and thank you for supporting the program today. Thanks for that, Katie. And so when we come back, you'll hear from our first panel of the day. We titled it Advanced Computing. But these startups are really working across a variety of related critical technology areas that include trusted AI and autonomy, integrated sensing and cyber and quantum science and space. These companies are modernizing legacy systems with resilient, affordable and assured new software that we can have confidence in moderating. This panel is Helena Krusek, Strategic engagement lead at AppWorks. So thank you for joining us for this kickoff and we look forward to seeing you back here very shortly. Three o', clock, Advanced Computing. We'll be back.

Foreign.

Hi everyone. So glad to see you all here today. My name is Helena Krusek and I'm the deputy. Excuse me, I'm thinking about my old lead here. I'm the strategic engagement lead for AffWorks. Starting our day off on the right foot here today. Getting the right titles correct. Welcome to today's America's Seed Fund Startup Expo session and panel. In this session today, we're going to be discussing and sharing information and insights into the field of advanced computing. Advanced computing is a term that encompasses a great deal of computing and software technologies that continue to shape the world we live in, including supercomputing, cloud computing, data storage, computing architectures, data processing, and artificial intelligence. Because computing plays such a critical role in our infrastructure and defense capabilities, the government is working to follow a software development model of DevSecOps, or development security Operations, focusing on continuous development, continuous testing and continuous delivery. This work includes a rapid push to modernize our legacy software systems with resilient, affordable and assured new software that has been designed, developed and tested using processes and established confidence in its performance. Today we're going to look at a couple companies that are doing just that, building some critical technologies and capabilities in that advanced computing space. First and foremost. Let's meet our companies. The first company I'm pleased to introduce is Earthsense from Champaign, Illinois.

What if farmers could use plants to pull carbon out of the air and put it to work to improve soils? We'll make our food systems more climate resilient and help reverse climate change. Hi, I'm Chinmay Soman, Co founder and CEO of EarthSense. I started Earthsense with my friend Girish Chowdhury. He's the co founder and Chief Technology Officer. When we started Earthsense, I was an NSF Postdoctoral fellow inventing better ways of understanding and improving soil health. And Girish was a Professor of autonomy and AI at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. We started Earthsense with a mission to create intelligent autonomous robots that will enable farmers to make agriculture resilient to climate change while farming profitably and of course producing high quality food for all of us. We pitched these ideas to the National Science foundation and they catalyzed our mission through Phase one and Phase two SBIR grants, an investment of over a million dollars. As a part of the SBIR funded work, we started collaboration with the world renowned computer scientist, Professor Vikram Adwai. Vikram is very well known for creating a key software that powers iPhones. He's collaborating with us to bring powerful machine learning capabilities to the low cost power efficient computers on our robots, making them affordable to farmers worldwide. Empowered by the million dollar seed investment from NSF, we built an amazing team of over 30 engineers, designers and agronomists. Together we've deployed over 150 robots with robust autonomy and AI capabilities to a range of customers. We've also filed three patent applications, the first of which was recently granted by the USPTO. Since 2018, EarthSense has earned over $4 million in revenues from early adopter customers and raised $3.5 million in venture capital. I'm excited to share with you that over the last three years we've tested and refined a uniquely powerful application of our robots. Let's watch a short video about this amazing opportunity.

Agriculture is the backbone of our civilization, and right now it's threatened by climate change. To grow food for 8 billion people, farmers today have to deal with more frequent and intense droughts, floods and deteriorating soil. At Earthsense, we've created technologies that will help farmers produce better food, more resilient soil, and even help reverse climate change. And cover crops are the key to doing that. Cover crops are plants grown not for food, but to capture and store carbon in the soil, making farmland more productive. They're seen as crucial for sustainable agriculture and fighting climate change. They're kind of a big deal.

Farmers planting cover crops so they can reduce the carbon dioxide in the air and get paid for doing it.

Even so, Only less than 5% of American farms plant cover crops because of expensive gas guzzling tractors and skilled labor shortages. Since 2020, EarthSense has worked with farmers to build AI driven robotics to make cover cropping simpler and more affordable. Terrapreta is Our low cost autonomous robot designed for cover cropping and powered by renewable electricity. Now farmers can have fields with robotic fleets that autonomously plant cover crops and unlike large tractors, do it without damaging the catch crop.

With already 30,000 acres signed up by.

Farmers worldwide, TerraProda's advanced AI and low cost hardware make it easy to scan start cover cropping all around the world. So let's work together to make agriculture a positive force for the planet by helping farmers put billions of tons of carbon into the ground, make agriculture climate resilient and heal our planet.

Oh man, that video really gets me pumped every time I watch it. We've now established that cover crops planted by our robots deliver up to five times as much benefits at half the cost of conventional cover cropping. Now we need to rapidly scale up. We have nearly 100,000 acres of farmland signed up. These farmers can't wait to get our robots planting cover crops on their farms to help serve these farmers and then scale to the 200 million acres of farms in the U.S. we'd love to partner with government agencies, landowners, as well as with corporations that are looking to buy carbon offsets from farmers. We're currently raising a $5 million funding round. I'd like to invite venture capitalists and impact investors to connect with us. Let's improve our food systems and help heal the planet.

All right, now that we've seen a virtual Chianmai, let's go ahead and bring real life Chinmay back up onto the stage from Earthsense. Thanks so much for that, Chenmay. Great video. Super inspirational problem and really glad to have you here today.

Absolutely. No, it's a, it's a tremendous honor to be in this rarefied cohort.

Of course we're happy to have you. So I know we've got a limited amount of time. I got a couple of questions here for you. Hope we can get through really quickly. So first question is, what inspired you to take on this challenge? It is a big, hulking problem. So where did your inspiration come from and how did you get the initiative to do this?

Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, I grew up in India, as did Girish. Much of our either. Both of our extended families are small farmers in India and we've seen, you know, up close the kinds of challenges they face. I came to the US for graduate studies and postdoc started working on agricultural problems just motivated by the kinds of issues that farmers worldwide face. And one of the key insights through my NSF funded postdoctoral research was that a. Of course agriculture is going to be tremendously affected by climate change. But interestingly enough, agriculture can be an amazing solution to climate change as well. So even though it's a big problem, somebody has to do it. And we found an amazing team to take on this challenge. That's what it came down to.

That's fantastic. And remind me, how large is your company? How many people do you have on staff?

Yeah, we have a little over 30 people on staff right now. Mostly all of these are full time robotics, electronics, computer engineers, as well as designers, manufacturing specialists and agronomists, of course.

Fantastic. So I think in the audience we've got a lot of other startup founders and folks that are working with other small businesses. Could you share any lessons that you've learned in building this technology for someone that might be approaching another technology space that's very much needed, one like this, but might need more definition around that vertical?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, the path we took that we found very fruitful and rewarding was to, even though we wanted to solve, or even though we do want to solve the problem for, you know, farmers everywhere, that's not always the best place to start, especially when you're dealing with challenging technology development problems. Right. So AI, robotics, autonomy, these are very difficult technologies. And back when we started in 2016, 17, they were still very much nascent. We made rapid progress because we focused on a subset of the problem, which is just providing data from these kinds of fields to people, and then found the segment of the market that valued that data most, which is the people, the scientists that make the new versions of seeds, new versions of crops for farmers. So crops that are more climate resilient, more productive, take less water, fertilizers, et cetera. That's something that we identified quickly as early adopter market. And we've been able to make a lot of technical progress, product progress, as well as generate revenue by focusing on a subset of the problem rather than trying to bite off everything all at once.

That's fantastic. And it's great to see that a company working on a real public good issue can be successful and build an awesome company like yours. So really great to hear that success. Last question here. How do you envision your technology going to change the industry around agriculture going forward? What's your ultimate goal?

Scale neutral. So right now what's happening is, you know, farmers have to, because of labor shortages, they have to keep investing in more and more expensive and larger and larger tractors and other kinds of equipment, use lots of chemicals. And that means that farms are getting larger and larger Right. Smaller farmers are getting squeezed out because they just can't make ends meet. Meat. And that's not necessarily a good thing. It's also reducing the diversity of our food supply, which is bad for human health and it's bad for the security of the food supply. So by making these new types of agricultural equipment that's smaller, more affordable, more capable by design by start of dealing with a whole diversity of crops rather than just corn, soybean, cotton, sort of the four or five major crops. We are planning to take agriculture back to the high diversity, high ecological sustainability, high nutrient density, historical routes, and then make it a positive force for the whole planet as well by sequestering gigatons of carbon.

Awesome. Well, that's a super impactful goal, Chen Mai. So thank you so much for joining us today. Let's move on. I recognize we're short on time, so let's move on to our next company, Kanna Systems from Lincoln, Nebraska.

In order to ensure the enterprise is able to operate today, we put together this Can I fight tonight? Dashboard. I am the director of the NC3 Enterprise Center. That's Nuclear Command, Control and Communications Enterprise Center. The center is here at StratCom. This system helps provide that level of detailed understanding of all the data as we collect it in a way that you can actually help answer that question, can I fight tonight? But to actually measure it and to know it in something close to real time has frankly never been doable without this kind of data and analytics. We have a huge data challenge and that's where KANA Systems comes into play.

