Executives of Two MTI Client Companies Named as Mainebiz 2008 Business Leaders of the Year. This year, Mainebiz chose three chief executives in three categories as its 2008 Business Leaders of the Year: Ford Reiche, president of Safe Handling in Auburn, as business leader of a large company (50 or more employees); and Kent Peterson, CEO of Fluid Imaging Technologies in Yarmouth, as business leader of a small company (less than 50 employees). Read the article in on Mainebiz.biz. MTI Awards Help Support UM Advanced Wood Composites Center's List of Successes The University of Maine's Advanced Wood Composites Center has a long list of successes and partners in innovation that MTI awards have supported. Read the text of Bangor Daily New's article. Aiko Biotechnology Credits MTI and SBIR Awards with Boosting its Development Read how MTI and SBIR awards have helped Aiko move along the development path to commercialization in Mainebiz. MTI Awards Help Artful Wares, Inc., Takes First Place in New England Products Trade Show Artful Wares, Inc., of Old Town won first place in the giftware category for its cutting board made with recycled lobster and mussel shells. The company had used its MTI Seed Grant and Development Awards for market research and the testing of innovative manufacturing for its tablewear featuring unique, composite handles created with indigenous shells and stones. Approximately 2,000 wholesale buyers from across the country attended the show, where over 120 companies from Maine and the other New England states displayed a wide variety of goods, from handcrafter clothing to speciality foods, furniture and home goods. Read the press release from the show's primary sponsor, the Department of Economic and Community Development. MTI Awardees Collaborate to Bring Maine's Ship Building and Composites Industries' Strengths to Bid for Navy Contract In response to Navy interest in replacing its fleet of fast Zodiac-type vessels for deployment of its SEALs, a Maine-based team has been working for two years on preparing for the competition. Read the Portland Press Herald article about how MTI award winners from the ship building and composite materials sectors have joined together to respond: Maine Marine Composites in Portland as lead, Kenway Corporation in Augusta, Small Craft Engineering in Portland, Tex Tech Industries in Monmouth and the University of Maine's Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center in Orono. MTI Seed Grants Help Flagsuit, LLC, Go to Work in Space Flagsuit of Southwest Harbor shipped its first commercially produced space suit gloves to Los-Angeles-based Orbital Outfillers under a joint-development agreement. The gloves, which could one day be worn by NASA astronauts, are designed to be used with the Industrial Suborbital Space Suit-Crew (ISC3) that was unveiled by Orbital Outfitters in October 2007. The gloves will be used for integrated suit testing and evaluation and feature patent-pending joint design that makes the fingers more flexible under pressure. Two MTI seed grant awards covered intellectual property protection and proof of concept. Read the press release about how Flagsuit is currently implementing a preliminary production capability with the support of MTI awards. The Export Market Is Hot. MTI Awards Help Develop, Position, Move Innovative Technology Products to Markets Abroad. MTI seed grants helped Maine Distilleries in Freeport conduct a feasibility study of potato vodka distillation and then a market analysis. The company lauched its Cold River Vodka, participated in a Maine International Trade Center trade mission this October 2007 and recently launched its vodka in England. Read about Maine Distilleries' export marketing and the export market in general in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Cold River Vodka is also featured as an Editor's Favorite on the Web site Visit New England that touts its innovation and added-value to a traditional state product and, by extension, the Maine brand. The current issue of MTI's periodical, the MTI Innovator, also covers the export market with features on two MTI awardees, Rynel, Inc., of Wiscasset and Quantrix of Portland. Click here to read Quantrix's related announcement that it has partnered with Baker Newman Noyes, LLC, one of Maine’s largest certified public accounting firms, in delivering integrated 10-year strategic planning and forecasting models to the National University of Singapore. MTI Awards Help Test the Water, Move the Product to Launch An MTI Seed Grant helped Hydro-Phyton of Blue Hill conduct a market anaysis and an MTI Performance Grant helped in the beta testing and certification of the SteriPen LCD. The new wandlike