DAYTON — The executive director of the Air Force Research Laboratory has no doubt that Dayton will be the international center of sensor technology development.
“In the next five to 10 years, this will become the next Silicon Valley for sensors and sensors development,” Joe Sciabica, AFRL chief, said Tuesday at the fourth annual Ohio Innovation Sensor Summit, held at the Tech Town business park.
Sensors are devices that detect everything from suspected terrorists to corrosion. Larrell Walters, director of the University of Dayton’s Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Sensors Technology, estimates 2,000 people work in sensor development across Southwest Ohio, not counting employees at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where AFRL is headquartered.
The base invests about $1 billion a year into sensor work, Walters estimated. At least $200 million to $300 million a year of sensor activity takes place outside the base, he said.
Sciabica said partnerships with contractors and small businesses “permeate the fence line surrounding” the base. AFRL had a budget of nearly $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2011, and of that, more than $1.9 billion was spent on external contracts, he said. AFRL has a workforce of more than 10,000 across the Air Force.
“I think our future is extremely, extremely bright,” Sciabica added.
Technology transfer between AFRL and academic and industry partners leads to increased production, jobs and sales, Sciabica said. That was a theme for other summit speakers as well.
Larry Hollingsworth, director of rapid response and irregular warfare at the Naval Air Station Command in Patuxent River, Md., praised the contractors with whom he works and urged listeners to tap into the expertise of small businesses. His projects have ranged from helium-filled mini-blimps that can monitor a region from 2,000 feet up to technologies that counter improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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