We're dealing with highly cloud classified, very sensitive information. So we were asked to come in and help to modernize this process and we did that. And we developed the Conn Systems actionable analytics tool. Takes messy, unstructured data. We transform that data then into usable information. That usable information then creates better decision making tools. Khana Systems is a company that empowers trusted decision making. Our forte is better in the government realm, so helping to solve very difficult government problems, especially in the areas of modernization and digital transformation. This is my chance to serve our country. I'm a byproduct of both. My grandparents were enlisted in the one in the Air Force, one in the Navy. And then my dad served and he just recently passed away. He was a retired master sergeant in the Air Force. My husband served 30 years. He's a retired colonel. So when the call came for me and our government came asking for my help, it was just such an honor to be able to do that and So I feel really passionately about that. Data and software engineers, architects, analysts and developers are the nucleus of our team. The average age in Our company is 27. Our team lives and breathes technology. Our solutions team is rounded out by people who know how to grow a business. As the Founder and CEO of Comma Systems, I was recruited by the Department of Defense to help modernize nuclear weapons technology. I have three decades of experience in the corporate world and as a serial entrepreneur earning tens of millions in revenue by commercializing and growing businesses in both industry and in the defense market. Additionally, I am an angel investor. We have top Secret facility clearance as well as several of our members have top secret clearance themselves. So we are able to work at everything from unclassified aisle 2 on up through top secret SAP. Depending on just what the customer needs.

You can do a certain amount of work at on class level. But really the juice to be squeezed, the big impact to be made. We really got to be working at that top secret level working with real data.

Our first SBIR funded technology to receive a direct to Phase two was the actionable analytics tool aat. It gets the right data to the right people at the right time. AAT solves big problems, manual data gathering, time consuming data cleaning, static outdated reporting. The AAT empowers trusted decision making using DoD approved processes like DevSecOps. The impact of accuracy actionable analytics tool was seen in the nuclear weapons domain. Both with Admiral Fritz Meyer's comments as well as subsequent Phase 3s that were awarded to KANA Systems, we've seen terrific traction. We've landed two phase twos, three phase 3s and earned revenue of almost $10 million. We were one of eight companies selected last year for the very first Digital Data Strategies program sponsored by the Air Force's Digital Transformation Office. We were selected as a CIBBER success story and that video that you see here has been produced by the Department of Defense. And we were just notified of our selection as the 2022 NBDC government contractor of the Year. What's next? We are ambitious. Our plan is to scale a decision tools product line building off the success of AAT. We've partnered with powerful companies like Microsoft, MongoDB and Confluent that complement our offer. We need a more diversified pipeline of customers both in government and industry. We've been profitable since our first year of business and have never taken outside investment for our next stage. With this technology the biggest thing that we need are more people to test our products. We have a drag and drop for non technology Users product. We have a data cleaning product and of course we have our enhanced actionable analytics tool, aat. So if you're interested in joining and riding the wave of innovation with Kanna Systems, please say aloha and reach out to us at Alohaana Systems. All right, let's welcome to the stage Mailani Vini from Kanna Systems. Mailani, welcome. Thanks for that video. Thank you. Y' all are doing a lot of really great things. So we, we had a brief conversation really quickly before we all jumped online and it sounds like your team is doing a lot of stuff. So can you please tell me about what your latest product is and what are you, what are you working on now? Yeah, so I gave a hint in the video there. So we have a suite of decision making products, so tools that enable better decision making. For those of you in the audience that are data scientists, engineers, analysts, data data cowboys, there are not enough of you. And our government and our gut and our and communities, civilian and government, need more of the clean data to be able to use the really cool tools out there. So we bridge that gap and we have those kinds of tools so that a person who is not technical can access the suite out there. We're seeing all kinds of people that are not directly trained in data engineering being able to just unleash an incredible, powerful amount of decision making at their fingertips. I love that and I love the term data cowboys. I'm going to have to think about that as well. So if we're thinking about your ultimate customer end user here, are you thinking about releasing this kind of product for similar folks in the nuclear weapons space or what's your ideal sort of government customer for this suite of products? So there's messy data throughout our government and we've been talking to lots of different agencies. We got our start and I was recruited, we were recruited to help out in the Department of Defense and we've already launched products and are currently working with customers in that realm. Because we have our top secret clearance, we're able to access different projects that other small businesses or large businesses that don't have that kind of clearance, we're given access to that. However, this problem is not one that is relegated to the, the top secret world. So if you got a lot of data, if you got data that's siloed, if you got data that's coming in, you got 95% of it's on the floor. You don't know how to use it. That's where we can help out. We have Some really cool tools. Like I said, there's. We've partnered with some very large companies like Microsoft, Confluent, MongoDB, to name a few that have incredible tools. But you can't access those tools unless you have the data in the right spot. So we can both do aiml, but there's a step between where you have to have the right data wrangled. That's an actual term. You have to have the wrangled data to be able to actually put that good data in to get the good results out. So that is a worldwide non government, non DOD problem. Yeah, I like that. Data cowboys having to wrangle the data first. So another question here. What advice do you have for other founders working in the artificial intelligence and machine learning space who are also trying to work with the DOD that you mentioned, that you know, the sensitive information, the, the secret clearance is definitely one part of it. Do you have any advice to founders who are trying to build in the same space? Yes, there are excellent resources. So I. Super props to your organization. AF works. That's actually how we got our start. The Air Force's Digital Transformation office has been incredible as well. There are a lot of other things coming from the civilian world over into government that are not considerations in industry. So the whole contracting acquisition process is very, very different. So having guidance there is important as far as whether it's AI or any other topic that, that someone is looking to transfer. We call it dual use. In the, in the Cibber technology world, if you're trying to take a technology and use it also in the government, talking to those end users. This is a advice that I give as an angel investor as well, which is you really have to understand are you truly solving a problem for your customer? That is exactly the same thing that you need to do in the government. So whether it's AI or whether it's agriculture or whether it's biotech, that is a step that you cannot pass. Yeah, really great advice. So last question here. Can you tell us about the progression of your technology from its first stage to its current stage and what challenges did you have to overcome? Because when it comes to working with government customers, that's definitely a nuanced space, right? That sort of product iteration. Right. The CPR program is very good for that because it gives you the ability to connect with different user groups that have very specific, specific problem sets and you know, can you adapt that, your product to that to solve that problem. So for us, we did go through iterations. We had a commercial product we adapted that for, for the top secret realm. That's where we got the CBR success story. One of those videos that you saw, the one with Admiral Fritz Meyer, we've then since adapted it for another customer, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. We won one of their p. That was a few years ago. So as we continue to work with different customers we iterate but then we're also speaking with customers and user groups that are both either affiliated. So that's where I'm talking about like the MongoDB's of the world. So MongoDB is a database company that is it allows a lot of flexibility for developers to write applications on but in order to use that capability they are talking to their own customers. So I think making, I call it the spiderweb theory. You make relationships, you don't just make one thread of relationships. You're continuing to learn. That's a huge part of the type of team that we have is we're all learners, we're all very curious. So as we continue to learn that's how we continue to beef up and strengthen our product. And that's what we've seen. This company will be four years old in July, so we're not even four years old yet. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Mailani. It's awesome to see AFWorks companies doing great stuff out in this space. So thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you. Aloha. All right, now we're going to move on to our third and final company for today's session called Zero Systems. Hailing from Lone Tree, Colorado.

My name is David Milling and I'm the CEO and co founder of Xeros, a startup that is looking to build a more secure and more accurate GPS through quantum technology. All networks, financial transaction and electronics rely on timing from GPS. But GPS is a 50 year old system that has fundamentally reached its limits. So we're going to build a system that is orders of magnitude more accurate and secure. We've already built a proof of concept and our next step is to package it to a commercial product. And then we scale up. We provide timing over local terrestrial networks, then launches a satellite to provide timing over a large region and then interlink satellites until we have a global timing service at 10 picosecond level accuracy which is about 3,000 times more accurate than GPS. This accuracy enables 6G resilient smart grids, low latency financial transactions, self driving vehicles, defense applications and efficient distributed databases. Power quantum technology was invented, demonstrated in the lab and patented by my co founder in 2018 we formed the company around this technology in 2019 and immediately got selected for the Air Force sponsored Catalyst Accelerator. That led to two Air Force SBIRS, one Air Force SDTR and a NASA Phase 1 SBIR. We were also accepted into prestigious Techstars and CDL Quantum Stream accelerators which allowed us to do an extensive commercial customer discovery and kick off a seed fundraise. The proceeds from that raise allows us to build a proof of concept. Our team has the experience necessary to execute on this ambitious vision. I have decades of experience building complex space systems and Zeros is my third startup. My co founder Dr. James Troup invented our core technology and is the architect of the system and our algorithm. We've built a good mix of space quantum and PNT expertise and we have also set up a board of advisors that includes Dr. Rayfield Puzer and Nino Defaulsis. Our core quantum technology has been successfully demonstrated as a proof of concept and is now ready for commercialization. While it sounds exotic, it's essentially a laser. In optical communications a laser is pulsed to create zeros and ones for the transmission of data. But in quantum communications, individual particles of light known as photons are converted into pairs of photons that are entangled. These entangled photons are exchanged between distant clocks, creating synchronization at much better accuracy and security than other time transfer methods. We were fortunate because this development was enabled through the Air Force and NASA SBIR and STTR contracts that we received. Of note is the Air Force sttr. That project has now led to a published paper and a presentation at the recent Quantum 2.0 conference. The NASA Phase 1 SBIR titled Quantum Clock Synchronization allowed us to develop our simulation model to look at lunar and deep space quantum links. This led to a joint NASA and JPL paper. These projects not only allowed us to develop our technology, but also allowed us to understand the problems our customers are facing. GPS and other global navigation satellite systems work well when you're out in the open, but not so well in urban canyons and indoors. So we envision a system that provides accurate, resilient timing to fixed nodes and base stations. It will provide time distribution over large areas through satellites and then locally through fiber, and then we provide a position and timing signal over cell and WI fi for mobile users. This will improve the position accuracy from 5 meters to 10 centimeters, but only if the beacons are accurately synchronized with our technology. In addition to the SBIRS and STTR that I mentioned, we also have strong traction from the commercial sector. We closed A seed fundraise of nearly $1.5 million. We've also built new partnerships, including a research collaboration agreement with two universities and a number of commercial partners. And on top of that, we've also had the opportunity to present our technology at a number of space quantum and timing conferences. Now that we've built a proof of concept, we are looking to build our commercial system. With the support of America's seed fund, we are working on expanding that proof of concept to upgrade key components, characterize performance, and use those results to upgrade our simulation model. We also want to leverage testbeds as a step toward commercial sales. There are a number of quantum testbeds that have been announced in the last year that are usually public private partnerships funded by government research labs with commercial participation. We've also started designing our first satellite and are looking to develop missions with interested parties. We have big ambitions at Xeros, but we couldn't have gotten this far without the SBIR and STTR program. So on behalf of the Xeros team, thank you.