device disinfects clear water for drinking with continual swirls of ultraviolet light over a short period of about one minute and more. An LDC screen shows a countdown and a smiley face signals when the process is done. The lightweight device will be sold at camping, travel and other stores, as well as on line beginning this April. Read the article in the New York Times. MTI Seed Grant Opened the Way to $100,000 Grant for University of Maine Two enquiring minds at the University of Maine wanted to know whether there was a way "to have a portal on a user's computer that would be adjusted to literacy and comprehension levels" to deal with complicated language on healthcare of government Web sites. An MTI seed grand of $10,000 funded market research that answered yes, but that no such software existed. Read the story on the University of Maine Web site that relates how the University, working with an Orono software company, then received a $100,000 grant to translate and simplify anti-smoking Web site text. MTI Awards Help Launch Hodgdon Yachts' Composite Prototype Patrol Boat for Navy On January 11, Hodgdon Yachts unveiled an 82-foot research prototype designed to help deliver combat-ready Navy SEALS to their destination with fewer injuries by absorbing the impact as the vessel crashes through the waves at 50-plus knots. Dave Packhem of Hodgdon explains that the MTI award monies were used to "perform market analysis that helped us target a customer that matched our capabilities and to advance our functional designs that were used to advance the state of the art in carbon/Kevlar composite design and construction." Read the coverage on cnn.com. The company subsequently delivered its patrol boat to the Navy for evaluation. Confident in its use of composites as the future for similar vessels, the company is marketing its design around the world and exploring production expansion in Hampden. Read the March 28, 2008, article in the Portland Press Herald. Technology Systems, Inc., Applied MTI Awards to New High-Tech Defense Software Development MTI grant and awards have played an important role in supporting innovative R&D at Brunswick-based Technology Systems, Inc. (TSI). Tom Zysk, the company's chief operating officer, explains that the biggest hurdle is the stage between developing new technologies and and making the leap to integrating the technology into real life. Read the Mainebiz article about TSI's "spy games." MTI Seed Grant Recipient Fiddler's Reach Produces 'Nectar of the Gods' Fiddler's Reach used its MTI Seed Grant to study how yeast affects the taste of wine in the process of making mead, known across history as the "nectar of the gods." The study enabled Fiddler's Reach to determine the formula necessary to produce a dry mead using honey instead of wine because, as owner and mead master Rob Nicoll explains, "It's hard to grow grapes (in Maine), and I wanted to use local ingredients." Listen to an interview on Maine Public Broadcasting and read the feature article in the Times Record. Aegis Bicycles Relies on MTI Seed Grants to Research New High-Tech Designs Aegis Bicycles' Van Buren shop designs and individually builds some of the most high-tech carbon fiber competitive racing bicycles in the world. Two MTI Seed Grands have enabled the company to design, develop and produce two new hand-made models, the Zaero and the Victory for women. View the feature presentation of the company on Channel WCSH 6's 207 Weekend.  MTI Client CrossRate Technology Works to Solve GPS Limitations In early December 2007 hunter Stephen Wright survived nearly three snow-filled days lost in Northern Maine. The primary reason for his dilemma, he said, was his faulty global positioning system (GPS). "It took me farther and farther away from my truck," he explained. Less than 90 miles away, MTI awardee CrossRate Technology, LLC, was working on technology to prevent such problems and their consequences. Read the story in Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology. MITC Trade Mission Supports MTI Awardees In responses to the interest shown during governor's trade mission to Japan and South Korea this past October 2007, Cold River Vodka in Freeport expects its potato vodka to be on the shelves in Tokyo this spring. Intelligent Spatial Technologies, another MTI awardee, also participated in the mission and made many valuable contacts. The weeklong trip, organized by the Maine International Trade Center in cooperation with the U.S. Foreign Commercial Services Offices in Tokyo and Seoul and the Foreign Agricultural Services FoodExport USA program, gathered a wide range of Maine businesses. Read more in the Bangor Daily News at www.bangordailynews.com.