The challenge was clear: traditional direct heat-transfer equipment, while efficient, was plagued by uneven heating and high emissions. As industries across the board faced increasing pressure to reduce their environmental footprint, S. Howes saw an opportunity to lead the charge.

Enter the next-generation thermal screw conveyor – a game-changing technology that promised to deliver precise heating and cooling while minimizing emissions. But bringing this innovation to market would require more than just engineering prowess. It would take a village, or in this case, a university.

The Power of Partnership

S. Howes found their perfect collaborator in the University at Buffalo’s Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics (CMI). This partnership opened doors to a wealth of resources:

• Cutting-edge research expertise
• Access to bright, young talent
• High-performance computing capabilities
• Crucial funding opportunities

With these tools at their disposal, S. Howes set out to design, manufacture, and prototype their revolutionary equipment.

From Concept to Reality

The journey from idea to marketable product is often fraught with challenges, but S. Howes had an ace up their sleeve. A FuzeHub Manufacturing Grant, secured through their partnership with CMI and UB’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, provided the financial boost needed to refine and test their equipment.

UB’s Business and Entrepreneur Partnerships stepped in, offering advanced manufacturing experts, student talent, and state-of-the-art facilities. This collaboration was the catalyst in which S. Howes’ prototype was forged and perfected.

The Fruits of Innovation

The result? A high-efficiency, environmentally friendly thermal screw conveyor that not only met but exceeded industry expectations. This equipment offered precise and efficient heating or cooling through indirect heat transfer, a significant leap forward from traditional methods.

But the true measure of success in business is sales, and S. Howes’ innovation delivered in spades. In the fiscal year 2021-2022, the company saw $1.5 million in sales. But that was just the beginning. The following year, from July 2022 to June 2023, sales skyrocketed to $8 million – a testament to the market’s hunger for sustainable solutions.

A New Chapter in Manufacturing

As we look to the future, the story of S. Howes serves as a powerful reminder of what can be achieved when innovation meets collaboration. By partnering with academic institutions and leveraging available resources, even long-established companies can pivot, innovate, and lead in the face of new challenges.

In the end, this isn’t just a story about a new piece of equipment. It’s a story about reimagining what’s possible, about finding new ways to meet old needs, and about the power of partnerships to drive progress. As industries worldwide grapple with the dual demands of efficiency and sustainability, the path blazed by S. Howes and the University at Buffalo offers a blueprint for success.

From enhancing the manufacturing processes for quantum components to developing new solutions for space exploration, New York’s academic and industrial collaborations are driving real progress in the field. These advancements are aimed not only at accelerating the development of quantum computers, but also at ensuring these technologies can seamlessly integrate with existing systems, benefit industries across sectors, and train the next generation of quantum computer scientists and space technology researchers.

Here’s a look at just some of the exciting work being done throughout the NYSTAR network:

Driving Quantum Tech Innovation

Researchers across the NYSTAR network are exploring ways to make it easier for companies to develop their quantum technologies and for those technologies to connect with each other.

Robust work is being done with qubits—the main building block for quantum computers. Producing qubits in larger quantities has been a challenge, so one of those projects is examining ways to make qubits on a larger silicon wafer, which would allow more qubits to be produced at once. This can introduce issues with the stability of the qubits, so researchers at Albany-based NY CREATES, with the help of new tools funded by the Center for Advanced Technology in Nanomaterials and Nanoelectronics (CATN2), are working on improving the process of making these qubits on larger wafers. The end goal is to provide this new technology to New York companies as they create their quantum circuits.

Down the I-90, the Rochester Institute of Technology was awarded $3.97 million from the Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub (NORDTECH) to advance quantum chip technologies. The project is focused on making quantum systems stronger and more powerful by connecting them together using entangled photons (light particles).

Meanwhile, Dr. German Kolmakov, chair of the Physics department at New York City College of Technology, and Shaina Raklyar, a former doctoral student at the school, are developing a new technology called “quantum interconnect” that allows traditional internet connections to link up with quantum computers. After participating in the National Science Foundation I-Corps Hub through the NYC Innovation Hot Spot, they were able to develop a product from their technology, forming the company NextGen Quantum to help tech companies and data centers work faster and use less energy.

Building the Moon’s Infrastructure

The moon has long captured creative and scientific imagination, and New York State is helping to lead the way in the future of space exploration.

At Alfred University, the Center for Advanced Ceramic Technology (CACT) is a lead partner in the creation of the Space Materials Institute (SMI), currently working with Blue Star Manufacturing, a small materials-science company located in Allegany County, with ongoing NASA-funded programing. The project is creating new technology called “top-down microwave sintering” to heat and harden dust and rocks found on the moon. The technology is used to create strong surfaces, like durable landing pads, with resources found on the moon. Building essential infrastructure with material found on the moon will make it easier and cheaper to explore space.

At Brookhaven National Laboratory, another NASA-led project is underway. LuSEE-Night is a mission to land a sensitive radio spectrometer on the far side of the Moon, where the radio-quiet environment will enable searches for cosmic signals that are impossible to observe from Earth or Earth-orbiting satellites. Brookhaven Lab is responsible for several of the main electronic modules of the spectrometer, and in September completed the fabrication, testing, and delivery of the flight. The next steps will be to complete and test the onboard flight software, assemble the flight configuration, and begin the extensive environmental tests prior to integration with the spacecraft in preparation for the late-2025 launch.

