| Workforce Survey |
Survey will focus upon training practices,
workforce development, and aging workforce.
Point-of-contact RRPC Members will be receiving a workforce
survey this week. Among the key information we will be looking
for is your "best guess" on the age of your workforce,
details about your workforce training resources, and the identity
of the person in your firm responsible for Human Resource functions.
Please take a few minutes to respond to the survey when you
get it.
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| Insurance Costs |
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Sample Outcomes from RRPC Insurance Initiative
John Hart, President, Lumetrics reports:
During the first year of our company formation,
we analyzed our employee needs for all types of insurance. Since
there were only three full-time employees (two of us had medical
insurance through our spouses) we came to the conclusion that
enhanced short term, long term, life and accidental death and
dismemberment insurance were important benefits.
First, let me state that I hate setting up new
insurance policies. The level of detail, and nitpicking questions
drive me nuts. The only thing that offsets this pain is saving
lots of money for competitive quotes.
I attended the Insurance Benefits Workshop hosted
by RRPC-member Optima Financial Group in July, and worked with
them on a quote. We ended up saving a lot of money with better
coverage and simplified billing.
Here are our numbers:
Lumetrics designs, manufactures,
and markets advanced optically-based instruments that provide
unique measurement solutions for a variety of industrial applications.
Lumetrics technology employs the power of light for accurate and
routine analysis of materials such as specialty film, flexible
packaging, plastics, coatings, and optics.
From John Gebhart, Director of Organizational
Development at Thales Optem:
Thales Optem Inc. became aware of Optima Financial
Group at the RRPC Insurance Workshop last July 12. Our organization
wished to investigate the possibility of separating health and
welfare benefits plans from our parent company in Virginia.
Frank DiCesare, Brian Blaustein and Dan Botsford
worked with us to identify multiple options for medical, dental,
life, accident and disability insurances. Although our parent
company afforded favorable rates through the size of its national
workforce, Optima provided superior value through:
- offering several choices of provider for each benefit
- giving feedback on insurance provider responsiveness
- educating our workforce in filling out the various enrollment
forms
Thanks to significant savings on family medical
and all levels of dental coverage, we will realize over 12% reduction
in aggregate monthly insurance premiums. We plan to share
this savings with employees, at least temporarily holding off
the trend of ever-increasing healthcare costs.
Thales Optem, located in Fairport, is a designer
and manufacturer of optical systems for semiconductor, life sciences,
government and other markets.
Optima Financial Group, an
RRPC Member, can be reached at (585) 244-6800. |
| CEIS Annual Meeting |
October 27
Event Highlighted Record Accomplishments
Eighty industrial partners, researchers, and
 stakeholders,
including David Koon, (Assemblyman, 135th District), and Kathy
Wise, Director of Programs at NYSTAR attended the 5th Annual CEIS
Annual Meeting at the Lodge at Woodcliff. The Center logged $92M
in New York State Economic Impact in '04-'05.
Bob Klimasewski, CEO of VirtualScopics,
and Sid Dalal, Vice President, Xerox Corporation accepted awards
for succesful technology transfer from a University.
The Center awarded $402,500 in funds to 23 investigators
in the '05-'06 program year. The RFP's for '06-'07 are due for
release in late December.
Outgoing Chair of the Center's Industrial Advisory
Board, John Spoonhauer, Eastman Kodak handed the reins to incoming
Chair Bob Naum, of Applied Image.
View the presentation here. |
| RRPC Annual Meeting |
The final date has not
yet been set as this newsletter goes out, but RRPC's Annual Meeting
is being scheduled to include timely subject matter, interesting
speakers, and once again, excellent food! The Meeting will be
held in February at RIT's Golisano Auditorium.
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| Worldwide Events |
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14 -17 November 2005
Fall
National SBIR/STTR Conference
Albany, NY
21 - 26 January 2006
Photonics
West
San Jose, CA
11 - 16 February 2006
Medical
Imaging
San Jose, CA
17 - 21 April 2006
Defense
& Security Symposium
Orlando, FL
12 - 16 June 2006
Great
Lakes Photonics Symposium
Dayton, Ohio USA |
| Local OSA Chapter Meetings |
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - 7:00 pm
UR, Center for Optoelectronics and Imaging
Steven Buratto -
Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSB
Nanoscale Photophysics of Organic Semiconductors Probed
by Near-Field Optics and Single Molecule Spectroscopy
Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - 6:00 p.m.
RIT, Carlson Center for Imaging Science Auditorium
Muhammed Aslam and Yee S. Ng -
Eastman Kodak Company
Nexpress Glosser Process for Photo-Rich Applications
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| SBIR Is Worth Learning About |
Did you know?
