September 1, 2005 

NovaWave Technologies (Redwood City, CA) has recently been awarded two Missile Defense Agency (MDA) SBIR Phase II Research Grants with a combined value of approximately $1.5M to develop diagnostic systems primarily for the Airborne Laser (ABL) program. The projects leverage the company’s innovations in cavity-enhanced technologies for optical health monitoring and gas sensing on board ABL’s Boeing 747 platform. The two year programs focus on refining both cavity ringdown (CRD) as well as integrated cavity output spectroscopy (ICOS)-based systems as autonomous sensors for long-term monitoring of vital ABL subsystems. “

We are very excited about both of these programs as we see an opportunity to address significant monitoring problems in the ABL while enhancing our ongoing work on developing deployable, ruggedized sensor platforms”, states Dr. James Scherer, NovaWave’s CEO and President. “The challenging ABL environment requires that we carefully engineer and thoroughly characterize sensor performance under a range of environmental conditions, which will be simulated during the programs using our recently acquired environmental chambers. We expect to learn a lot during these tests about ruggedizing our optical sensor platforms to survive in real-world conditions, which is highly symbiotic with our broader commercialization goals to develop autonomous sensors for field applications.” Both programs will comprise developing, delivering, and testing prototype systems at Government facilities, where additional testing will determine the suitability of the sensors for integration into the ABL program. In addition to ABL applications, it is anticipated that the technology will be suitable for a broad range of sensing applications, including Homeland Defense and environmental monitoring.

  September 1, 2005

NovaWave Technologies (Redwood City, CA) has secured two Department of Energy SBIR Phase II Research Grants with a total value of approximately $1.5M to develop gas sensors based on the company’s novel infrared laser technology. The projects leverage the company’s development of an all-solid state, room temperature, widely tunable middle infrared laser system that produces single transverse mode, single frequency laser light at the mW level. “We are excited about the potential for enabling commercial laser products based on these two projects, and will focus on transitioning our infrared laser platform from the lab to the marketplace as a parallel effort to the two programs” states Dr. James Scherer, President and CEO of NovaWave. According to Dr. Scherer, “Our laser system will constitute the worlds first turnkey, widely tunable infrared laser product of its kind, providing a new tool for high resolution spectroscopy in the middle infrared, with a price point that assures significant market penetration.”

The frequency agile nature of the new laser “engine” to be developed during the programs enables numerous chemical species to be detected via their distinct spectroscopic signatures in the “fingerprint” middle infrared spectral region, creating the opportunity for a wide range of commercial applications for the technology. “Our core laser platform offers an immediate solution to the problem of previously obtaining a rugged, truly single mode, room temperature laser system suitable for high resolution spectroscopic applications”, states Dr. Scherer. “The ability to access the middle infrared precludes the need in many cases to employ less robust, ‘ultrasensitive’ spectroscopic methods, as transition strengths for chemical targets are significantly stronger in this spectral region.”

The two year DoE programs will focus on refining the new laser technology for turnkey absorption-based environmental sensing applications such as greenhouse gas and pollution monitoring. NovaWave plans to release a commercial version of the infrared laser system subcomponent in early 2006, and has already sold several beta version laser systems, which constitute a new versatile, turnkey spectroscopic tool for the broader R&D community. The complete sensor system will subsequently be refined for dedicated sensing applications that require extended, autonomous operation.

August 1, 2005

NovaWave Technologies (Redwood City, CA) has expanded its operations to include an additional 11,000 square foot state-of-the-art R&D and manufacturing facility in the Redwood Shores area of the Silicon Valley. The new facility is located at 900 Island Drive, approximately one-half mile from its 230 Twin Dolphin Drive facility. “The new facility was recently built-to-order to accommodate our expanding operations, significantly increasing our ability to seamlessly grow our commercial as well as R&D business sectors”, states Dr. James Scherer, NovaWave’s President and CEO. “We are now in the process of hiring a number of new staff to round out our technical as well as support team, with special emphasis on putting together a top-notch engineering team to transition prototypes into innovative commercial products.”

The new facility includes high power laser and electronics laboratories, product test, assembly, and validation areas, and class 100 and 1000 clean rooms. “A key feature of our new facility is the potential to grow contiguously as operations expand, providing as much as 40,000 sq. ft. of additional space as needed to accommodate our rapidly growing business,” according to Dr. Scherer. “This, together with the ability and willingness of the owners (Peery-Arrillaga) to build a modern, turnkey facility to our specification were the primary drivers for site selection.” NovaWave anticipates significant additional expansion of operations at the new site in the near future based on projected business revenues, which have more than tripled in the last two years.