Building the Next Gen Workforce

From bridging educational gaps to collegiate hackathons and the hiring of world-class faculty, New York is not only investing in technology development but is also helping students gain the skills and experience necessary to be the future leaders in the quantum and space technology fields.

The Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) co-founded the New York Consortium for Space Technology (NYCST), which focuses on driving growth in education, space technology, advanced manufacturing, and supply chain development. The consortium awarded $100,000 to the non-profit Science Buddies to develop hands-on explorations and career discovery activities for students in kindergarten through 12^th grade to support the STEM talent pipeline needed to grow the space industry workforce.

While the high school pipeline develops, the Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovation Center (ETIC) at Long Island’s New York Institute of Technology found that students who learned traditional and classic computer science skills needed an educational bridge to learn the different concepts and skills required for quantum computing. Based on the work of Shwetha Jayaraj, who created an end-to-end transitional program to quickly bring traditional computer scientists into the world of quantum computing for her thesis, ETIC launched a quantum training program for students and entrepreneurs, including an upcoming video seminar on its YouTube channel (@NYITETIC).

Putting skills into action, nearly 700 students across three campuses (NYU Tandon School of Engineering, City College of New York, and Columbia University) participated in the NYC HAQ Hackathon this past September. After completing a rigorous week of online training hosted by QWorld, 60 selected students formed 10 teams for the competition. During the opening weekend, held at City College and Columbia, participants tackled challenges in cryptography, finance, and health presented by SandboxAQ, qBraid, and DoraHacks, using quantum computing to address these problems. The event culminated at NYU Tandon with a final showcase where the winning team earned an all-expenses-paid invitation to the 2025 NYU Abu Dhabi Quantum Hackathon.

Meanwhile, New York-based universities continue to attract the best minds in the world. In October, Syracuse University announced that Dr. Alexander Maloney, an international leader in quantum information science, joined the College of Arts and Sciences as the inaugural Kathy and Stan Walters Endowed Professor of Quantum Science. At Syracuse, Maloney will work with four new researchers—now being recruited by the University with support from Invest Syracuse and Empire State Development—who will grow curricula and research in quantum science, providing opportunities for students to advance understanding of nature and design the next generation of quantum technologies. 

Creating More Efficient Infrastructures

Researchers and companies are utilizing quantum and space technologies to solve a variety of real-world challenges, including optimizing heating and cooling systems for buildings, integrating communication networks, and improving radar sensor technology.

A major source of both electricity usage and greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is HVAC systems for residential and commercial buildings. Researchers at the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems (SyracuseCoE) developed a quantum computing method for model predictive control of a rooftop HVAC unit. Compared with traditional approaches, quantum computing solutions resulted in significant energy savings and reductions in electricity usage. The study was published in the academic journal Applied Energy in March 2023.

Following its acquisition of satellite TV provider DirecTV, AT&T wanted to explore if satellite dish receiver costs for subscribers could be reduced by using ground-based networks.

The Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT) worked with AT&T to quantify the savings using a novel approach that led to a patent. The work showed that a cost-efficient wireless framework for delivering live TV services—consisting of a mix of wireless access technologies—requires 75–90% fewer satellite dish receivers, compared to traditional structures.

The Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) Sensor CAT has been working with Astrabeam, LLC on a new type of radar sensor that works at a very high frequency which can be used for a variety of purposes involving wireless sensing such as weather monitoring from space satellites, industrial safety, building security and automation, in-vehicle passenger monitoring, and vital sign detection for healthcare. Astrabeam has been working with the CUNY-ASRC Sensor CAT program on several projects since 2023, including developing new material that helps improve the radar sensor’s performance and to creating a prototype of a CubeSat, a small satellite for space deployment.

Driving Industry Connections

Throughout the year, events across the state provide opportunities for researchers, entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and funders to meet. The introductions lead to collaborations and are a hallmark of the power of the NYSTAR network.

Seeqc is a Westchester-based quantum company which works with the Hudson Valley Venture Hub, exhibited and gave a talk at the Quantum for International (Q4I) Workshop at Griffiss Institute in June. Oleg A. Mukhanov, Seeqc CTO and company founder, presented at the event’s Quantum Alley and was invited to participate in international trade missions by Global NY.

August featured “Future of Air & Space,” produced by Upstate Capital, in partnership with GENIUS NY and the Griffiss Institute, to highlight innovation in uncrewed systems, dual-use and enabling technologies in Upstate New York. This annual event provides visibility and access to key Upstate New York assets to a national audience of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry professionals active in aerospace, defense, uncrewed systems, robotics, and enabling technologies.

Thanks to the many NYSTAR centers, hotspots and incubators for submitting their success story. Click here to submit your stories to share with the NYSTAR network — we want to hear from you!

On a crisp October weekend in 2024, Clyde Carpenter took his lab on the road. At the annual New York State Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, New York, he met with farmers raising all kinds of sheep. Carpenter took samples of their wool and fur and tested their fibers on the spot.

His mission: Collect data showing the micron measurement, or thickness, of the various fibers, providing key information for using wool in consumer products from fashionable sweaters and cozy socks to home furnishings.

And that can be a game changer for New York State’s farming industry.

