IN3, NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge Hold Tech Demo Highlighting Indiana Technology

The Indiana Innovation Institute (IN3) and the NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge conducted their first Tech Demonstration on March 31, 2020. Ten Indiana companies and one university had the opportunity to exhibit and explain their innovative products and abilities to representatives from Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane) and other U.S. Navy officials.

The goal of tech demos is to identify organizations that the Navy can partner with to address military emerging technology needs. This particular demonstration featured organizations with expertise in the areas of microelectronics, hypersonics, artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity.

The event was intended to be an in-person demonstration but that plan quickly changed due to social distancing requirements during the ongoing COVID-19 health emergency. In an effort to meet the over-arching goal of the NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge – getting new technologies into the hands of the nation’s military as quickly as possible – IN3 responded by swiftly producing an online version of the conference. This allowed the organizations to showcase their advanced technology products and skills for the Navy as planned.

The event was very well attended with 125 people representing 23 companies, universities, government agencies and military commands from locations in the U.S., United Kingdom and Germany.

The demonstration was part of a partnership agreement between IN3 and NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge to foster collaboration in the Midwest ecosystem among universities, industry, small businesses and non-profits to accelerate technology to the warfighter in areas including trusted microelectronics, hypersonics, and electro-optics.

In addition to the Navy, the agreement is aimed at benefiting a number of initiatives and organizations across the state and the broader Midwest. It will also help advance Governor Holcomb’s defense strategy, boost the state’s economy through new business projects, tap into the expertise at the state’s top research universities, and forge collaborations among a host of entities, which may not have partnered on defense projects in the past.

Presenting organizations for the tech demo were:

  • Semiring (Bloomington) – Dr. Damir Cavar, CEO and Co-Founder
    • Semiring develops real-time natural language processing and AI analytics of spoken and written language, semantic and pragmatic analytics of the next generation, and real-time Knowledge Graph generation.
  • SimbaChain (Plymouth) – Joel Neidig, CEO and Co-Founder
    • Simba Chain is a cloud-based, smart-contract-as-a-service platform, enabling users across a variety of skill sets to implement dapps (decentralized applications). The platform is tailored for users, developers, government, and enterprises to quickly deploy blockchain dapps for their enterprise.
  • Indiana Integrated Circuits (South Bend) – Jason Kulick, President and CEO
    • Indiana Integrated Circuits develops and licenses advanced microelectronics. The company’s quilt packaging technology can deliver monolithic-like device performance while achieving heterogeneous integration.
  • Transhield (Elkhart) – Jeff Vold, Vice President Industrial and Government Business Development, and Dr. David Sharman, Military and Technical Advisor
    • Transhield develops and provides radio frequency (RF) shielding protective covers that block malicious RF attacks. Their covers for the U.S. Navy prevent RF scanning that determines capabilities, prevents interference and interrogation with communications and combat systems.
  • DANNAR (Muncie) – Gary Dannar, CEO
    • DANNAR is an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) that provides mobile, off-road energy platforms. The DANNAR Mobile Power Stations are multi-purpose vehicles that are complete maintenance and disaster response platforms.
  • Stryke Industries (Fort Wayne) – David Augustine, Senior Vice President
    • Stryke Industries provides SEAS technology/device, hardware agnostic plug and play encryption.
  • Pierce Aerospace (Carmel) – Aaron Pierce, CEO
    • Pierce Aerospace’s Flight Portal ID provides a secure authentication system for remote identification of drones for both military and civilian applications.
  • IFBattery (West Lafayette) – Bradford Thorne, R&D Engineer
    • IFBattery is developing a low-cost ventilator that is designed for mass production. The ventilator is specifically designed to support COVID-19 disease states and complications. Applications beyond the current crisis include military, global cost-sensitive care, and local EMT/Fire Department use.
  • Indiana University (Bloomington) – Martin Swany, Chair, Intelligent Systems Engineering
    • Mobile edge computing using AI to allocate assets.
  • Manufacturing Technology Inc. (South Bend)– Tom Budd, Solutions Manager-Friction Welding
    • Manufacturing Technology Inc. provides critical component joining capability through a process known as Friction welding for the commercial Astro/Aero Space sectors.
  • SEG – Chuck Smith, NSWC Crane Program Manager; Pete Grossman, Advanced Development Branch Manager; Tom Viehe, Business Development Manager
    • SEG provides systems engineering expertise for U.S. integrated air and missile defense initiatives. Its list of clients includes Missile Defense Agency, AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense Program, U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Centers and many others.