The process of commercializing Happy Valley technology
By Tim Kelly The Technology Center at Innovation Park, home to Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern Pennsylvania, Magnitude Instruments, and other start-ups. Photo by T. Kelly After experiencing endless frustration and months of effort attempting to acquire useful data from a home-built transient absorption spectrometer, Eric Kennehan, his former advisor John Asbury […]
Private equity in Happy Valley: plunderers or producers?
By Timothy Kelly EnergyCAP headquarters in Boalsburg, PA. Photo by T. Kelly Is private equity ruining economic development? That’s the premise of a new book that offered a critical — to put it mildly —portrayal of private equity. “The titans call their industry private equity,” Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner wrote in “These Are the […]
Climb Nittany growing as a top Happy Valley destination for recreation
By Timothy Kelly Some of the Climb Nittany community. Photos provided, collage by T. Kelly In the latter half of the last decade, Josh Helke, owner of Philipsburg-based climbing gear company Organic Climbing, reached out to the owners of the Vertical Adventures climbing gym (now 5.Life, based in Columbus, OH) and suggested that State College […]
Penn State engineers optimizing water purification system for the U.S. Marines
By Timothy Kelly An experimental MCDI unit. Photo: Chris Arges. A team of researchers, led by Chris Arges, Penn State associate professor of chemical engineering, is working to optimize a water desalination process called membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) for mobile teams of U.S. Marines. We asked Arges to explain how the system works, why he […]
Only 9% of plastics actually get recycled. These engineers aim to change that.
By Timothy Kelly The rapidly growing chemical recycling industry is picking up steam, but it faces important obstacles — obstacles that the Toraman Research Group at Penn State hopes to overcome. This research group focuses on plastic pyrolysis, or the process of breaking down plastics with heat, in an oxygen-free atmosphere. The group’s aim? Optimize […]
Penn State research unlocking treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s to extend patient lives
By Timothy Kelly Two life science research teams were recently awarded Lab Bench to Commercialization (LB2C) grants from the Penn State Eberly College of Science to commercialize their research. The teams have discovered novel interventions to address diseases from cancer to Parkinson’s and diabetic retinopathy. The grant program will help these researchers bring the benefits […]
A perfect combo: STAR-X and Penn State
By Timothy Kelly 1.5-million light year-wide jets of very high-energy plasma, subatomic particles and magnetic fields shooting from the supermassive black hole in galaxy Hercules A, shown in optical, x-ray (purple) and radio (blue). Photo: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO, Optical: NASA/STScI, Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA). On Aug. 18, NASA announced that a proposed space mission called STAR-X had been […]
Local leaders on the current state and future of manufacturing in Happy Valley
By Timothy Kelly An article published by Bloomberg in July focused on the accelerating reshoring trend in manufacturing and noted that companies aren’t just talking about reshoring — they’re taking action. Some companies are moving their supply chains, including primary production facilities, out of China and relocating to the U.S. According to the article, the […]
Happy Valley remains a bright spot in a darkening economy
By Timothy Kelly The home of the CIMP-3D Lab. Research at Penn State has been the foundation of many local high tech and deep tech start-ups. Photo: T. Kelly The S&P 500 is down 8.5% in the last six months. The gross domestic product percentage change from the preceding quarter was negative in the first […]
Research discovery on waste heat could yield innovative new energy source
By Timothy Kelly The Earth and Mineral Sciences Energy Institute, Penn State University. Photo: T. Kelly Waste heat is the unused heat given to the surrounding environment (in the form of thermal energy) by a heat engine in a thermodynamic process in which it converts heat to useful work. Recovering and recycling waste heat has […]