“A lot of sheep farmers in New York State breed sheep primarily for meat,” Carpenter said. “The wool is shorn off and right now these farmers don’t have much of an outlet for the wool. Many just throw it away, and they’re losing out on a side stream of money that could potentially benefit their farm. What we’re working on with wool testing is helping the sheep farmers understand what kind of wool they have and get a feel for new end-uses for it.”

His research is part of the NY Fashion Innovation Center, a consortium created in 2023 through a grant from Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), and led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Its mission is to connect researchers, farmers, designers and manufacturers to accelerate innovative solutions using natural fibers as New York becomes a leader in sustainable textiles.

“Our purpose is to advance sustainable fashion in New York,” said Ken Simons, director of the Fashion Innovation Center. “We’ve been taking a natural fibers approach because there’s already a substantial industry around wool and animal fibers in the state. It includes everything from the farms to the entire supply chain including spinning, weaving and knitting through clothing manufacturing to retail. We’re trying to help make that practical in New York.”

Wool fiber testing is one way the center is addressing the practical ways in which New York can strengthen its sustainable fiber economy. In addition to sheep’s wool, the center expects to be able to test other types of animal hair, such as goat, rabbit, and yak, in the future.

Currently, there are only two other labs in the United States where farmers can send their wool for testing: Texas A&M and Montana State University. Until the Fashion Innovation Center came online, there was no place on the East Coast for farmers to test their wool. There’s no practical way for most New York farmers to know the current quality of their wool or the ways in which they can adjust their practices to alter its properties for better end-use commercialization.

Super fine wool can be used for products that are in contact with a person’s skin, like socks, sweaters, hats, and gloves. Coarser wool is well-suited for home goods, like carpets or the backing for a chair. Super coarse wool can be put through a pelletizing machine to make a form of natural fertilizer.

Once farmers know what type of wool they have, they can begin to find outlets to sell it, both supplementing their income and helping New York textile businesses locally source their fibers. Farmers can even take that data and implement new practices to change the quality of the wool their sheep—or other animals—produce.

“There are different factors that go into the wool quality,” said Carpenter, laboratory manager at the Fashion Innovation Center. “It’s the food you’re feeding them, how you’re feeding them, and how old they are. Farmers may introduce a new diet or keep them away from stressful situations. I spoke to one farmer who had tested their wool at a different lab, and you can see on a graph, over time, changes in the wool fineness. There was a drop at one point in the fineness, and they were able to tell that this was because the sheep had been close to a firework show around New Year’s. The firework show stressed them out, and it completely changed that wool that season.”

Along with bringing fiber testing to New York’s farmers, the Fashion Innovation Center is in the process of awarding its first round of grants supporting startups, small businesses, farmers, researchers and individuals working on the development of textile fiber-related products and technologies in the state. Along with up to $10,000 in funding, awardees will receive mentoring from experts in their industries and have access to equipment, facilities, and other resources to advance their projects. The center plans to open its second round in early 2025.

For more information on the New York Fashion Innovation Center, visit nyfic.org.

Materials science is an area of innovation that reimagines the makeup of everyday products used in industries like construction, apparel, and even energy. While the impacts are not yet widely appreciated, advanced materials are poised to have a profound impact on our future and our progress towards sustainability goals.

Advanced materials — built on innovations that can replace or improve conventional materials  — are already reducing harmful chemicals and greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing locally sourced supply chains, and cutting down on manufacturing waste.

Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) is at the center of it all.  Recent work and collaborations at NYSTAR-backed centers have produced breakthroughs in green building materials, introduced sustainable solutions in fashion, and helped crack the code for reliable and affordable hydrogen-based power.

Greener homes through cleaner concrete

The construction industry continues to search for alternatives to traditional concrete, which is becoming more widely understood as a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Projects at two different NYSTAR-backed centers are helping to produce viable long-term solutions.

The company SQ4D was already an innovator in the industry, specializing in 3D-printed houses and commercial buildings. Then they connected with Alfred University’s Center for Advanced Ceramic Technology (CACT) to test the efficiency and strength of using recycled glass in concrete composition.

The research provided game-changing results.

First, researchers found that incorporating recycled glass cullet into their concrete mix could increase a building’s strength. But more than that, the research — which involved testing different colors of glass — determined that certain colors of glass produced the strongest concrete. The significance? Most colored glasses are the least recyclable and therefore the most likely to end up in a landfill. The new product not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions of the concrete, it also prevents difficult-to-recycle colored glass from ending up in landfills, providing a double environmental benefit.

The proof is in the printing: SQ4D has used this process in demonstration 3D-printed homes on Long Island.

Meanwhile, KLAW Industries received early stage support at Koffman Southern Tier Incubator en route to creating its product, Pantheon™️. Made from glass that otherwise would end up in landfills, Pantheon™️ reacts with cement to add additional crystal structures to the concrete. This allows concrete producers to use 20 percent less cement in their mixes, preventing approximately 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per truckload. The City of Binghamton has been investing in its low-carbon future by incorporating Pantheon™️ in the city’s curb and sidewalk upgrades since 2022 with the help of local concrete producer Barney & Dickenson Inc. KLAW Industries, now a thriving business, was recently awarded a $50,000 grant from FuzeHub, the statewide New York Manufacturing Extension Partnership center, to scale its production, and has also received federal recognition, securing the top honor at the Department of Energy’s EPIC Pitch Competition

A sustainable, New York–made wardrobe

New York already boasts the fashion capital of the world, and it’s now stitching together a team of experts at the newly created Fashion Innovation Center to develop a smarter, greener industry.