All right, let's welcome back up to the stage. Well, I say not back up. You were just on camera. David Mitling from Zero Systems. Thanks so much for that video, David.

Oh, thank you, Helena. It's a pleasure to be part of this at the Startup Expo.

Awesome. Well, we're glad to have you. So, first question I have on here, and this is super compelling to me because I've been working in this space for a long time and whenever people talk about technology that either doesn't exist yet or is like the moonshot of things they don't have, they talk about lasers and quantum. Right. So it's really cool to see a company that's actually doing it with a practical application. So can you tell me a little bit about how you came up with this idea in the first place?

Well, I'll give all the credit to my co founder. He's, He's a quantum scientist, 30 years been, you know, working on very complicated quantum systems. My background is space, so I, I've been fortunate to have worked on optical systems for satellites. You know, going back to my first startup in 2015. 15. And that's kind of through that, those connections I, I met my co founder and realized the value of what he's developed and created. You know, he invented this in 2018, leveraging a prior work that's been done by other quantum scientists and other quantum groups particular around quantum key distribution, quantum photography type applications. So I think for us it was, hey, you saw this technology, saw the value of it for solving a problem. And we formed a company around taking it to the next step.

Excellent. So a lot of technology today uses gps, right? And your technology has the potential to disrupt the way that GPS sort of works. Right. So what challenges have you had to overcome in that space or what are you still working on?

Well, we look at this as potentially being an augmentation to what exists for GPS. So GPS today has roughly 7 billion receivers already out there. It's almost one receiver for every, you know, person on the earth. So where the limitations of GPS are, are particularly in urban environments and for enterprise network users. So you're right, it is ambitious. If we were going to make a blanket crazy statement like saying, oh, we're going to replace gps, no, we're going to go and try to solve, you know, kind of fit into the cracks and the areas where GPS just can't reach. And to get there, we don't want to try to boil the ocean, try to do it all ourselves. We are working with partners, we are working with government and government agencies and commercial customers that, that are looking to be first adopters, looking to solve this problem. So we figure this is a big enough problem that we can solve it. Working with partners.

Fantastic. So what advice do you have for other founders out there that might be working on what they see as revolutionary quantum technology, Especially when it comes to translating that sort of the big idea into the actual application of something that turns out turns into a business model. Any advice?

Well, I, you know, I, I think what the previous Milani said in the Revis thing, we, we were very fortunate that we were able to get that bridge through the quote, unquote valley of death through the SBIR and STTR program. A lot of investors, a lot of commercial customers, you know, they want to see that finished product. So fortunately for us, these agencies are willing to say, hey, provide some funding sort of potentially revolutionary ideas to help you get to a product, to help you understand what the problem really is, get to that point where you have a product market fit. And so we've been fortunate with that. It's allowed us to advance the point where this is now getting that traction. The other thing I'd like to highlight to particularly for quantum startups, because that is tough technology, there's a longer valley of death when you have quantum. There's some very interesting things, like I mentioned in the video, with quantum test beds being funded. And again, those are an outstanding resource for a company like us to go in and do some installations with this public private partnership to leverage those resources. So it's, it's really a great time having that encouragement to come out with, with interesting quantum technology.

That's awesome, David. And just want to make sure I've got this correct. Do you have an STTR award? Correct. Which organization are you working with again?

So we got an appworks again. I want to give a nice shout out to AppWorks after doing great. So we have Air Force, SBIR and SDTR.

Fantastic. Well, again, great to see more AfWorks portfolio companies out there doing the work. And again, this is a really unique opportunity that we have here because AIML is such a buzzword and it's fantastic to people taking the things that, you know, make everyone excited about that technology and translating them into real use cases. So great job, Congrats on being here and thanks for joining us today.

Well, thank you for having me.

All right, so we've had some amazing companies this afternoon, but now I'd like to welcome everyone back up to the stage. So, Chinmai Mailani, come join David and I here back on camera. I see everyone excellent for a couple of rapid fire final thoughts. So let me make sure we've got everyone. Excellent. Okay, first question I have here is for Chen Mai. What differentiates your technology from other competitors in this space? Agriculture. Ag tech is definitely a crowded but vital space. So what's your big differentiator?

So we've always kept our focus on making small autonomous robots, and that means we have had to solve some very difficult problems of self navigation as well as machine learning. Mostly people do them separately, right? You know, put GPS and other kinds of navigation sensors on tractors or put cameras and computers on, you know, smaller vehicles or tractors. We managed to combine all of those into a AI and Autonomy combined engine. And while that was a much harder lift originally, now that we have it, the combined solution works much better than doing these things separately. And it's a lot lower cost as well for us to implement. So that's really put us in a place where we can very rapidly scale up to hundreds of thousands of these robots at very, very low costs.

Awesome. And for everyone listening, the theme of the day here, I think is dual use. Right. So it's government customers and private sector product as it stands today. Is this purchasable by the private consumer? Is this something that is strictly government IP products as of right now?

No, no, absolutely. I think, you know, we've had a million dollars from the NSF, but the majority of our revenue, almost $4 million, has been from the private sector. So We've been selling these robots and our AI services to the large enterprise customers in agriculture. We have some interesting conversations going on with the defense folks as well. But those are early stage. So as you said, like dual use from both government use as well as private use.

Awesome. So staying on that same vein, I want to transition quickly over to Mailani. So think in dual use here as you are building these products, what if any is the use case here with small businesses? Are you trying to build up more dual use side to this? Because the, you know, the secret clearance space is definitely one that's very niche. How does this sort of technology translate into the small business world? So another component of what we're doing is the real time. That's where confluent comes in. So working with Apache, Kafka, the need for the right information, the right data at the right time to the right person, that's ubiquitous. So we're working with everything from banking, banking and finance. We're talking with manufacturing, insurance. You know, again, the need to create timely decisions that are fast and trusted is a general topic, an area of issue. So you know, for those of you in the audience, bring us your hard problems in the decision space. If someone's told you something's impossible, we love those kinds of challenges, those are the kinds of things we thrive off of and we also want to make it more accessible. Again, this should not be the realm of people who are very specialized in this and it can't be, you know, there's too much data out there, there's too much information that we all need to make better decisions. And you know, we're trying to make that more democratic and more available to everyone. That's an awesome mission, Milani. Thank you for that. Last question here I have is going back to David. So you mentioned partnerships as being critical in the success of your company. What types of partnerships are you looking to get? Or is there anyone in this audience in particular? The particular that can help you get to your next inflection point.

Yeah, the partnerships that we're trying to develop are really across three areas. Quantum space and in the pnt, the timing sector. Our near term focus really is with the timing industry. So there's actually a fairly large multi billion dollar industry today for network timing equipment. You know, people think of gps, you know, you think of that, your cell phone. But for network operators that need very stable, capable timing systems, you know, it tends to be an expensive product. And those are the companies that are, we're looking at partnerships with so we can put our system on the satellite and we can distribute it to, to this existing hardware. But we're also looking at, for, for space and quantum hardware and photonics partners. Again, this is kind of a big ambitious thing we're trying to do. So hey, let's, let's all work on it together and solve a problem and so one day we could live in that magic world where we have flying cars and delivery drones and all that kind of good stuff.

I love it. And let's take that last question and open it up to the rest of the group because I want to make sure. Right. We've got a really awesome captive audience here. So for both Chinmay and Mailani, if you could ask anything of this audience, is there anyone particular that you're looking to meet or anyone that we could help introduce you to with this awesome community of people attached to the sba? Yes. So our ask is we are looking for people who have data, who have problems and would like us our help in that. So we particularly are looking for obviously new customers. That's the, that's the lifeblood of what we do, but more users. So we've got a really great opportunity. If you are in the chat, a bunch of my team is there. You can sign up for the Khana Data place which would give you 100 free tokens so you can be one of the first users. It's a drag and drop. So think of the claw from Toy Story. That's our, that's our logo for that. Love that. And you can get, you can get cleaned data that's usable. We have been approached by a number of different investors. We're an acquisition target as well. We entertain those conversations and at the right time we'll make the right decision. So otherwise we don't have an open round. But we're always looking for others who want to partner in Aloha. I'm from Hawaii is helping others to flourish. So I'm my mind is going thinking well hey, how can the three of our companies work together? You know we, we definitely have some overlap. You've got data, we've got the ability to make decisions. So yeah, if anything's interesting and also we're very, very active on LinkedIn so please connect with us. There's. All right, Chenmay, real quick, we're running short on time so real quick ask.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like to close on I think.

Yeah, definitely investors since we have around active love to chat with people who are interested in deep tech, ag tech, you know, climate and then of course one of the big things that we're looking for is people who want to buy carbon offsets from farmers since we're sequestering all of this carbon on farmland and that's a great way of contributing to the vitality of our heartland economies.

