Detecting Light, Taking Flight, and Protecting Networks

Steve Melito: So, hey, welcome to New York State Manufacturing Now, the podcast and now video series that’s powered by FuzeHub. My name is Steve Melito, we’re here on day two of the New York State Innovation Summit and I am with Gary Kardys from Marktech Optoelectronics. Gary, how are you?

Gary Kardys: Alright, how are you doing today?

Steve Melito: I’m doing well. We’ve just been sitting here talking about the show. Have you had a pretty good show so far? Did you meet some folks that might become customers?

Gary Kardys: Yeah, there’s a lot of companies that are also co-exhibitors, that we’ve met and talked to, that are developing a sensor, an optical sensor that needs our components. We’re really a component manufacturer. We don’t make the finished sensor. We’ll make the semiconductor devices that go into those components, so the sensing element, like a photodiode detector or a light source, so we can detect light, and then we can also provide a source of light, not just the visible light that you see, but like deep into the ultraviolet. You know the invisible portion, you know down to 235 nanometer or up to. You know what we call infrared, near infrared, shortwave, infrared or mid wave, all the way up to 4,300 nanometers, and all the different wavelengths have different characteristics and interact differently with chemical compounds or biomarkers in your blood, like cholesterol. We have customers that are using our light to detect cholesterol or blood alcohol or other diseases, cancers and stuff.

Steve Melito: So you’re not just doing things to light up a room?

Gary Kardys: No, these lights have a lot of different functions.

Steve Melito: Yeah, what are they? Some of those different applications they’re used for. You mentioned medical.

Gary Kardys: Yeah, a lot in medical. You know there are companies that are making biosensors that will wear, companies that are making what’s called smart toilets that will analyze your urine and tell you if you’re sick or your kidneys are going to fail things like that and then also phototherapy devices you can use light to treat diseases like psoriasis.

Steve Melito: Really?

Gary Kardys: Yeah, they call it phot bio modulation or photo therapy. You know, infrared and red light also will actually heal a wound faster.

Steve Melito: Gary, tell me about Marktech Optoelectronics, the company. Where are you located? How long have you been there? How many people work there?

Gary Kardys: Yeah, we’re company was founded in 1985 by Mark Campito. We’re located in Latham, NY, but we also have a plant in Simi Valley, California. In New York we mainly do testing and engineering and sales and marketing and we have like a complete test lab so we can test all the way down to 200 nanometers, up to 4,300 nanometers, in both detectors and LEDs or light emitters. So we can characterize all the characteristics what’s called responsively of a detector, or the peak wavelength and viewing angle of an LED and all sorts of other electrical and optical characteristics, which is important when we’re working with our customers and they’re trying to understand why a product is working or how to make it work better.

Steve Melito: Sure, now you’re trained as an engineer, sort of full disclosure. We worked together at Global Spec years ago, so a little bit about, yeah, what you know what is the average worker like at Marktech after electronics?

Gary Kardys: So they have a technical background, good at process type stuff there’s a wide variety summer, you know, some have engineering degrees and okay, some don’t, because you need a variety of skill sets sure to serve the marketplace.

Steve Melito: So, okay, wide range, I’d say sure, and your job title is marketing and business development manager. Yep, what do you see us? Some market opportunities for you these days well.

Gary Kardys: Well, like with UV, what we call deep UVC LED we can make down to 235 nanometers. Okay, and there’s a trend in the industry if you can get the wavelengths short enough. It doesn’t penetrate deep into the skin, so it does very minimal damage. But it is even more powerful at killing germs and sanitization. So that’s a big area. And water purification, sanitizing the air, either in duct or in what’s called upper air light systems or disinfection systems or just surface sanitization, and then also in a lot of sensing applications. Uv is used for water quality, to sense nutrients and nitrates, proteins and different other compounds and mercury vapor, and gases. So also gas sensors. So that’s a big area for us. And then we also work in the infrared and again there’s gas sensing, phototherapy, photodynamic applications and then just a lot of general optical sensing, like for position and things like that.

Steve Melito: Can you talk about any space-related or military applications, or is that class time?

Gary Kardys: Well, a lot of our business is custom, you know. So we’ve signed probably like over 360 non-disclosure agreements. So we can’t really mention specific companies. You know, we don’t tend to do that just because we want to honor the NDA agreements but.