The consortium of universities, businesses, farmers, fashion industry leaders, and non-profit organizations will be centered in the Capital Region and led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

In September 2023, NYSTAR selected the consortium members, which include RPI, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Hudson Valley Textile Project, Field to Fiber, SUNY Morrisville, and Made X Hudson.

Their goal: to advance the production of New York State–produced sustainable textiles like hemp, flax and wool, further strengthening collaboration between the state’s strong agricultural sector and the fashion industry.

In addition to research on processing, prototyping, material characterization and testing capabilities, the consortium will also create an accelerator housed within the Fashion Innovation Center to provide space to early stage companies working on promising developments in the field and candidates for commercialization.

Innovating the hydrogen economy

In the future of sustainable energy, hydrogen has emerged as one key to a carbon-free future.  However, the current supply of hydrogen poses significant cost, storage and transportation issues.

That’s where Bettergy, a company based in Peekskill, and the NYSTAR-backed Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics at the University at Buffalo come into play.

Together, they are developing a novel catalyst that produced a highly energy-efficient, cost-effective and safe method to use ammonia and convert it to hydrogen. The process allows for the conversation at easier-to-obtain temperatures and reduces the need for precious metals, which address both cost and environmental concerns in hydrogen conversion.

Currently working on commercialization of this critical hydrogen technology and scaling for industrial applications, this ongoing academic-industry partnership has attracted more than $1.5 million in federal funding.

These are just a few examples of NYSTAR and its centers supporting innovations in advanced materials. To learn more about NYSTAR and the resources available to innovators in New York, visit Empire State Development’s website.

It’s no secret that buildings of all kinds — from homes to apartment buildings to offices — are contributing to climate change. Traditional heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are a big reason why buildings account for nearly one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.

Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) is invested in finding cleaner, greener HVAC systems. The network has been supporting research, development, and commercialization of clean technology for decades, and three recent projects are addressing the need for more efficient ways to heat and cool commercial and residential buildings.

Retrofitting for efficiency

It seems fitting that Syracuse, home to an historic cluster of companies and university faculty with expertise in HVAC innovation, is also at the forefront of re-imagining indoor climate control.

Two projects at the Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems at Syracuse University (SyracuseCoE) aim to make heating and cooling more climate friendly using an unlikely source — a building’s exterior.

The first project involves a multidisciplinary team of Syracuse University researchers, who have partnered with Cycle Architects, Taitem Engineering, TKFabricate, Signetron, cocoon construct, and others to develop an innovative “wrap” for homes in cold climates, making them more energy efficient by keeping more cold or warm air inside the dwelling. The research team includes faculty from the Syracuse School of Architecture and the College of Engineering and Computer Science and is also funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and NYSERDA.

“We have a vast number of existing buildings that are going to be around for a while. Many of these were built prior to building codes that require improved energy performance. Rather than demolish these older buildings and build new construction, which can be incredibly energy-intensive, there’s a tremendous opportunity for energy savings through deep energy-efficiency retrofits,” said Bess Krietemeyer, associate professor in the School of Architecture and the project lead.

“We’re targeting low- to moderate-income buildings in cold climates, which are typically poorly insulated, to make it easy for building owners to implement. Creating access to healthier and more comfortable housing options is one of our major motivations,” Krietemeyer added.

The project features three major innovations:

• A highly insulated envelope system — imagine a coat for a building — that provides thermal performance and airtightness at the walls, roof and foundation while being attached to the exterior of an existing building.
• A high-efficiency mechanical pod system featuring real-time performance monitoring for heating, cooling, ventilation and hot water that is incorporated into the envelope panel system.
• Pre-retrofit assessment software that ensures a good fit to the building.

Meanwhile, SyracuseCoE is also working with Hydronic Shell Technologies, a NYC-based company that has developed an innovative approach to HVAC in which the heating, cooling, and ventilation inside the building comes from the exterior walls.

In essence, the Hydronic Shell integrated solution also wraps around the exterior of a building, like a blanket, but with a system containing the technology needed to heat and cool while improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions.

Along with the health and environmental benefits comes another perk: since the system is external, apartment dwellers experience minimal disruption during installation, adding a level of efficiency, and privacy, to the process.

The company is primarily targeting multifamily affordable housing in certain communities where this technology can dramatically reduce operating costs and improve quality of life.

Electrifying HVAC and reducing refrigerants

Electrification is key to carbon neutrality. However, with HVAC, there’s still the issue of refrigerants, which can be harmful to the environment.

Enter MIMiC Systems. The Brooklyn-based company has developed an electrified solid-state heat pump that provides heating and cooling in one device. Its solution is DC-powered, quieter, and less carbon intensive than traditional compressor-based systems — with zero refrigerants.

Working with the Center for Future Energy Systems (CFES) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on prototype development, MIMiC’s solid-state heat pump requires no moving parts, making the system maintenance-free and reducing the cost of operation.

Solid-state heating and cooling eliminates the need for refrigerants that are commonly used in commercial HVAC systems. Some of those refrigerants include ozone-depleting chemicals that can be as harmful to our climate as carbon emissions.

