Advanced Ceramics Research (ACR)

Advanced Ceramics Research (ACR) develops state-of-the-art high temperature, high strength ceramic materials and processes. ACR's long-range mission is to improve the performance of ceramic and composite materials.



Transcript

00:00:01 what does a small business do with funding from the federal government if the company is Advanced Ceramics research incorporated they do a lot the company also known as ACR has successfully transferred Technologies they've developed through Government funding to both Federal and private sectors from NASA and the Department of Defense to the biomedical field and

00:00:25 international business this small company in Tucson Arizona has a knack for finding new homes for ITS Technologies technologies that the firm has developed through the small business Innovation research or sbir program regardless of the economic climate ACR is always thinking of new markets for those Technologies it's a little bit of a

00:00:49 juggling act you have to be somewhat Dynamic and and Rule with the punches we constantly think of applications because sometimes one application that you think of can can never happen ACR was founded in 1989 by Mark anir and Anthony Mulligan what began with only $1,000 in startup funds has since become a worldclass company that

00:01:15 focuses on developing a state-of-the-art high temperature high strength ceramic materials and processes in the late 1990s ACR received an sbir award from NASA's Marshall space flight center to develop a rapid prototyping technology for producing new Composite Materials materials that would enable a new generation of lowcost propulsion

00:01:39 components for NASA and the Department of Defense that same research then led to the development of a very unique experimental process in the biomed field enter plasty bone by combining computer modeling and revolutionary materials ACR has developed an Innovative technology that may May one day be used to create artificial bone grafts through an sbir funding from the

00:02:06 NASA Langley Research Center the firm is now developing new technologies for radiation shielding applications yet another example of ACR spinning out a new application from the research originally begun with Marshall recently the company entered the field of unmanned aerial vehicles or uavs through an SB award from The Office of Naval Research ACR has teamed with

00:02:34 another firm to develop and deploy The Silver Fox a small tactical UAV that uses high-tech eyes in the sky camera technology to gather intelligence information and then simultaneously relay the images to a remote laptop on the ground besides the federal government ACR pursues commercial applications for their research licensing their

00:02:59 Technologies to other Industries has been an important mechanism for the company what they'll be able to do with the technology we would struggle to do ourselves it it would take us much longer to commercialize and to really uh do the product development that they're capable of and they of course have the the marketing clout that a small business like ACR doesn't the company

00:03:21 signed a 10-year multi-million dollar license agreement allowing a US company to use one of their Technologies to improve the efficiency of oil and rock Drilling and one of their Technologies has been licensed to Kera in Japan the global leader in Ceramics for communications applications ACR extends its Partnerships to the academic Community

00:03:44 as well from the beginning The Firm has collaborated with colleges and universities believing that academic Partnerships are critical to its research and development success in addition to working with the faculty ACR regularly employs University in interns on staff it's a great relationship because we've been able to uh look at U you know perspective employes that and

00:04:09 and sort of test drive them uh before hiring them and and uh We've it also gives us a very close connection with the university and doing some of the technology transfer with product demands on the increase ACR recently formed a joint venture Advanced Ceramics manufacturing or ACM through a cooperative Arrangement the owners of ACR are building a new facility on the

00:04:34 nearby toono Odum reservation we proposed a partnership where we would try and establish a manufacturing arm of of ACR on a reservation and train people on the reservation to do technical jobs there anir believes Federal funding is responsible for the technical superiority his company has today but it's more than that ACR knows how to put

00:04:59 its government funding to work by constantly searching for those new applications and opportunities we are not doing this just for research sake we are doing this because we see a commercial potential a big commercial potential out there and we work very hard to commercialize that technology