Steve Melito: But your stuff is used in outer space on satellites.

Gary Kardys: Yeah, yeah, in satellites, heart, lung machines, optical encoders and almost all the high end automobiles photoelectric sensors which I mentioned. So that’s for position and proximity. We work a lot of photoelectric sensors and manufacturers. We’ve made things for treating vitamin D deficiency like babies sometimes, so they need a special light source. We’ve made those surgical lights, lights that go on the tip of endoscopes, that are very small, what’s called a points point source LED which could be like 10 microns or 8 microns, and they’re used in gun sights, but they can also be used to replace a laser when you only have a short distance, you know, sure?

Steve Melito: So for those that don well, it’s a micron, it would be it’s, you know, 10 to the minus 6 of a meter.

Gary Kardys: You know, okay, you know.

Steve Melito: I’ve heard of my own lanes, understanding it’s about a thousandth of a human hair yeah, it’s very small, very small yeah, got it, got it. So Marktech the company. Mark Campito’s the owner. We met him earlier today. Obviously he’s probably back in the booth at this point. Where do you think the company’s going to be like in the next five or 10 years? What do you think will happen?

Gary Kardys: I think we’ll continue serving a lot of the optical sensing area. There’s a lot of optical sensing area Even at this show. There’s a lot of small companies developing optical sensors. One for there’s a company called Labey and they actually bought our LEDs when I went and talked to them through. DigiKey or Mouser and they would like to talk to us to again because we could customize and get them something even better than what they got from the standard product. But they’re developing a phototherapy device for autism JelikaLite, so there’s a lot of companies, small startups or larger companies. You know using light, you know for sensing and for phototherapy. So you know we’ll work with a lot of those companies you know in the future to help get those products to market, because a lot of times they understand the science and technology but they don’t understand well, how do I actually get these light sources or these detectors to detect? And you know like some companies might be buying through DigiKey, like five or six different LEDs and a detector, and through customization. We could take those individual chips, put them all in one package and then reduce the whole complexity of their design. And you know they’re the cost in a lot of cases so, from understanding you correctly, you’ve got standard products.

Steve Melito: But it sounds like if I’m a potential customer and I look and I don’t see what I that and you don’t have what I need, I should ask you yeah, exactly yeah, so we might have a a 265 nanometer led or a 255 in a to can.

Gary Kardys: Yeah, and maybe you want it in a surface mount device package, an SMD package, so we can do that kind of stuff. We can, or we can put multiple chips in the same package to get higher output, which is, which is a lot of times, what you need in certain sensing applications.

Steve Melito: So you’re adding value in addition to just being a manufacturer, which is obviously a very important thing, but you’re able to customize it based on what they need.

Gary Kardys: Yeah, and we have those 360 NDA agreements. We have a long history of application engineering. And then taking products and testing them to validate the performance too.

Steve Melito: You know, because we have a large, you know a great test lab facility yeah, do you find that you use your engineering background all the time in your marketing work because you’re not selling like yeah, I think coffee or something?

Gary Kardys: Yeah, the engineering background definitely helps because there’s a lot of application engineer you know and understanding what people are doing.

Steve Melito: So yeah having the engineering background is definitely a plus good and I’m glad that you’ve met some startup companies and other companies here that are potential customers. Have you met any new york state assets that you could work with, for example? If you haven’t met them yet, I’ll introduce you to them. There’s an organization in New York City called SensorCat.

Gary Kardys: Oh no, I haven’t heard of them.

Steve Melito: So we’ll have to make an introduction to them for you, but they work with companies as well that may need to work with you.

Gary Kardys: Yeah, if they’re developing an optical sensor, then we might be the source for the semiconductor components of that optical sensor. Right, right, it’s good.

Steve Melito: It’s good. So, Gary, thanks for being part of New York State Manufacturing Now.

Gary Kardys: Alright, thanks. Thanks for having me here, you betcha.

Steve Melito: All right, hey, welcome back to New York State Manufacturing. Now the podcast and video series that’s powered by FuzeHub. I’m your host, Steve Melito. We are with Lorraine Grabowski. Did I get your last name right? You got it right. I get an A-plus for the Polish pronunciation and you are a sponsor of our event?