SyracuseCoE and RPI’s CFES are just two centers funded by NYSTAR — a network of more than 70 assets — engaged in research, development and support of new technologies.

By investing in HVAC technology innovations that can be used in new construction or layered onto existing buildings, NYSTAR network investments are helping New York companies take their ideas to the next level — and contributing to a greener future for the world’s population.

Pick a meteorological phenomenon to study and chances are New York will give you ample opportunity for field research.

“I firmly believe that New York is the most weather-diverse state in the country,” said Nick Bassill, director of research and development at the University of Albany’s Center of Excellence in Weather and Climate Analytics. “We have these massive lake effect snowstorms and we have hurricanes. In no other state could that even be possible. We also get everything in between. We’re not in the Central Plains. We don’t get massive tornadoes like they do. But we still do get tornadoes; we still do get strong winds and hail. We get heat and cold weather and freezing rain and sleet and everything in between”

And for a researcher like Bassill, it’s also the perfect place to unlock the potential of weather data. It’s a crucial area of study, because better data can inform decisions of government agencies and utility companies that potentially have lifesaving consequences.

That’s exactly what he’s doing at UAlbany’s CoE.

Bassill’s story — and his impact on New York State’s ability to respond to extreme weather events — has its roots in a good old-fashioned Midwestern winter.

From snowstorms to hurricanes

Growing up in Wisconsin, Bassill was a typical child of the region, enjoying winter and building snow forts. Eagerly wanting to know when the next snowfall would occur, he began watching The Weather Channel and became captivated by meteorological patterns that affected his backyard, as well as the ones that made headlines across the country.

In particular, the weather events he’d never experienced caught his attention, specifically in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew made landfall twice in the U.S. – first in Florida, then Louisiana. That impression, coupled with his love of data and maps, led him to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his early research projects focused on hurricanes en route to earning a Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

And in a roundabout way, it was the aftermath of two hurricanes that brought Bassill and his expertise to New York State.

He arrived in Albany in 2014 to help design, install and operate Mesonet – the centerpiece of the New York State Early Warning Weather Detection System – then moved into the role of senior scientist at the Center of Excellence at the University at Albany, funded by Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation, also known as NYSTAR.

The creation of Mesonet was the result of two major storms that devastated New York. In 2011, Hurricane Irene caused nine fatalities and more than $1 billion in flooding damage across the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains. One year later, Superstorm Sandy caused more than $5 billion in damage from storm surge flooding downstate.

Figuring out exactly what happened – how much rain fell and how high the wind gusts peaked in specific locations — was important to public officials in the wake of these severe events. But New York State didn’t have enough weather stations to provide those details.

With funding from the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013, also known as the Sandy Supplemental Relief Bill, New York was able to deploy a high-quality weather network across the state. Bassill was charged with helping to implement the system and find practical ways to utilize the information it provided.

“I came here about a year before the first site was installed,” Bassill said. “Then, as they were being installed, I would start making weather products with the data that was coming in, whether it was maps or line graphs of temperature, whatever you can think of really. I just started to figure out what can we do with that data. Now, I’m more in a role of trying to translate that data to products for groups that can use it directly.”

Collecting, interpreting and applying the data

Here’s the thing: New York State now produces an incredible amount of real-time weather data, updated every five minutes from each of its 126 stations across the state. There is at least one station in every county and borough with an average of 17 miles between sites.

But unless you are a meteorologist, all this information can be difficult to interpret.

And many government agencies don’t have a full-time meteorologist on staff to provide that interpretation.

How can that play out?

Bassill offered two examples.

First, let’s say you knew a winter storm was coming. Standard procedure would be to put salt down on the roadways. But if it’s going to rain before it snows, you wouldn’t want to put salt out, because the rain will wash it away. Drivers won’t get any benefit, and the municipality has now wasted time, money and salt. With the right tools and data, that basic question – is it going to rain before it snows or is it going to snow before it rains? – is easy to interpret from a meteorologist’s perspective, but not necessarily obvious to an amateur weather forecaster.

Now, let’s say you work for a utility company and see there’s going to be snow and strong winds. But is the snow going to be wet and therefore heavy? That matters because a wet snow is going to stick to the power lines and trees. In those conditions, when the wind comes, power outages will be more than likely. But if it’s a dry, powdery snow, there’s less reason to worry about the winds, lowering the likelihood of downed lines.

“These kinds of questions and situations spring up a lot,” Bassill said. “They are the things which are mostly knowable, but hard to look up if you don’t have that expertise.”

Interpretation is where science and entrepreneurial opportunities come together. Bassill and his colleagues could spend their entire workdays on the phone, talking through the data with government and utility representatives. Instead, they’re looking for ways to develop products and tools that can translate the high level of meteorological data into easily digestible — and actionable — information about the weather.

His current projects include working with utility companies to better predict restoration times, providing situational awareness for New York’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, and studying urban heat in New York City – a trending topic as climate change and urbanization are changing millions of people’s living environments.

“Heat is the No. 1 or No. 2 weather-related cause of death in virtually all years, with flooding being the other one,” Bassill said. “The great thing is that heat is among the most predicable things. It’s less about predicting heat than how we respond to it.”

Bassill continues to find inspiration in helping agencies, organizations and companies use data to better respond to weather emergencies.