Awesome. Well, we're almost right on time, so thanks so much everyone. Join me in thanking Chinmay, Mailani and David again. If you would like any more information about any of the companies you've heard here today, please reach out to them directly. Also, be sure to visit the Startup Expo section of the exhibition hall where you can rewatch these narrative videos and capture more information about each company. With that said, I'm going to hand it back over to you, Katie. Thanks everyone.

Thanks everybody. Thank you.

Thank you Helena, and great job to the startups. You all bring in some great energy and I know there's a lot of action and potential partners coming your way. For those, for the audience out there, please let us know what you thought about the panel. A link will be placed in the chat box. So thanks again to everyone. When we come back, we'll hear from our next panel on advanced materials. Really excited for this panel because these startups are creating materials that have higher strength, lighter weight, higher efficiency and can handle more extreme temperatures, which ultimately help improve the capability of the materials produced for the government and the commercial market. Moderating this panel is Bob Smith, Director of Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Programs for the Department of the Navy. Thank you for joining us. Our second panel will will begin momentarily.

Thanks for joining us to hear from some really innovative companies working with the SBIR STTR program. Their progress getting here. We're going to be asking her some questions, putting them on the spot about what it takes to become that overnight success years in the making and hopefully it will spur you to participate in our program and realize SBA. $4 billion is there for you to help pay you for your passion. We at Alkali thank you for the opportunity to participate in the America's Seed Fund Expo and we as a company welcome you to the future of advanced materials processing processing. Alklite is a pioneer in the field of laser surface processing technologies. Our technology can now be applied to glass, ceramics, plastics and all types of metals. The company was founded in 2015, its origins in the University of Rochester labs of professor chun Li Guo. Dr. Guo started alkalite to allow expansion and commercialization stemming from his published work in the lab. Alkalite has won numerous awards including the Clean Energy Innovations Award in New York and the DoD Defense Innovation Award in 2019. Alklite is also in the process of receiving two phase three projects. Professor Go has published over 300 peer reviewed articles. He's an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and Optical Society of America. He's a recipient of the T.C. graham Innovations Prize, the GE Statoil Innovation Award and is a Fulbright Scholar. Dr. Fihard's expertise includes materials processing, nanosecond laser material interactions and laser induced spectrochemistry. He joined Alklite as a research scientist in 2020. Dr. Chivin Ngo joined Oclite as a research scientist. Dr. Ngo has more than 10 years of research experience in producing advanced functional surfaces using nanosecond femosecond laser matter interactions for various applications such as self cleaning, water harvesting, anti corrosion, anti icing and sanitation. The capabilities of black metal have been tested and it has been confirmed that it can absorb virtually 100% of the light energy to which is it exposed. Black metals should allow far more data to be captured in light detecting devices, making them more sensitive and efficient. Using the femosecond laser, metals such as steel, platinum, titanium, tungsten, silver and most others can have the surface color altered. This technique can create a wide variety of spectrum of colors. Even multicolored iridescents can be achieved. Emissivity and surface area are increased by 700% and 300% respectively. Emissivity changes the heat exchange rate. Radiative and convective cooling power of femosecond laser treated surface Is increased by 2,100% and 300% respectively at 200 degrees centigrade. This remarkable superhydrophilic effect is accomplished through the laser's ability to modify the nanostructure of the treated surface and change the way molecules of liquid interact with molecules of the material, allowing them to become more or less attracted to each other. This video demonstrates the power of the super wicking effect effect. Alkalite's superhydrophobic surface offers many advantages over similar processes, including the surface has a much stronger hydrophobic effect than the presently available coatings and there is no concern about the coating peeling or degrading over time, thereby creating no adverse environmental effects. This video demonstrates the powerful superhydrophobic properties created by laser processes. A demonstration of the superhydrophobic effect on glass transparency is maintained with a measurable loss of less than 5%. You can see here the remarkable anti corrosive and anti icing properties instilled in the post laser treated samples. The left side of the slide represents the growth of E. Coli Colonies prior to any treatment. The right side. After laser treatment, bacterial growth is reduced by over 99% on the laser treated surface. By significantly increasing surface area, fuel cell performance is increased nearly five fold. With additional funding, we will have the ability to significantly increase laser energy, speed and flexibility, thereby achieving our objective as a fully commercialized company. We'll be able to process larger surface areas faster and more efficiently, opening up the technology to a wider variety of industries. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this expo and allow us to introduce our exciting technology to your audience and just to get back to it. So we started with the Gates foundation and some SBIR grants, and it was a translation from Dr. Guo's lab at the University of Rochester where he was inundated after his first publications with requests for this technology in the private sector and from the Department of Defense. So he started alcohol in 2015 by renting out part of the Kodak building in Rochester, New York. Nice. So you got the Gates money, do that. How large is your company now? How many employees? Well, we are very startup. Yeah. Very small company right now. We have six employees right now. So most of them are scientists. Plus me who gets to do all the marketing, new business development. Take the spotlight here and the opportunity, along with all these great CEOs of the other companies from the other panel. Well, you know, that's a great kind of segue to talking about perseverance of taking that passion for that technology you have, seeing that it has commercial applicability, working through the process, finding those that support you. So I guess a plug again for sbir. Do you find it not only helped you get to where you're at or you plan to keep using it to continue progression of your technology? Oh, absolutely. Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry, please. Nope, nope. It was absolutely relevant and I believe it was the main initial funding that we received to take on these projects through an army SBIR and allowed the company to get off the ground. Of course, we are continuing to do SBIR sttr. We have been awarded two phase three SBIR studies which will be starting hopefully over the summer into the fall. So SBIR STTR is a huge part of what we're looking for as well as into the private sector. Now, obviously the SBIR has helped you, SDTR has helped you finance the continued research. Have you found the program been helpful to help you grow as a company? Just to get a quick example in the lab where Dr. Gwois started this process, what we do now that takes minutes, took hours, took four hours to process a one by one inch metal when he started. It now takes less than 60 seconds. So through this SBIR STTR funding, we've increased laser energy, we've increased the speed. We are working on commercializing the whole process to a huge variety of industries. The the what's what we have capabilities of is infinite.

Okay, great.

Okay, with the last few seconds, what do you want to say on the elevator to anybody that walked past the front office? Please give our company a chance. We will revolutionize the product coding industry because our product is not a coating. It is a change in the surface properties of the substance and therefore is long lasting and environmentally safe. Well, Peter, we appreciate your time today, appreciate your team's time to prepare for this this time and wish you all the best. Well, appreciate the opportunity. Thanks very much, Bob.

Isotrust towers are durable, corrosion resistant, lightweight and resilient. These towers significantly reduce energy installation costs and time permit unique deployment locations, including rooftops, remote areas and other locations with difficult access and withstand even extreme environmental conditions such as saltwater humidity and high winds. This technology was developed through the Small Business innovation research, or SBIR, program with the U.S. department of Agriculture. In the rural development topic, the isotrust tower is helping to close the digital divide or the disparity in network connection between rural and urban areas. The SBIR program enabled us to transform our technology from a university research project to a commercially viable product. Phase one funding allowed us to prove the feasibility of the technology, and phase two funding enables us to continue testing and tooling development as well as experience initial deployments with actual customers. We also acknowledge the generous support of the U.S. department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency for other SBIR funded feasibility studies on related isotrust technologies. The following video describes the mission of isotrust Inc. The producer of the isotrust Tower.

If you think about steel, it hasn't really innovated itself much over the last century. Metals are pretty well understood and they're used in a lot of places. But composites are the new world of material science. We know that isotrust is the material of the future. What began as a research project at a university has grown into a business with the potential to disrupt the entire world. I developed a lot of experience in composite materials.

Composite structures ultimately began working on what.

Became known as the isotrust structure. The geometry of isotrust is unique because it's an open lattice, open grid structure.

Not only does isotrust use composite materials, but there is this geometry that takes advantage of the uniqueness of composite materials.

We are up to 12 times as strong as steel or 12 times lighter. There's this constant work that we, that we're doing on the engineering and R and D side to be able to create these structures. We're continually looking at ways to improve it.

We have a focus on thoroughly understanding our product and testing it.

Our testing consists of everything from very, very small test pieces to full tower sections. And that data is being gathered and reported so that we can show not only the testing and standard organizations, but our clients that we have a robust industrial grade product. We've already tested in the real world our structures against typhoons and hurricanes. They're performing perfectly for that environment. We can beat steel on its lifetime costs. They're lighter weight than any steel structure out there. And we can meet all the design standards required for these infrastructure projects. It's disruptive. It's a game changer. Environmental friendly, stronger than steel. The imagination is the limit of the types of applications that an isotrust structure could fill. Over the past century, we've lived in an economy that's been dominated by steel. The next 100 to 200 years will be dominated by isotrust. Our mission is to build the sustainable infrastructure of tomorrow. Foreign. Part of me wants to just sit here for a few minutes and take in that video because it showed so much in such a short amount of time. But if you could talk about give me sort of the quick time frame between where you're at now and your overnight success. Years in the making.

Yeah. Thanks Fog. So the technology was actually invented a couple decades ago and studied at a university level for a long time. And then Isotrust. The company was started in 2015 by Nathan D. Rich, who's our founder. And our first SBIR opportunity came in 2019 with the USDA. And since then we've been able to participate in three other SBIR opportunities. It's really helped us us grow our research and develop our product into something that's commercial. Neat.

So do you find yourself having a challenge with focusing on one or two customers as you grow? Because the the ability to have lightweight, sturdy structures covers so many different technology disciplines. And airplanes to ship to buildings, to roads. So how are you putting all those balls in the air?

