Center of Excellence awards grants to five local companies

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Oct 5, 2007 by Tampone, Kevin

SYRACUSE - Matthew DaRin of North Syracuse-based Environmental Laboratory Services is not shy about the prospects for a new testing technique his company is developing.

"No one else is going to know how to do this," says DaRin, microbiology technical director for the company, which provides a variety of soil, water, and air testing. "We're going to be out there as the national authority on this."

The new method, which focuses on testing for fungi in air samples, is based on research originally done at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The school and Environmental Laboratory Services are now working together to commercialize it with the help of a $149,000 Technology Application and Demonstration grant from the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems.

The grant was one of five the center awarded to local companies Oct. 1. The funding across all five projects totaled more than $710,000. The money for the grants came to the center from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The technology Environmental Laboratory Services will work on is a DNA-based method, DaRin explains. It's faster, less expensive, and more accurate than current techniques used to test in-door-air quality for fungal contaminants like mold.

"This is all basically to give the indoor-air industry better tools for assessing and identifying fungi in buildings," DaRin says. "We're taking this technology and developing it into a commercial application. Then we're ultimately going to be developing commercialization strategies."

Environmental Laboratory Services, owned by Nancy Struzenski, anticipates using the new test method to attract more business, DaRin says. The company, which employs 30, hopes other indoor-air laboratories and consultants will send their samples to North Syracuse for testing because of the technique's advantages over current technology.

Over the next year, the company and ESF will do analysis and testing of the technology, and later, begin introducing it to the rest of the indoor-air industry.

Also receiving a grant Oct. 1 was Taitem Engineering of Ithaca, which will work with Syracuse University on a new heating-cooling system for buildings. Taitem's grant totals more than $111,000.

The new system uses heat, rather than electricity, to both heat and cool a building, explains Ian Shapiro, Taitem's president. The system could be powered by energy sources such as solar or gas, thereby reducing cost and greenhouse-gas emissions, he says.

Taitem is an engineering-consulting firm with a focus on product development, green technologies, and energy-efficiency in buildings. The company employs 15 and generates about $1 million in sales per year.

Shapiro founded the company in 1989 after working seven years for Carrier Corp.

The heating-cooling research funded by the Center of Excellence is in its early stages, Shapiro adds. Taitem is still finishing a feasibility study for the work.

The new grant will fund construction of a prototype system. Shapiro hopes to have lab tests of the unit running next summer.

He's not sure yet whether Taitem will eventually commercialize the product on its own, partner with another company, or license the technology out.

Other grants the center awarded Oct. 1 include more than $149,000 to CollabWorx, Inc. of Syracuse; $150,000 to Propulsive Wing, LLC of Elbridge; and $150,000 to Widetronix, Inc. of Ithaca.