“The type of project that I’m really interested in is one that is somewhat more universal,” Bassill said.

He envisions an initiative that delivers New York’s Mesonet data in a more cohesive comprehensive way to a wide group of agencies and utility companies. An ability to share information that is broadly relevant to all their organizations creates more opportunities for innovative and effective solutions.

“I’m interested in finding a way to bring everyone to work collaboratively to think a little bit bigger, to not necessarily do things one at a time but tackle slightly bigger problems in a more comprehensive way that would benefit everyone for less money,” Bassill said. “That’s my dream.”

As a child growing up in China, Zhiyao Duan loved music. He studied the violin and later picked up the euphonium, a brass instrument, as a college student majoring in automation.

That’s when he started thinking about artificial intelligence and its potential applications in music. He became interested in polyphonic music transcription — which, in simple terms, involves a computer program turning a composition with multiple melodies into written sheet music.

Armed with a master’s degree in automation and a deep curiosity to merge his love of music with his academic pursuits, Duan came to the United States and earned his doctorate at Northwestern University in electrical engineering and computer science. Soon after arriving at the University of Rochester as an assistant professor, however, he discovered one of the realities of American academic research and found it necessary to make a career pivot.

“In the U.S. it’s very difficult to get funding to support music research because the [federal] government is very pragmatic, I would say. Music is not considered economically impactful,” Duan said. “I had to expand my research area into other types of audio, which is very doable because music and speech, they are just different forms of sound.”

Duan pivoted into an area he calls “computer audition,” which involves speech and general sounds.

“In music we work on music-source separation, which is trying to separate the music sources from the polyphonic music mixture,” Duan explained. “In speech, there’s a problem called speech enhancement, which is separating the speech signal from the background noise. It’s very similar to music-source separation.”

Then the work took another interesting turn. While Duan was building his research in computer audition at the University of Rochester, a businessman named Peter Soufleris was building a company in voice biometrics in Philadelphia.

A graduate of the University of Rochester, Soufleris is CEO and Founder of Voice Biometrics Group, a company that specializes in speaker verification systems. The technology creates a voice print that gives Voice Biometrics’ clients new ways to verify people’s identities; imagine being identified as you speak with your bank’s call-center agent without being asked any security questions or unlocking your apartment door by speaking into your mobile phone.

As his company looked to become more competitive in a growing industry, Soufleris first explored a collaboration with Temple University. Then he approached his alma mater for help, starting with summer internships and a few advanced research projects with Duan’s doctoral students.

Then tragedy struck Voice Biometrics Group with the sudden death of its senior engineer from brain cancer. Soufleris turned again to Duan and the University of Rochester. He needed creative solutions to move the company forward and build out its next generation of technology.

“We created somewhat of a sponsorship for a couple of students,” Soufleris said. “We had all the industry experience of running a company for almost a dozen years. We would be able to give them very specific guidance on what was needed in the market and design products for them to build. We could put them into our environment, test them with real-world data and give them real-world feedback.”

As the relationship between the company and the university deepened, along came a grant opportunity through the Center of Excellence in Data Science, a NYSTAR-backed center at the University of Rochester.

To apply for the grant, Voice Biometrics Group opened a branch in Rochester in 2021. As the project continued, it got Soufleris, who grew up in Syracuse, thinking even bigger. Maybe it was time to start an entirely new business based in New York State.

Through the process of working with the Center of Excellence and NYSTAR, Soufleris created a new biometrics company called IngenID (a combination of the words “ingenious” and “identification”). The plan is to establish headquarters — and make an impact — in the greater Rochester area. IngenID will focus on voice biometrics initially, but is also preparing to offer other biometric and identification technologies within its platform.

“The whole Center of Excellence and NYSTAR process was the inflection point for this new company,” Soufleris said. “As part of that grant I committed to [physically] being in Rochester two weeks each month. I thought if this works out, I’ll plant a stake here. And quickly I saw that with the right time and energy, I could make this its own thing.”

Although in operation less than a year, IngenID has several clients and is currently on-boarding several more. They recently hired a chief technology officer in Rochester to lead development of the company’s next generation platform and hire additional developers for the team.

“I’m an upstate New York guy. I want to make an impact on the local community and be part the University of Rochester community,” Soufleris said. “What we want to do is build a new delivery platform that specifically houses the University of Rochester technology, hire people in the greater Rochester area and contribute to the New York economy.”

While Voice Biometric Group will continue to operate separately, IngenID will be the focal point for all new development and for commercializing the innovations borne from the UR collaboration. All the new technology starts with fundamental research in Duan’s lab, where, for example, his team is working on anti-spoofing techniques and advanced voice biometrics, such as detecting the emotion of a person as they’re speaking — a game-changing technology for call centers.

For Duan, computer audition and speech processing systems provide a rich, relevant, and fascinating area of research. And he still keeps active with his first love: music, and research in music information retrieval.

In 2024 he will become president of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval. He also is part of the company Mango Future Education Technology, which developed the app Violy. The app can listen to a music learner’s instrumental performance and provide feedback about intonation, rhythmic and tempo accuracy.

“The actual content of music information retrieval is broader than what the name suggests,” Duan said. “When people hear the word retrieval maybe they think about searching a song from a database, but the research topics in this area are much wider. Just to mention a few: It includes the analysis of music signals along different musical aspects, based on which various kinds of matching or retrieval of music can be performed. It also includes generating new music from that analysis, such as creating new pieces from scratch or filling in gaps in existing compositions.