Yeah. So the technology was originally invented for the aerospace industry with partial funding from NASA. So there's obvious opportunity there as weight is critical in aerospace right now. We are also doing a lot of work in the telecom industry. And weight there is important because you can put towers in new places. If they're lighter weight, you can put them on rooftops, you can Put them in areas that have difficult access. And so ultimately that's helping connect people across the United States, which is exciting.

Yeah, I'm going to go personal. I'm waiting for. I'll be your first volunteer for your first isotrust mountain bike. So keep that in mind for me please. With a little bit of time to go. You've got that stranger in the elevator. What do you, what knowledge of your company do you want to impart to them?

Yeah, we're excited about our technology, we're excited to keep building and help America's infrastructure be more future looking. And so we're excited for more opportunities and more deployments in the future.

Okay, well that's pretty awesome. And obviously still staying active in the SBR SDR program. Yes, that's way to keep going with multiple customers with multiple solutions. And where do I apply? Thank you for your time.

Got us on our website. Thanks, Bob.

Okay, that's your website. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your technology and your passion with us. Bravo to you and your team and can't wait to see you when you're, you know, a major prime company out there running things in America. It takes a generation and you guys are well on your way. Thank you. At necotech, we are developing more advanced equipment and eco friendly materials to improve performance, increase safety and make our nation's infrastructure more sustainable for decades to come. We have assembled a world class team of employees and advisors, but our strength is multiplied by our success in collaborating with others. We were recently named one of Fast Company's 2023 World's Most Innovative companies for our ability to have an outsized impact on our industry. We partner with the best labs in the country to help us develop our technologies. Some relationships to note include the US Army Engineer Research and Development center, the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, NASA and multiple universities within Ohio and throughout the US our first completed SBIR Phase 2 was our hot patch on Demand, which is a proprietary solution to make hot mix asphalt in minutes, providing the performance of hot mix with the convenience of cold mix year round. The hot pods are system will operate much like a hot glue gun for potholes and asphalt. The technology is currently in the midst of a four base army demonstration tour and we are hopeful for phase three transition later this year. But don't just take our word for it. Listen to what Dr. John Rushing of the US Army Engineer Research and Development center has to say. Our airfields are some of our most valuable assets to the military and they're the launching points for some of the most critical weapon systems, but when they get damaged, that puts our operations at risk. The materials that we have right now to go out and do the expedient repairs, sometimes at remote places around the globe, they don't work. They simply can't handle the loads that are imparted from our fighter aircraft. When we put ours to the test, we found that it could survive hundreds of passes of those aircraft. Our current SBR Phase 2 is a robotic crack sealing vehicle. It is a truck with a blower vision system and robotic arm to clean, map and seal asphalt pavement while driving. It can run 24, seven at up to two times the speed of traditional workers while requiring fewer personnel and keeping them out of harm's way. We have been able to test this on roads, parking lots and even on DoD bases including Tyndall Air Force Base, aka the base of the Future and Luke Air Force Base where we stress tested the system for three weeks. Much like our Hot Patch on demand, we hope to transition this technology to a Phase three contract later this year. The long term goal is for a robotic crack sealing vehicle to become an all in one maintenance vehicle with a magnitude of additional use cases including pothole filling, concrete printing and joint replacement to name a few. We have even identified a ruggedized electric chassis that could be utilized for some of these use cases, specifically our mobile 3D concrete printing efforts that just wrapped up an STTR phase one and won third place at Xtec Manufacturing. We love the SBIR program and we will be submitting three phase two rollovers later this month including the mobile 3D concrete printer mentioned above, and are awaiting the results of multiple Phase 1 submissions to continue building out our catalog of infrastructure maintenance solutions. However, the end goal is not to research technologies but to commercialize them. Nikotec is just getting started. We are only three years old and are currently looking to raise funding to help accelerate our entry into the commercial market. We are very interested in major customers and corporate partners. The timing for this raise is perfect as multiple of our technologies have been proven out through the SBIR program and our business model was recently validated when we were named one of the 16 most fundable companies in America by the annual Pepperdine Graziado program. So please join us in transforming the way we take care of our nation's infrastructure. So Steve, I love watching your technology and but part of me keeps going well that's not really exciting except for then I think about I live in a major metropolitan area and Lord knows I'd love to have your cold patch to Fix some of the holes we've got here. How are you balancing using SBI or STTR to continue to spin on your technologies? And I use that phrase, and it seems like it's almost limitless the applications of the technology you have or the, the use of those technologies, the next vehicle you're going to put on the base there. So do you find yourself having to balance between doing Those current SBIRs versus dreaming about the next one? Yeah, it can go both ways. You know, you can certainly be casting a wide net. Fortunately, we found with the civil engineering realm inside the war fighter with the Air Force that there's a lot of synergy with, with what we're building. And so we look at everything as kind of, you know, let's get the base chassis out there and then add the modular solutions based on the use case of what the war fighters have to do. So but are you finding as you're satisfying that SBIR customer, the, the base commander and the folks there that just out the, just outside that city gate there, you've got another community that just can't wait to get their hands on your technology? Sure, sure, yeah. I mean, you know, dual market is the point of the program. Right. So it's being able to develop and service the DoD customer or the ESPIR customer if you're, you know, not in the DOD sipper program. And then the commercial market success. So we cut our teeth with the Air Force. Covid kind of allowed us to do that and they defined environment. We were able to go out and secure our first phase one and phase two and then we've rolled that into multiple and never intended to be more than just the one. We were just going after that. That was like the seed funding. Right. But it kind of working with our worldwide as we saw that there was more opportunities. Now it's going into the commercial market and standing up that commercial business so that as the technologies develop with the world wide area in the Cibber program, we can actually roll them out to a ready and aware commercial market. So great point. So your phase two helped you get that prototype to product ready. I always like to tell folks that are phase two, congratulations, you're behind. So have you found yourself catching up yet? Yeah, in ways behind in others. I mean we're going into a massive market. I'm actually out on the Washington Mall today for the construction industry celebration on the mall. So we've got big equipment from 24 of the world's large, largest construction industry players and then Nicotech. So it's it's daunting, you know, the task that's ahead, but it's also kind of humbling and remarkable of, you know, where we've come in, you know, three short years. Three short years. So you started with when you first opened your doors there two or three of you. And how many do you have now? Now there was one. It was me. Okay. So we. We started with one and added a couple people along the way. We're up to nine now and looking to add in about probably double the team over the next year here. Okay. Pretty neat. So getting off the stage, any of the last things you want to say about sba, which I think is thank them very much for the program, the Air Force, obviously, hopefully other DoD customers. But what else do you want them to remember about nicotech? Yeah, no, it's been a catalyst to our success. You know, we, as mentioned in the video, we adore the program. You know, lucky it found it at the timing. It kind of did a perfect niche for us, you know, and then we. We look to help others, you know, go through the program as well. But it's all about commercial success at the end and making sure that we're transitioning technology to truly have an impact on decarbonizing, you know, the. The infrastructure maintenance industry. Ronnie, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your passion. Nothing, you know, talking about one person taking their passion and bringing it fruition. It's. It's gotta be some pretty exciting times at the same time. Still plenty of things to keep you up at night, but thank you so much. Okay, so I'm gonna open this up for anyone at this point. What do you find your biggest challenge for your company at this point? Is it the funding or is it pursuing the technology or growing the company or all of the above? Why don't we start with Marianne?

I think it can be challenging to figure out make sure that you're meeting customer need. So it's great to have a really cool technology that we're excited about, but we need to make sure that we're meeting a need of our customers and that we're marketing well to that. And the SBIR program helped us do that with the technical and business assistance funding. So actually talking to customers, getting feedback, and making sure that we're looking at the right things to help them.

So that's interesting. So you consider your customer the future customers or the current person that's signing those checks?

Both. Yeah.

Okay. I like to tell companies and, like, make sure the first person you keep. Keep Happy is that technical point of contact because they're the key to the next step. Okay, let's go to OC Light if I could. One of the questions I was going to ask you is have you found a challenge moving between different agencies or are you finding there's sort of a culture niche that works for you in your current SBIR host? I think we meet the needs of just about any SBIR in that we've come across in the DOD arena. Being able to create a water resistant glass, for example, with all everything being on sensors and automated these days, self cleaning, anti fogging, anti icing glass, for example, is a huge advantage for the Air Force, for aerospace, for army, any of these things we've been contacted about. So I think our technology is applicable across a wide variety of industries and the sbirs that gives us a huge variety of sbirs to delve into and we've fortunately taken advantage of that. Well, it sounds like you've listened what the customer wanted. Instead of going, here's my technology, go us. You're going, here's your solution. Yes, we look for a problem and because our technology is so flexible and offers so many different avenues to go down, we try to pick a problem, offer the solution. And that's how we've been choosing our SBIRS STTRS at the moment. I think that's an awesome model. I've seen it work for many folks. So Nikotech, we'll put you on the spot here. Do you see yourself staying in the facilities realm of repairing things or do you see yourself starting to help teach them how to build new things? Well, so we're launching 100% recycled asphalt plants on the commercial side. So that's kind of our going to be the, the main side of the business here as we stand up. And then the, the infrastructure maintenance machine, you know, plays a critical role not only with the Air Force and the attention that it's gotten over there, but, but we're looking at the 5,000 paved airport facilities in the United States alone and helping out with that because with the next wave of aviation and the evital movement and everything, we see that the regional hubs and airports are going to become a big economic driver as well as logistics and cargo centers for both people and package transportation. So we want to help make sure that we're doing that in a sustainable way and make sure that they can maintain that infrastructure so that they can keep up with the, the increase in the change of this shift. So I, I think I'll start with Indigo Tech, and we'll go through all three companies. Do you. Is anywhere in your business models to be acquired by a Prime or you want to continue to challenge them in this technology area? Yeah, I mean, I, I think everybody, you know, looks at that ultimate exit strategy. I mean, you know, whether it's, you know, we're, we're suited for a prime acquisition or a private equity roll up with a collection of technologies. But at the end of the day, you know, you start bringing in the bureaucratic Systems and the 17 layers of decision making, you slow down innovation. So we want to get far enough, you know, so that we can make sure that we've got that identity and keep that innovation up, up, but then also have the financial and the systems to be able to actually capture the market. So it's a balance for sure. So I'll go with you. Peter, your thoughts on that? Yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly, I think, and I brought it up at our meetings. Would we be open to being absorbed into a larger industry? I think we have to keep our eyes open to what's out there. The, our technology, for example, if it could be placed into robotics, we could do huge, huge pieces of metal, glass, where right now we're limited by the power of the laser. But if we could combine with a partner, for example, and be absorbed. I don't like the word absorb. Become partners with a company like that. Because I don't think being absorbed that, that story, you lose your identity, I believe. And we don't want to lose our identity. We just want to grow our business. And if that means being partnered with other, other industries, we're certainly open to it. Okay, so, Marianne, are you ready to be procured by a Prime and get your first small caravan island of your own, or do you see yourself being the upstart that will keep them on their toes for years to come?

