By Thomas Gnau
Staff Writer
DAYTON — The executive director of the Air Force Research Laboratory has no doubt that Dayton will be the international center of sensors technology development.
“In the next five to ten years, this will become the next Silicon Valley for sensors and sensors development,” Joe Sciabica, AFRL chief, told an audience Tuesday at the fourth annual Ohio Innovation Sensor Summit, held at the Tech Town business park.
Sensors are devices designed to help users 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 that at least 2,000 people work in sensors development across Southwestern Ohio, not counting employees on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where AFRL is headquartered.
The base itself invests about $1 billion a year into sensors work, Walters estimated. At least $200 million to $300 million a year of sensor activity takes place outside the base, he estimated.
Sciabica said outside partnerships with contractors and small businesses “permeate the fenceline surrounding” the base. AFRL itself had a total budget of nearly $4.6 billion fiscal year 2011, and of that, just over $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, calling the Dayton area, “a good area at a good time.”
Technology transfer between AFRL and academic and industry partners leads to increased production, jobs and sales, Sciabica said, and 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 included helium-filled mini-blimps that can continuously monitor a region from 2,000 feet up to technologies that counter IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Do not disregard small businesses for they are the engine of innovation,” Hollingsworth said. “I truly believe that.”
He acknowledged the reality of ever-tighter government budgets, but he said there should be an understanding that some sensor technologies will not pay dividends immediately. “Some technologies will have a return (on investment) in that fifth, sixth, seventh year,” he said.
Others praised Ohio government’s willingness to invest in new companies nurturing new technologies. Don Burdette, director of scientific research for Columbus-based Traycer Diagnostics, showed his audience a slide calling Ohio’s development programs “second to none.”
Ohio’s investment helped the company create the world’s first broadband camera for detecting terahertz radiation, a device that could be useful for looking past paint and silicon for defects, Burdette said.
“I don’t know anywhere else that is doing that,” Burdette said, referring to the Ohio Third Frontier and other programs meant to boost technology.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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