“Another area is music performance generation. When you have the score how do you generate audio that can perform the score in a realistic way, not in a robotic way? We try to design computer algorithms to mimic how humans interpret the score and play it expressively. There are really many fascinating areas of research.”

To learn more about Duan and his research, visit his University of Rochester faculty page.

When Dr. Linda Alvarez and Stephanie Schrauth met in an innovations course while working on their Executive MBAs at Cornell, they quickly learned about the nutritional woes of female endurance athletes.

While almost half of marathon runners in the United States are women, only 2.5 percent of products in the sports nutrition aisles target women – and nearly all of them have an emphasis on getting skinny or looking sexy, not on athletic performance.

“Men fuel and train while women diet and exercise. That’s the way sports and fitness nutrition products are presented,” Alvarez said. “We want to completely change that narrative.”

Beyond the marketing, Alvarez and Schrauth found the products themselves problematic. Women had become accustomed to constantly experimenting with their sports nutrition, trying to find the right formula that wouldn’t cause bloating, cramping, and other physical symptoms that hampered their training and performance.

“As we interviewed women marathoners, we heard this common theme. They felt their negative physical reactions to sports nutrition products were because of their bodies,” Alvarez said. “We interviewed more than 100 women, and when every woman was saying that, well, we saw that clearly it’s not a problem with your body. It’s really a problem in the market.”

Determined to address that problem, Alvarez and Schrauth created their company, Levelle Nutrition, in early 2021. But they had no specific product in mind. Nor did they have manufacturing or entrepreneurial experience.

That’s where the NYSTAR innovation network came into play.

With guidance from multiple centers and programs funded by Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology, and Innovation (NYSTAR), their company moved beyond the first step of identifying a problem. In short order, they created a solution, scaled a product for commercialization, and are now on the cusp of introducing it to the market.

“Neither Stephanie nor I started out in food or consumer products,” Alvarez said. “I came from the medical world and she at the time was working in software product management. So, the NYSTAR centers, through their mentorship and advisement, allowed us to feel confident within the space and bridge the gaps in our experiences.”

Alvarez did have a background in nutrition, which grounded the duo as they examined ingredients of products on the market, noting a confluence of high glycemic index sugars, electrolytes, and other additives. This mix creates environments that often lead to physical side effects; if you can’t absorb the amount of sugar and salt in a sports nutrition product, it’s going to linger in your stomach and create problems, according to Alvarez.

“What we did was focus on fruits, vegetables, and seeds that we know pack a great amount of nutritional benefit outside of their macronutrients, and used all low glycemic index fruits to really give you that sustained release of energy rather than having to process large amounts of these engineered sugars,” Alvarez said.

Those ingredients are at the heart of Levelle Nutrition’s signature product – an energy puree formulated specifically for women. The first batches were cooked in Alvarez’s own kitchen. With help of the NYSTAR-backed Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell AgriTech, the company was able to fine-tune the recipes and address problems of scale to commercialize their product in single serving pouches.

One roadblock that AgriTech helped solve involved the pH value of their product. The puree had to be cooked at a temperature so high, it approached the limit of most manufacturers’ processing capabilities. With the help of food scientists and the Center of Excellence, they were able to naturally lower the pH value of their product, allowing for processing at a lower temperature to make the manufacturing process easier and more accessible.

Levelle Nutrition took full advantage of the NYSTAR network, utilizing not only the Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell AgriTech, but also the New York State Science & Technology Law Center at Syracuse University, where they gained a better understanding how to protect their intellectual property – their proprietary recipe and process – to position themselves for long-term success.

In October 2022, Levelle Nutrition won $50,000 from the Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund Commercialization Competition, hosted by FuzeHub at the New York State Innovation Summit. The money will help the company buy and establish its own manufacturing line, which will enable an initial run of product they can take to market in 2023.

But the development doesn’t stop there. Levelle Nutrition began working with another NYSTAR program – the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) – to submit a grant proposal through the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) to further understand the effects of their products on female athletes while expanding the breadth of research dedicated to female athletes.

“We noticed that there hasn’t been a lot of research on nutrition and female athletes, and we want to help change that,” Alverez said. “That’s important to us and it’s important to the athletes as well. The feedback we’ve gotten is that they love the taste of our Energy Purees, but even before trying they product, women are celebrating a company that celebrates women.”

Behind the modern-day jobsite are companies like neARabl, a startup that was spun out of the City College of New York Visual Computing Research Laboratory. The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation through the Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) Program and the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program, a partnership with Bentley Systems, Incorporated and a collaboration with Rutgers University and Lighthouse Guild.

The company has developed software that combines accurate indoor navigation with augmented reality resulting in more efficient project management.

The software also provides real-time updates to offsite stakeholders like project managers and building owners.

But this game-changing technology wasn’t meant for construction — at least not at the outset.

neARabl founders Jin Chen, Arber Ruci, and E’edresha Sturdivant knew they had a powerful technology application. Their precise indoor navigation solution brought real accuracy to indoor spaces — to within 1 centimeter — where traditional GPS systems were lacking.

At first, they saw their mobile application as a way to help people who are blind or visually impaired navigate indoor spaces. While the initial vision showed potential, there wasn’t any demand for the product to take off.