I think we're open to all kinds of collaboration, whether that's an acquisition or just research and development partnering. But yeah, we're excited about isotrust and we want to see the technology move forward in whatever opportunity opens up for us.

So. And I'll stay with you on that. When it comes to collaboration, folks, do you find, do you find other small businesses easier to work with than, say, some of the established companies out there? Do you find just more of an innovative mindset and collaboration and, and teamwork, even though they may be competition out there with other small businesses?

And this is also a great chance to do your last. What do you want to make sure the audience takes away from. From this panel.

So in that case, Marian, why don't we go straight to that one, make it easy, the walk off the stage. What do you want people to remember once you drop that mic?

I think the SBIR program has really been so influential for our company, so I'd encourage other small businesses to look into it. And we're just excited about all the innovation that's been featured today and excited to see where it goes. Okay.

And Peter, we'll take you next. Yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly. I believe that the SBIR SDTR programs have allowed us to take the steps we've taken over the past few years. And I would encourage anybody to look into it who has a small business or a startup. We will keep looking into it. We will look into the private sector, and we hope to be able to be part of this again down the road, where I can say we have more than six, less than 100 employees, but we're going to. We're planning on growing big and fast. So thank you for the opportunity. And nicotech. Yeah, no, we're helping decarbonize the construction industry. So, you know, the pursuit of that is a big one. We're entering a trillion dollar market with big players, but have been able to build a brand that people not only recognize, but they empathize with, and that's powerful. And the SBIR program has allowed us to do that. So, you know, getting validation, working with the war fighters. You know, you go tell the private sector that you're working with the DoD or with the Air Force in particular, and you get some validity. That's. That's hard for a startup to get elsewhere. So it does help being part of the SBIR program for sure. Okay, thank you. So to all of our panelists, thank you so much for your time, your dedication. Thank you for your passion, for your technology, for those watching. And Jen, thank you for putting us all together. For those listening to the presentation, think about it for a second, how these folks took their passion and made today's successes overnight using the SBIR program, which is there for you also to move forward, to get paid to do what you love to do, which is create things that don't exist today. Thank you for your time. And Jen, I think I'll pass it back to you, ma'. Am.

Thanks so much, Bob. And thank you so much, Steve, Peter, and Marianne, you know, following on what, what Bob said, I mean, it is just incredible. And don't forget, all of you, to visit sbir.gov to learn more about America's seed Fund. And also in case you want any more information about the companies that were on today's panel, you can reach out to them. You can go visit the Startup Expo section of the exhibition hall after tomorrow, where you'll get to rewatch any of these videos and capture more information about each company in case that chat was flying way too fast. Also, make sure you let us know how you like the panel by clicking the link that we're sharing in the chat. And when we come back from the break, we'll hear from our final panel of the day. Some companies really Disrupting in the Biotechnology and Public Health and of course, you know biotechnology is an emerging engineering discipline I think that all of us learned a lot more about over the past few years. But as we're finally on the other side of the pandemic, I'm excited to learn more about additional companies participating in this emerging and critical technology area and what you'll see. As you just saw the variety of different kinds of of companies and applications from advanced materials or in the computing space, you're going to see a lot of variety in the biotechnology or public health space as well. And moderating this discussion is Lt. Col. Andy Yakouis, Director of Corporate Ventures at the Army Applications Lab. Thanks, Sam.

Foreign. Welcome and hello everyone to today's America's Seed Fund Startup Expo session on biotechnology and and public health. My name is Lt. Col. Andy Ugulis and I'm the Director of Corporate Ventures for the arm of the Applications Lab, the innovation arm of Army Futures Command. As we've all experienced from living through a global pandemic, focusing more resources on improving outcomes for public health is critical to sustaining our very way of life, and the field of biotechnology plays a critical role. Biotechnology is an emerging engineering discipline that uses living systems to produce a wide range of technologies and capabilities. This includes everything from fighting global pandemics to reducing logistics and sustainment costs to increasing energy efficiency. Biotechnology can help change the way that government departments conduct missions, perform in contested logistic environments, and adapt to major global changes. So today we're going to spotlight some companies that are doing groundbreaking work in its emerging displacement. As Director of Corporate Ventures for the Army Applications Lab, I get to meet with really incredible and innovative small businesses every day. And these three companies that we're going to talk to this afternoon are no different. The first company I am pleased to introduce is Allied Microbiota from Stony Brook, New York. Hello, my name is Ray Cimbrado, Founder and CEO of Allied Microbiota, a company focused on the elimination of contaminants from environmental waste streams. Our technology is based on bacteria and our ability to improve on their destruction of environmental contaminants. In this short video, Laurel and Kurtz, our former CEO and I will explain how SBIR Phase 2 funding has been critical to develop this technology and it's brought us to our early revenue stage and the exciting recent development of a joint development agreement with a major chemical company. Team is composed of. Ray Sombrado, an environmental microbiologist for almost three decades at Columbia University, stepped out to found Allied Micro. His expertise is in microbial diversity and the catalytic properties of bacteria. Bill St. John is a serial entrepreneur who's been very helpful in developing the company and Mark Kluger is a executive with an environmental engineering group who are very important to us to scale up our technology.

Allied Microbiota uses microbes to clean contaminants from soil and our microbes have shown groundbreaking results against compounds like Those polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, PHAs, dioxins and chlorinated compounds.

An important recent development has been our demonstration that our biological process can break down PER and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Pfas. PFAS has been an emerging contaminant that's caused concern in drinking waters around the world. SBIR Phase 2 funding has been critical in allowing Allied Microbiota to develop our platform technology composed of three basic parts, most importantly our bioprospecting, in which we select and find new organisms for specific commercial purposes and then improve those strains in the laboratory. Once these strains are in hand, they can be used with our commercial partners in scale up technology in the field.

We've shown in the lab that we can take PCB levels down below 50 part per million and that's a key regulatory threshold that allows the soil to be safely landfilled. But we're not stopping there. We're working hard to get the PCB levels down below 1 ppm. At that point the soil can be safely reused, solving the problem, not burying it. We're often told that the solution is to dig up the soil, transport it hundreds of miles and bury it. That doesn't solve the problem, it just relocates it and buries it. When we say that we can solve the problem, we're told that it'll too expensive and too slow. We disagree. Our microbes can degrade environmental contaminants faster and cheaper than existing remediation technology.