Lorraine Grabowski: Tell us about how this came about. So I work for a company, ax Enterprise. We are a software hardware systems development company that primarily focuses on the unmanned uncrewed systems space and as part of that mission we also manage the New York UAS test site. As part of that, mission.

Steve Melito: We also manage the New York UAS test site at the former Griffis Air Base Out in Rome, new York. Yep, okay, very good, and what does it mean to manage that site? I mean, what are some of the things you do to make sure things take off on time and get back home when they should?

Lorraine Grabowski: Well, a lot of the testing happens either in the GPS-denied indoor hangar space that has been recently recreated to host unmanned systems, and then there’s an outdoor test facility that has data feeds back to an operations center that the folks our engineers and our technicians all kind of magically make happen integrate sensors from out beyond where you can see, there’s a term in uncrewed systems called beyond visual line of sight, and so the goal, ultimately, is to be able to send uncrewed systems out and know where they are without having a visual observer along the way.

Steve Melito: Sure, sure. You are really at the forefront of a technology that reading about all the time in the news. From Ukraine to the war in the Middle East, have things changed in the last couple years? Is there more interest in what you’re doing?

Lorraine Grabowski: So I think that a lot of big players in the space Google, amazon, walmart, all of the behemoth, you know Fortune 5, really want to get to a space where they can deliver your bananas or a book or whatever it might be. The interesting thing is we take that a step further. We still have the military applications, obviously, first and foremost, securing the homeland, protecting our assets here, understanding from a border patrol perspective who’s doing what and where, but also the commercial aspect of uncrewed systems.

Steve Melito: Right.

Lorraine Grabowski: So that can be as small as a pocket-sized drone that is maybe going out for a surveillance or inspection mission of utility lines to bigger aircraft doing delivery of medical devices or pharmaceuticals and right here in Syracuse, air Upstate, which is a department of the SUNY Upstate Medical System are kind of leading the way with that and getting a lot of waivers is what it’s called to fly in certain airspace to do just that. So it’s happening right here and we’re out in the Mohawk Valley and a lot of innovation and folks from around the globe coming there to test their systems.

Steve Melito: And they are a leader in this area. Now, how did you get into this? This is a relatively new field technologically?

Lorraine Grabowski: Um so my background I started off in engineering and kind of went the way of business which I have a passion for strategy and implementation yep and I spent a whole career with the united Indian nation doing just that and Turning Stone and some of the other enterprises, helping them in lots of ways and kind of was voluntold into political, the political space with the Oneidas, and then met some people and it’s a lot about relationships, but it’s about being able to pivot and being agile, I think yeah from a personal perspective, yeah, and so I got back into the technical space and, uh, and and do a lot of the business side of of what we’re talking about so you have a good mix between the technical and the business side both probably probably, yeah, maybe some of the technical guys might argue with that. So but um, yeah, but it’s, it’s uh. What I say in the company that I work directly for, ax Enterprise, is we are at the forefront of inventing unmanned traffic management. So knowing what is where from an air domain awareness perspective, and being able to remotely identify those various aircraft and other things that are flying around. So it’s really cool to be, to be on the very weeding edge of all of that, sure, sure.

Steve Melito: So October is manufacturing month and there’s a tremendous shortage of workers and manufacturing and technology in general. And say this very sincerely if we don’t use all of our resources demographically, we’re gonna be in trouble. And I’ll say this very sincerely if we don’t use all of our resources, demographically, we’re going to be in trouble. So I’m going to ask you what is it like to be a woman in engineering, and can you inspire any young women who might be watching this?

Lorraine Grabowski: So I think what is really interesting for me, I have a 17-year-old daughter. I have 19 and 15-year-old sons, but my daughter is looking at engineering schools as we speak. Matter of fact, that’s what I was talking about when I saw Paul was her looking at some engineering schools, and I think what I would say to young women in technology is there is always a place for every type of personality. We don’t need to pull folks from central casting. That you might think is a stereotype. In a lot of girls we lose by about fifth or sixth grade in the STEM, in math and science affinity for math and science. But if there’s a grain of something there, there’s a lot to be accomplished in all spaces of technology. There’s a lot of money to be made, which, for women, empowers you to kind of do your own thing. So we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about the financial benefit to being a technology. But I think that there’s a lot of space for lots of different personalities and skill sets in the tech field. I’m not a traditional tech person, but I have found a space where I can be me and bring a skill set and bring the company along with me. In that vein, that is great.