The company then pivoted to indoor navigation for first responders — a potentially life-saving application for its technology, enabling firefighters and paramedics to access, navigate, and ultimately, safely exit spaces that they have never been in before. Similarly, the founders learned that there wasn’t substantial demand in this sector, as safe building egress is a very small portion of first responders’ daily jobs.

Not to be discouraged, the company used the technology’s versatility to adapt to market needs, which were uncovered with the help of their partners in industry and innovation.

So neARabl began the process of transforming the infrastructure sector.

While taking part in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps’ immersive seven-week program, the neARabl team interviewed 113 potential customers, discovering the market that most needed its technology was infrastructure.

The feedback they heard was that infrastructure professionals could use neARabl’s technology to visualize their digital twins on the ground, keep multiple stakeholders updated in real time, visualize workflows, and save significant money on physical signage at job sites by going digital. And the response was strong. Today, the company’s software is deployed on five job sites including in New York City, while preparing to launch its technology at job sites in the western United States as well as overseas.

Through the entire process, the company has leveraged the expertise and support of 13 different centers backed by NYSTAR — Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Ruci, the company’s CEO, had experience navigating the NYSTAR Innovation Network, having led the New York City Innovation Hot Spot for five years.

“I knew the rich resources that were available throughout the state and how committed New York and NYSTAR are to cultivating collaborative innovation,” Ruci said. “And it’s not just in New York City. We received support from the Western New York Incubator Network, the New York I-Corps Hub at CUNY and Central NY Biotech Accelerator at Upstate Medical University.

“Key for us as well was the New York State Science & Technology Law Center, which is based at Syracuse University. They helped us ensure our technology didn’t infringe on any other company’s intellectual property.”

With solid grounding from the NYSTAR ecosystem, neARabl has partnered with Bentley Systems, Incorporated (Nasdaq : BSY) — an influential global infrastructure engineering software company. This partnership allows neARabl to adopt the iTwin Platform and earned the powered by iTwin designation, which serves as a channel enabler to a large ecosystem of architecture, engineering, and construction firms, developers, and Bentley partners building digital twins and the infrastructure metaverse.

“This partnership is a gigantic step towards establishing our imprint on the infrastructure market. As an academic spin-out, integrating with Bentley’s open-source digital twin technology was a no-brainer for many reasons,” Ruci said. “Where we found the most value was in familiarity and ease of use for our end-users — we launched as a mobile-first application to great initial early reviews of our mobile visualization, but soon enough we realized that our end users were much more comfortable editing and changing neARabl mobile content on an iTwin desktop/web interface. We quickly integrated the process and have been deploying it in some cool places.”

neARabl’s solutions have served diverse audiences including not only construction site managers but digital tourists, people with low vision, and metaverse enthusiasts. To find out more about the technology, visit nearabl.com.

In communities across New York State, some of the world’s brightest minds are pursuing groundbreaking and life-saving discoveries in partnership with research and innovation centers backed by NYSTAR, Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology, and Innovation. NYSTAR’s Profiles in Research series will share the stories of incredible researchers who are creating positive change and fueling technology-led economic growth statewide.

When the world closed its doors during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Francine Battaglia was in a unique position.

As an expert in computational fluid dynamics, she often works to improve ventilation and air quality in buildings by looking at one central question – where does the air go?

And as everyone – from offices and schools to restaurants and orchestras – looked for ways to mitigate exposure to COVID-19 and remove pathogens from indoor spaces, Dr. Battaglia was ready to evaluate solutions.

“I thought this was a good way to support the local community,” said Dr. Battaglia, professor and chair of the University at Buffalo’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “I was motivated by COVID and felt there was an opportunity to help.”

A research tool, computational fluid dynamics simulates the flow of fluids, such as droplets from sneezes and coughs in a room. That proved a vital resource for two companies working to bring commercial air purification systems to market.

Connecting with the Center for Advanced Technology in Big Data and Health Sciences (CAT) and the Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics (CMI), both funded by NYSTAR, Dr. Battaglia and her lab, ASCENT, used computer modeling to investigate several specific questions about airflow.

“My research is computational,” Dr. Battaglia said. “We’re not doing experiments. We’re using a computer to replicate what happens in the ‘real world.’ We can model how the air flows in a room. My role is to help the customers understand where the air moves when their devices are used in a building space.”

While both NYSTAR-funded projects worked on air purification systems, they approached the problem in different ways. The SteriSpace system by You First Services eliminates harmful airborne biological contaminants and sterilizes the air through existing ventilation systems, while the wall-mounted device by uvxPhyzx uses UV-C light to inactivate pathogens and pushes out clean air to the most-used areas of a room.

But both companies needed information on how air behaves in a room and how introducing their device would alter that behavior. Advanced computer modeling enabled Dr. Battaglia to track the likely movement of respiratory particles that are transported by the room air, calculating the best placement of the devices for maximum efficacy.

“Our lab could simulate a situation where an infected patient would sneeze or cough in a room and look where the respiratory aerosols and droplets would go,” Dr. Battaglia said. “We could introduce all kinds of variables and look at the best places to install systems and how that impacts the way the air flows in the room. These projects gave us an opportunity to demonstrate the ability of computational fluid dynamics to model and predict pathogen transport.”

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