The SBIR program is often used for high risk, pre-venture
capital projects.
-
In the most recent year, New York State
received 224 SBIR/STTR grants valued at a total of $62 million
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The total dollar amount available for 2005
is $2.2 billion
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38% of applications will be approved
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You can reapply twice
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The program staff really do help
Does SBIR make sense for you and your company?
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Do you have a research project that can
be done for $100k within 6 months?
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Can you put a resource on this project at
least 51% of the time?
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Have you done or are you willing to do your
homework?
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Can you meet an application deadline of
Dec1st, April 1st or August 1st?
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Can you wait 6 months to start the project?
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Is your company U.S.-owned and will the
project be completed in the U.S.?
The good news:
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The SBIR/STTR grant system is alive and
well – especially in the assistance area. While the
government will not write it for you, they will work with
you throughout the process
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There are also local resources that have
experience and can help. Some are even at no cost
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The funding is diverse. The departments
will also discuss your proposal and tell you what they are
looking for – as well as direct you to other resources
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Once approved initially as a Phase 1, Phase
2 has a potential of $750k across 2 years
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The money is truly a grant. There is no
cost sharing or in kind
-
Many companies learn how to do these grants
and have a constant funding cycle
The Hard Part:
-
There is a lot of paperwork
-
You must wait 6 months to find out if you
receive approval
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There are a lot of rules
-
You must follow the rules
RRPC Recommends:
- Attend a seminar to learn more about the grants work.
(see events section for Fall's National Conference in Albany)
- Go to the one of the many websites such as http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/sbir.htm
or Google SBIR or STTR grants
- Do your homework. Approved grants are for research that
has not been performed in the past, and results in product,
process, or service that will: improve human health, speed
process of discovery, reduce cost of medical care/cost of
research or improve research tools.
SBIR information provided by Lory Hedges,
a Rochester-based grantwriter with an engineering background.
Lory's contact information is here.
--National Science Foundation due 12/8/05
--Department of Energy due 12/2/05
Solicitations are available to search here
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| Company News |
| Infotonics Technology Center
Collaborations
During the past year several  RRPC
members have been working on, or trying to develop potential projects
with the ITC:
- ASE Optics
- New Scale Technologies
- Ohmcraft
- Melles Griot
- RPC Photonics
- Sydor Instruments
- Thales Optem
ASE Optics has been
working with the ITC to identify SBIR opportunities. ASE provides
concept development, system design, lens design, opto-mechanical
design, stray-light analysis, system tolerancing, component specification,
vendor selection, procedure development, performance analysis,
polarization analysis and system troubleshooting.
New
Scale Technologies received a $750K equity investment
from Trillium's University
Seed Fund, Istria, Inc., and private
investors. Developed and marketed by key personnel from the former
Burleigh Instruments, New Scale's patented Squiggle™ Motor
uniquely addresses micro-positioning challenges. Investors and
company officials emphasized the potential of the company's motors
for mobile-phone autofocus applications when making the announcement.
Ohmcraft's
core technologies are fine-line patterning systems which can produce
circuitry
down to 3 Mil lines with 2 Mil spaces, including unique abilities
to pattern
unusual surfaces. What might be possible when combining Ohmcraft's
speciality microelectronics
applications with ITC's fab and packaging expertise?
Melles
Griot Optics Group, a division of Barloworld Scientific,
is a major OEM supplier, involved in the high-volume fabrication
of both standard and custom optical  components
and advanced thin-film coatings, as well as optical tables, opto-mechanical
hardware, and precision positioners. The company also designs
and manufactures multielement optical systems for demanding OEM
applications including semiconductor, machine vision, and reprographics.
Dr. Bruce Capron has joined Melles Griot Optics Group in Rochester,
New York as director of sales and marketing. In his new role,
Dr. Capron  will
report to Charles Synborski, general manager, and will manage
all North American sales, marketing, applications engineering,
and customer service activities related to the Melles Griot
Optics Group’s optical components, optical systems, coatings,
electronic shutters, and electro-optic assembly businesses.
Additionally, he will support Melles Griot sales and marketing
activities in Europe and Japan.
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Contact RRPC |
The Rochester Regional Photonics Cluster is an active
and growing collaborative organization. Efforts are under way on joint
training events, workforce development, collaborative advertising opportunities,
promoting the commercialization of intellectual property, and development
of our website to further facillitate business development for our members.
Join us! There are advantages to working together,
and we are interested in working with you. Send an email to us at membership@rrpc-ny.org.
To subscribe, to unsubscribe, to submit a news item or upcoming event,
to suggest a feature or column, or to offer feedback, contact Tom
Battley, at 585-329-4029.
Click here
to go to the archived version of this, or any of our previous Newsletters.
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