SBIR funding was critical in getting us to our first paid contracts. In one, we remediated the formaldehyde coming from waste gas from a particle board manufacturer in North Carolina. In another, we helped a landfill to remediate the high levels of ammonia coming off the landfill water. And in the third, and probably the largest segment is to work with soil remediation companies in cleaning soil that they receive from contaminated sources. The de risking of our technology has brought us to the scale up of our commercialization efforts. This has been accelerated by the signing of a joint development agreement with Solovey Chemical Co. A move that has validated our technology and led to the development of a clear roadmap in which we can develop all three aspects of our technology. Specifically for the commercial aspects, we think we can develop the products and services shown in green through organic growth. The additional products and services in the black text will require a raise that we are currently working on. This three year plan is rapidly taking shape, led largely by the great interest in the PFAS remediation technology sector. Let's welcome to the stage Ray Sombrato, Founder and CEO from Allied Microbiota. Ray, first, congratulations. It's really great to meet you. Thank you. Andy. Same. Same here. Yeah. I'd love to know what inspired you to leave academia and take on this challenge. Well, that pivot came at a point in my life. I really wanted to operationalize a lot of the things I was doing for a couple of decades. There's nothing wrong with basic research and should have more of it, but we have to have this critical translation into operationalized products and I think we don't do a good enough job of that, particularly in the environmental sciences. Well, good for you for taking that leap into entrepreneurship. But can you speak a little bit about your company's mission and its long term vision? How does that appeal to recruiting employees or even investors? Okay. The bioremediation has been around actually for quite some time. So we're, I often say we're doing the version 2.0 approach where we're not just waiting around for the ambient and microbes to do their job, but we're augmenting with specific bacteria that we spend a lot of time matching up with the contaminants of concern. So the vision here is to harvest all of the great things that are going on in biotechnology, mostly driven in the biomed world, but bring those over into and leverage them for better, faster, cheaper ways of decontaminating and, and removing toxins from the environment. And so these decontamination of waste streams we Hope to make ourselves obsolete in removing the historical waste waste streams. At which point then you're only worrying about the real time, the removal of contaminants from real time waste stream. So that's the, that's the goal here. Yeah. Sadly I think you got a lot of work on your hands, but. So you're making the world a better place. You're cleaning up the planet, clean up the soil. How does that appeal to recruiting employees? Do you find that your mission and trying to improve the planet makes it easy to attract people to the company? Nope. Yeah, I've had lots of success with recruiting young scientists who are eager to work in this area, eager to make a mark not just in science in general, but specifically in the environmental aspects of this. So it's been going well in terms of the commercial raise. There's a lot of companies out there, investors interested in sustainability. We certainly have a large footprint in that area. And merging this with the environmental biotech areas, it's kind of a, a new way of looking at things. But as we talk to them more and more, we're getting some traction there as well. Great. Well then maybe just, just real quickly, any, any lessons learned building and scaling your company so far? Yeah, certainly the market research is critical. We came out with swinging on the soil remediation and the things as we said in the video, but we didn't, what I didn't say was the pivot we took into emerging contaminants. And this is something that just came just the market research just told us loud and clear. And so in our case at least it was pretty easy to see that it was the elephant in the room that needed to be addressed. Well, it sounds like a really great pivot. Ray, thank you very much for your time. Speak a little bit more here in a little bit. It's now time to introduce our second company, Molecular Rebar Design from Austin, Texas. Hello, my name is Kurt Swager. I'm the CEO of both Molecular Rebar Design and a subsidiary, BioPac Cellular Transport. The team at Molecular Rebar Design understands the fundamental importance of materials in shaping the world around us. Whether it's new materials that change batteries or tires and have longer lasting coatings and parts, or creating nanomaterials for biomedical applications, the redefining material properties can open new opportunities to improve, improve performance and cost. With this understanding, our team of world class scientists, engineers and researchers have dedicated themselves to revolutionizing material engineering through the application of discrete carbon nanotubes. By incorporating nanoscale carbon based structures into conventional materials. We unlocked a vast array of extraordinary properties and capabilities. These combined efforts have led us to create create our biomedical division, BioPak cellular transport. BioPak's patented medical grade molecular rebar technology, or MGMR, is the result of years of cutting edge research and development. By precisely engineering the size, shape and distribution of carbon nanotubes, we created a delivery vehicle that allows precision delivery of new or existing bioactive agents to tissue or cells, allowing more effective treatments for diseases such as cancer or HIV that are tailored to customer needs. Molecular Rebar Design has been recently awarded a two year phase two contract for the treatment of HIV virus. With this DoD contract, we aim to create advanced delivery techniques that will help target and suppress hiv. Another example to illustrate the technology is the use of mgmr, or cancer chemotherapy with minimal side effects and with the ability to have a broader therapy treatment range for an extended use of the treatment leading to longer life of the patient. We are looking for partners to help us develop the technology, particularly in the biotech area with new funds and new opportunities. Opportunities. Join us on this remarkable journey as we reshape the world of materials engineering with molecular rebar design. Let's welcome to the stage Curt Swager, CEO and co founder of Molecular Rebar Design. Hi Kurt, how are you today? Very good, thanks for having me. Of course, really, really interesting stuff that you and your company are working on and congratulations for being selected. I think founder journeys, founder stories are just fascinating. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your, your founding journey and a little bit more about the idea of using discrete carbon nanotubes for a variety of different applications. Well, I worked for the Dow Chemical Company for a whole 37 years, give or take a couple. And in it I was in a variety of products. In fact, you use them materials for croc shoes, materials for plastic bags, turf, all kinds of applications. And during that time we were seeing this nanomaterial business happen. So my partner and I after we retired decided, hey, let's make nanomaterials work. And we can talk about the other applications. But one of the things we learned a long time ago was make sure whatever you have is safe. So we started toxicology work on the individual tubes and found out they caused no harm to mice, they caused no harm to tissues cells. In fact, actually there were some pretty interesting things we found, one of which actually would go into a cell without hurting it. Another we could steer it to the bone and then there's a couple other applications. And with that it led to founding of this particular division. Really really interesting. Not a lot of people go and start companies after They've worked for 30 years at a large corporation. So hats off to you for that. What do you envision in the future for the use of nanotechnology specifically in the commercial industry? Okay, well, the tox work we use for this goes into tires. And the tires wear better and have better fuel economy. It goes into batteries which have, have higher energy density and faster to charge. It goes into coatings which are more durable. It goes into 3D printing which gives you more rigid parts. It goes into photovoltaics which gives you better films. There's just a whole host of applications. And of course it does go into the bio area. And you know, we start out with delivering one material for HIV into cells. You can also deliver materials that will affect a whole host of other diseases. So thanks to the, actually the army out of Walter Reed, we're getting a chance to demonstrate this. We'll be putting it into mice and then monkeys later on to show the concept for HIV and then you can extend it for other applications. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. A lot of those applications you talked about on the commercial use case have a dual use applicability to the military as well. Tires and those other things. Can you think about any like other direct defense related ways to use nanotechnology, your carbon nanotubes? Well, about shielding, you guys might be interested in that. Again, different kinds of batteries and other energy storage devices such as ultra capacitors, again different kinds of corrosion coatings. Obviously the rubber and tires for not only tires, but seals, things like that. A whole host of applications. And actually we're going to be visiting D.C. in another month or two and be right across from the army pavilion. So maybe we'll come visit you guys. Okay, sounds good. What, what's more challenging, the work you're doing in the biotech Space with your HIV Super Phase 2 project or something in like nanotech for batteries? Well, I, I'm a junkie for everything, so I think it's all pretty cool. And the material science is easier in some senses, a lot of senses. But people, the, the suction work for the new technology is more in the bio area. You know, your big enemies in, in this all whole development game materials is time. It always takes longer and then inertia in the system and people, you know, everybody understands cancer is a problem. HIV is a problem. Getting people excited about tires, unless you happen to be in that business is difficult. Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. Well, thank you for the work you're doing Kurt. It's definitely needed. Very, very interesting. We'll talk a little bit more here at the end. We're going to move on to our third and final company for today's session. Pedia Metrics From Rockville, Maryland.

I'm Dr. And I am founder and CEO of Pedia Metrics. I earned my PhD at Johns Hopkins University in Medical Imaging and have work experience at Children's Hospital and National Institutes of Health. I decided to start Pediatrics based on my personal experience as a mom with my older son Ryan and my passion for helping other parents.

Hi, my name is Dr. Reza Seifabadi. I am co Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Pedometrics. Before joining Pediometrics, I was a scientist at NIH Department of Radiology and before that I was trained at at Children's national in a fellowship focusing on pediatric innovation. I did my PhD at Johns Hopkins.

University softest part is FDA 510k cleared in fact, it is the first and only software as a medical device cleared by FDA that can be used for scanning baby's head. These kits can be used by parents. Physicians give these kits to parents so they can use a QR code to download the app and uses stocking cap to remove any hair artifacts. They scan and collect photos of the baby's head and the report is sent to their physician who will discuss the results with parents and discuss the next steps. More than a thousand scans have been done using these soft spot kits and it has helped many babies to prevent severe types of head deformity conditions. Our patent pending technologies allow for AI enabled photo collection by novice users, disease evaluation and detection and accurate 3D imaging using smartphones. SBI grants have helped us not only test our methods with headphantoms 3D printed from real patient data, but also with about 600 patient data in our clinical studies. Our clinical studies submitted to the FDA showed equivalent accuracy of soft spot to tools that are only available in specialist offices and our AI models are getting better every day as we are training them with data that only can be collected and it through Soft spot.

Soft Spot has already helped hundreds of patients to avoid intensive treatment options. The same technology will be used for adjacent body deformity conditions including spine dental deformity and ear deformity touching lives of more than 40 million children only in the United States. We have established partnership with major medical device distributors including McKesson Henry Schein, covering 90% of the US medical devices market. We have also made partnerships with other companies including Perfect Login and office practicum, the largest EHR system in pediatrics, which allow us to faster adoption moving forward. We are raising $3 million in order to bring soft spot 3D into the market which allows to cover more conditions. We are also making a strong sales and marketing team and also pursue regulatory approval in other countries outside of the US to drive revenue and market penetration.

Softspot has been a great tool for my practice. It's allowed me to improve the quality of of care I provide for my patients when they have a head shape concern. It's allowed me to enhance patient engagement in my practice with such a great tool. And finally, it's been a source of revenue for my practice because we're paid for the E M visits we do as we're following and managing head shape concerns.

I would definitely recommend this app to all concerned parents. Let's walk on stage. Dr. Freya Al Mufar from Pedometrics First I should say happy belated Mother's Day. I think I speak for the entire audience. I love to put blooper reel at at the end there. Sounds like you got some good little employees helping you with this product. We'd love to hear a little bit more about the beginning. What inspired you to to create this artificial intelligence in the direction of pediatric bodily deformity conditions?

Thank you for the happy Mother's Day message and thanks for having me. Well, I started working in the field of artificial intelligence during my PhD studies at John Hopkins University, specifically in the area of healthcare technologies. And after that I spent some time at the NIH and Children's national hospital in Washington D.C. and during this period I learned about how to bring innovative technologies to healthcare and more specifically pediatric patients. But I can say I developed the main passion after I myself became a mom and experienced the challenges of being a parent and the anxiety of going through multiple specialists when my son was developing a skull deformity condition and older wait times. So I decided to use the experience I had gained to help other parents not have to go through the same thing. And I wanted to build pediatrics so that I can bring computer vision and artificial intelligence based technologies that can be made available through smartphone devices to pediatric care so that parents and pediatricians can use those tools for screening and early detection. So nowadays everyone, almost everyone has access to a smartphone that has cameras and then they can use it to collect photographic data. And part of the artificial intelligence is about enabling acquiring of quality photo by but by different types of users, even parents who live in remote areas and then transferring them to secure hipaa compliant clouds where analysis can be done and the reports can be sent to their primary care physician for analyzing risk factors for different types of pediatric conditions.