Steve Melito: Well, thanks for doing what you’re doing and thanks for being part of New York State Manufacturing now on short notice, no less.

Lorraine Grabowski: Well, we’re really happy to support this symposium. You know there’s a lot of room for manufacturing at the Griffiths Technology. Park of room for manufacturing at the Griffiss Technology Park and we have interest from around the globe and folks coming in and making drones in the United States, because a lot of federal agencies are saying you cannot use drones on crewed systems that are manufactured in certain countries. And so if we can attract and bring folks to Central New York of all places but to the United States to make their aircraft here, I think that that puts us ahead of the game. With every strategic initiative that the Department of Defense, the Department of. Homeland Security are all looking to achieve, so listen.

Steve Melito: One last question. You live in Central New York. It’s a good place to live, isn’t it?

Lorraine Grabowski Oh, I, I, I could not ask for a better place. The um the four seasons, obviously you know the, the pumpkin spice, uh, you know um, uh, fall that comes along, and being able to raise my kids. Um, where there’s not gridlock right, uh, very low crime. Um, where there’s not gridlock right, uh, very low crime exceptional schools and and post-secondary educations that could be within driving distance for us is all uh, you know four hours and you’re anywhere you really want to be or fly out of in the united states good, well, hopefully someone’s listening who might not be in New York State and they’re going to say I’m going to check out central new y York. The foothills of the Adirondacks are like no other place on earth.

Steve Melito: Thank you for your time.

Lorraine Grabowski: Thank you for having me, it was great.

Steve Melito: Alright, hey, welcome back to New York State Manufacturing. Now the podcast, the now video series that’s powered by FuzeHub. I’m your host, steve Melito. Day two New York State Innovation Summit 2024, Syracuse, NY. We are here with Lauren Groff of Groff Networks, welcome.

Lauren Groff: Yeah, thanks for hosting me, Steve.

Steve Melito: So we got a couple of things in common, one being we both come from the same neck of the woods, and you went to Colgate University, I did, I did Fellow grad?

Lauren Groff: Yep, and what did you major in Philosophy and religion, and now you’re doing computer work, I’m doing sales, basically.

Steve Melito: You sales.

Lauren Groff: See, that’s the value of a liberal arts education absolutely or CEO leadership, you know, culture development, yeah, so all this yeah, exactly good.

Steve Melito: Well, what makes you come out and spend not just one day with us, but two days and sponsor this event? I mean, that’s a big commitment that you’re making yeah, appreciate it.

Lauren Groff: I mean we want to be present. We’re passionate about manufacturing the manufacturers that we worked with over the years. We’ve just seen how they’ve impacted you know, and surprised, when I moved to upstate New York 24 years ago, how to discover, when I started my business, how many manufacturers there were and have been in the area and just like, yeah, this is, this is important for us for our overall health of the economy, uh, to be, to be actually making stuff right and so to be involved there and then we help them be better, faster, stronger, using technology now, more and more reducing risk and, as of this past week especially, a lot are pursuing, need to have been pursuing CMMC, but now we have the updated regulations right and so we want to help whoever we can, you know, get got, get caught up if they’re not there already, or help implement what they haven’t implemented already. In regard to what you have to do to be compliant to support DoD primes or direct to DoD work where it requires that compliance.

Steve Melito: Sure. So when you come to an event like this, do you make connections that eventually can result in sales, or do you just come to this to just see what’s out there?

Lauren Groff: No, no, it’s definitely about prospecting, for sure, you know, making the connections, that I’m okay with the long game we’ve always done long game relationships uh can farm um long term. So I’m okay that I don’t get a direct client today or whatnot, right, um, but I just made some really good connections and I think I can contribute, uh, to some other other organizations that are directly, you know, manufacturing related, that are here, sure, and some that just spoke and they were like oh yeah, let me connect you here because we want to give right, we want to be able to help. There’s not enough resources, especially in cybersecurity, right now, to do what needs to be done for the small business and small manufacturer. There’s just not enough knowledge, not enough understanding, not enough implementation right now to keep America’s manufacturing safe.

Steve Melito: Right now for those that don’t know a lot about cybersecurity, they’ll hear a lot about cybersecurity. There’s a lot of companies in the space, so tell us more about what makes you different. What are you doing that maybe somebody else isn’t doing? Is it the level of service that you provide or the technology? Maybe both.

Lauren Groff: Yeah, I mean, there’s lots of technology companies, a lot of companies in my space. It’s about a tool or it’s about some sort of service that is built around software or hardware, but it’s more about process. You need a process. Yes, tools are going to be needed, people are going to be needed, labor is needed but what’s the process that you can put in place? That is an ongoing gap assessment. You need that ongoing gap assessment. Most people think, oh, if I need to figure out what I’m going to do, I’m going to do a penetration test. Those are really expensive. You can’t do them very often, so you don’t know what your gaps are for years at a time, sometimes mm-hmm. And then did you actually address that gap? Did it stay address, right? So our process and there’s very few following this is ongoing gap assessment, sure, and consulting around that. Okay, so that’s so. That’s our big uniques. We’ve done that for a long time on the IT side and obviously one of the big risks and gaps is always cybersecurity. Downtime could be caused by lots of things, especially when you have servers back in the day, but now ransomware can be downtime. So we’ve always been ahead of that because we’ve always been asking those questions. But now we have, you know, all these objective guidelines for cybersecurity that we can just go. Listen, this isn’t our opinion. This is the entire, you know, industry’s opinion on what you should be doing and just help you Like. We support them regardless of what they decide. But most prospects that I talk to are asking the question. I don’t know what, I don’t know right so just helping them, you know, surface that knowledge, then they can make informed decisions. And yeah, some risk has to be assumed, sure has to be, has to be taken on, but they can address many, much more risk than they realize, more affordable and our most customers in the capital region. The majority. Yeah, but we have across upstate New York and some downstate. Now we have a couple out of the state as well. We are national now.

Steve Melito: Okay, good, but you can also support Buffalo and Long Island and wherever.

Lauren Groff: Yeah, exactly and then we have an army across the country that we partnered with of smart hands so we can go anywhere if we need to install or replace, you know emergency type stuff. But we went out to Phoenix to install, you know to onboard a client, but we’re doing everything else remotely. So we do the same but we will go on site for that gap assessment even if we don’t need to for 98% of what we’re doing.

Steve Melito: Okay, even if it’s you know. You know, two, three hours away, on a monthly basis, right, and you’re still in Troy. How do you like it?

Lauren Groff: Oh, yeah, Troy, we love Troy, yeah, all of our kids so far graduated Troy high and we have the third one in Troy high and a few more there, and yeah, it’s just a great community. Yeah, we thought we’d be there for a year or two, 24 years ago and sometimes life just still there now.

Steve Melito: Yeah, we love it yeah good, so we could be talking about Continentia and all sorts of things.

Lauren Groff: Yeah right, philosophical but how did you get into this? How’d you know? Those are the two that I put together in the senior thesis. Yeah, rabbit trail for sure. But in the 90s I was in the computer center that was my work study job. Oh okay, Babysit the printers and get the printouts.

Steve Melito: Yep.

Lauren Groff: And clean viruses off of floppies, oh man. So I did it about three years, here and there, a couple different things, but then when I got engaged and needed to come back to the States to get a haircut and a real job, I was just like it was the tech bubble. So no experience, no education in tech and I was able to get a job, and then we landed in Troy and, slowly but surely, the rest is history.

Steve Melito: So how about the future? Where do you think you’re gonna be in five years with the business?

Lauren Groff: Five years. We’re looking at five years is probably double what we’re doing because of the need and you know the unique selling that we do have it’s a high value proposition. Not not everyone needs it, it’s not the fit for everybody, but because of it and we’re serious about growth, because some pretty cool things that we’ve come across, like we’re ranked highly nationally for what we do, one, best places to work yep, so the culture, you know the culture has been supported. Good, and we just feel that it’s really important to be able to help others as much as possible, as fast as possible because, yeah, again, the small businesses of America don’t have have enough heroes in this realm.

Steve Melito: Well, Lauren, it’s great to have you with us here, and thanks for sponsoring this event. We appreciate your continued support. Thank you.