I love hearing about founders kind of solving their own pain points. So really, really impressive, impressive there. And it's impressive how far this company has come. Can you take us a little bit back to the challenges that you've had to overcome along the way?

Sure. So I think it usually takes about seven years for a medical device to launch in the market. And I can say we were able to achieve a lot during the short amount of time of about four years thanks to the SPIR grants. I think in the first two years we mainly spent time on developing the core technology, filing the patents and launching our proof of concept. And then the next two years we spent on the clinical studies, receiving the FDA clearance and then launching our minimally viable prototype. But as everyone knows, the healthcare industry is very convoluted and there are different aspects to it that do not exist in other types of industries. So for example, regulations, reimbursement and education are very important parts of being able to enter the market and scale in the market.

Yeah, I think Selling to the DoD is hard. Selling to the healthcare industry is probably equally as challenging. Where do you see your specific industry though headed in the next 10 to 20 years?

Yeah, so I think we started with skull deformity conditions partly because of the personal experience, but we really see computer vision and artificial intelligence enabled through smartphone devices becoming kind of the smart, the standard of care for early detection and screening. Specifically, we see Soft spot becoming a computer vision platform for different types of screening and early detection. And that can include in addition to skull deformities, for example, spine deformities, also called scoliosis, that is recently very common among teenagers, and also ear and dental deformities.

What advice would you give to other companies out there that are trying to build products using artificial intelligence and healthcare?

Yeah, I can say the first is to identify the right problem that can be solved with an AI based solution. Because not every problem requires the resources that an AI needs to solve. For example, there are other solutions that can be equivalently accurate and effective without the artificial intelligence based solution. And that's what we actually try to do at pdmtric. So whenever possible we use non AI based solutions because they require less amount of resources, they don't need as much data that an AI model needs to be able to work, and they are faster and more available, sometimes in simpler kind of devices. So that's one. And I Think the other one is building the relationships and partnerships to access data. So for an artificial intelligence based technology, it is very important to get access to enough amount of data and patient data, especially in pediatric space, is difficult to access. So building partnerships with clinical centers and hospitals and those partners who have access to the data, that is very important.

Great points, Freya, thank you very much for that and great job to all the companies today. I think we're going to welcome them all back on stage and we're going to have a short roundtable discussion. All right, we got Ray, Kurt and Freya all back on stage now. We have a lot of CBER CIDR hopefuls out there. Ray, I guess I'll start with you. Can you tell me a little bit about how you first learned about the CIBR CIDR program? Well, yeah, I was mostly in the, as I said, basic research and things and it took me a while to become aware of it. So it was through people that I had colleagues that had been in the program and they informed me and I kind of asked them about it and familiarized myself with it. And then did you, were you on the like sam.gov website looking for CBER to come out in, in your field specifically, how did you find the siber that you ended up being on? Yeah, then it was a process of winnowing through all of the, the different programs to find the matchup between what we were doing and, and what the, the agencies were interested in. Yeah, gotcha. Okay, maybe Kurt to you. Were you successful for your very first proposal you write to the CBER process? And, and can you maybe tell us a little bit more about your experiences with the solicitation? Yeah, we've actually applied for three or four. I did one with the Air Force and one with the army and one for doe and we got actually three. We didn't get a follow on with the Air Force, but we did for the army, interestingly enough, in disease and DOE tires. And so I think the biggest thing is, is the search process. There are people that can help you do that. But I would say that the government's made it a lot pretty easy to go look and see if there's projects that you think your technology could match. And that's been extremely helpful. The process to get through the application can be entertaining. Not so much describing what it is, but all the other stuff that goes with it. But it's, it's well worth the trip. Can you give any advice as far as how to be successful in getting an application for maybe other than Keeping a sense of humor. First thing is sense of humor first one or two. We actually had an outfit help us a little bit that. But then once you get used to it, I'd say that the explaining what you have is actually pretty easy. When you go into the budgeting process, well, you guys know that in the army that's a nightmare sometimes. But again it's pretty, pretty sympathetic to help. And your program managers, I mean they're allowed to answer questions on at the application. So all the ones we've dealt with been super nice and pretty helpful. So that's great, that's great to hear. I think from my perspective, one of the things that we see is just answer the question. And you'd be surprised how many proposals don't actually just answer the question. In some terms it sounds basic, but just answer the question. That would probably be my advice for Freya, what do you think are some of the most important benefits of the Siber CTR program?

Yeah, I think for high risk technologies, especially those that are related to artificial intelligence and healthcare technologies, there are risks associated with developing the technology. And the advantage of these kinds of grants is that it enables small companies and startups to be able to use that funding to de risk the technology, run the studies, developing the methods and these kinds of. In that kind of a stage, most of the private equity investments and other types of investors will not be able to come in. So it enables the startups to reach that stage.

Got you. And then what do you think? We'll stick with you. Freya, what do you think is the most challenging part of the commercialization process? Any of you gentlemen can jump in on that as well. Any thoughts there?

I think for us, for healthcare industry, we need to develop a reimbursement strategy. After the regulatory is in place, we need to develop a reimbursement strategy and then the education and providing the efficacy data are the three components that are needed to achieve commercialization success.

And you sit in a little bit different spot than Ray and Kurt. For you gentlemen, any kind of thoughts on the commercialization process as far as what's challenging about it? For us in the remediation end of things, it's a fairly conservative industry. So coming into it with a new technology, there's some inertia there and convincing people that, you know, the cost benefit is going to be there for them. And so we kind of work our way into it with pilot tests and things that convince them of the validity of what we're doing and, and the amount of money we can Save it. So we have to compete on the same playing field as all the other technologies and but getting over the hump that we're the new guy on the block, a new way of doing things. Yeah, I'll echo what Fred said. The conservatism in the tire industry, which is about 100 years older than the remediation industry, is astounding. And of course they've had some pretty spectacular failures because they took too much risk. You can all remember the rollover stuff and that. So they're very, very conservative. The biggest help to us, to be honest, has been this whole electric vehicle tires which need new kinds of materials because they wear out much quicker and most people don't realize that until you buy one. And then what you can do with fuel economy is pretty impressive. Energy storage, again, lead batteries, they have only been around what, 150 years. Ultra conservative lithium batteries, much easier because it's all new stuff and people try new things. So the conservatism in some of these industries is pretty astounding. And I think AI is so new that there's going to be less conservatism from what we can see. But a lot of the base industries, it's just very difficult. Well, Ray, Kurt and Freya, thank you so much. Congratulations to all three of you for being selected and thank you for building such important products for the world, really. If you would like any more information about any of the companies on today's panel, please reach out to them. Also be sure to visit the Startup Expo section of the Expedition hall where you can re watch these narrative videos and capture more information about each company. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to have been with you all today. Back to you, Jennifer and Katie, thank you so much.

Andy, that was fantastic. And a really big and and special thank you to all of our moderators and the presenting companies today. You know, today we heard from innovators at the cutting edge in so many different critical technology areas. You know, I know that we kind of group them into these loose categories, but as you can tell, everyone has a lot of different potential applications. And so there are a few things I hope you took away from watching these panels. You know, one, the importance of partnerships, listening to customers and really again, that diversity of technologies and companies and those potential solutions that all these different innovations might provide. So if you're still here and watching with us, do you have resources or ideas for these presenting startups, please go connect with them. And if you want to learn more about the thousands of other amazing companies and innovations that have been de risked through America's Seed Fund. Be sure to check them out on sbir.gov you can also check out the videos from additional finalists from the Startup Expo competition this year over in the virtual Exhibition hall. Wonderful. Thanks, Jennifer. And speaking of sbir.gov, i want to make sure that you all sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on funding opportunities and events like this one and also join us in person. We'll be at the America Seed Fund SBIR STTR Spring Conference that's side by side with the TechConnect World Conference from June 20th through the 21st at the Gaylord National harbor in DC. Another opportunity to meet with agencies awarding SBIR and STTR dollars. And if you're local to the DC area and don't mind traveling, we have a couple of codes for you to come join the conference. One is for if you would like free access to the the Expo hall or if you would like to join the full conference. We do have a discount of 25% for you as well. We're sharing that information now in the chat box. So we hope to see you there. Yes, hope to see you there. But that's not the only place you'll be able to connect in person with people. We are we are getting back. We have the program managers from all these different federal funding agencies. You should go Be sure to come to the agency open houses this Wednesday to check out virtually. But we have program managers that go across the country working with our community partners. And so I also want to highlight that some of the community partners are hosting events throughout this week that really complement our goal of building an inclusive learning experience through America's Seed Fund Week. And these partners are critical to be able to reach innovators and entrepreneurs around the country and really provide the hands on deep connections with other resource partners that you might need in order to be part of America's Seed Fund as well as make other connections further out. So we really encourage you to check out the full schedule of events on America's with no apostrophe but an S Seed Fund Us I think that link is going to go in the chat chat too and we'd also love to hear your feedback on how you felt about each panel today. You know we're we're always looking to improve listening to our customers and we're sharing a link in the chat right now. So I want to thank you all for your time and support and again for sharing your skills and your knowledge and networks with all of us. So we look forward to continuing to collaborate and ensure the continued success and development of technologies that are going to change the world. So we'll see you back here tomorrow beginning at 2pm Eastern. Thanks, everyone. Have a great evening. Thanks, everyone.

Bye, Sam.