Technology Stars
TechPoint's Mira Award winners.

by Kathy McKimmie

Once again TechPoint, the voice of Indiana’s technology community, has honored organizations and individuals for innovations and successes in all areas of technology. Mira Awards were presented at its May 21 gala attended by 500 executives, entrepreneurs and educators.

Paragon Medical, Pierceton

"Our core business is glorified tackle boxes for surgeons," says Toby Buck, Paragon’s chairman, president and CEO. Doesn’t sound too high-tech, does it? But the company has carved a niche as a total delivery solution for the orthopedic-implant community. It picked Pierceton for its base in 1992 because it was 10 minutes away from Warsaw, dubbed the "Orthopedic Capital of the World." Four of what Buck calls the "magnificent seven" of orthopedic companies are located in Warsaw: DePuy, Biomet, Zimmer and Medtronic.

Buck says the company earned its stripes in the manufacture of reusable polymer cases and trays (called delivery systems in the trade) used to hold surgical instruments, but the business plan always reflected a total instrumentation management approach. It still makes cases and trays, including metal and hybrid ones, but now it makes custom surgical instruments and even some implantable components, such as bone screws, that are co-developed with customers.

The 300-employee company is located in an 110,000-square-foot facility in Matchett Industrial Park. On the drawing board are two additional 40,000-square-foot buildings, one opening in 2006 to house the case and tray production, the other in 2007 or 2008 for instrument and implant production.

"Technology mitigates dependence on labor in the factory," says Buck. Even so, in five to seven years he says the workforce at Paragon will triple. "In the orthopedic community there’s a large sucking sound" coming from Warsaw as the demand for the same workers intensifies. Although there will continue to be a need for engineers and highly skilled workers, technology advances will allow lesser-skilled workers to do many of the jobs. "Technology can be pursued for technology's sake," he says. "We’re really prudent on how we use it. We deploy technology to compress cost and compress lead time." That’s key to meeting customer pressure for cost reductions.

Given his name, Buck, it seems fitting to find stuffed buck trophies on the walls of the CEO’s office: two mule deer and two white tails. It’s a reflection of Buck’s southeastern Minnesota heritage and his passion–"I do a lot of hunting and fishing," he says, across the wilderness of the mountain and Plains states and Canada.

Buck studied engineering at Purdue University and did graduate work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He came to Fort Wayne to work for Magnavox and ITT Aerospace before launching his own company in Kosciusko County, which he says "is a good place to raise a family." Married 27 years to his high-school sweetheart and the father of four, Buck lives on Goose Lake, where he can fish for bass without leaving home.

eTapestry, Indianapolis

CEO Jay Love worked for a company that provided conventional fundraising software to not-for-profits before eTapestry’s startup. But Love and three other eTapestry founders decided that a Web-based solution would be preferable to the expense and constant updating required for software installed on a PC.

With $6.5 million in venture capital funding from Boston-based HarbourVest Partners LLC and Indianapolis-based Gazelle TechVentures, eTapestry began operation in 1999. Today, 5,000 customers have signed on to the simpler concept, served by 50 employees. "You can log on to the Web browser at home, at the office or when you’re out of town," says Love. Customer growth is running about 1,300 a year, revenues 100 percent a year. With 1.5 million not-for-profits in the U.S., Love says there’s a lot of opportunity out there.

Data is stored on secure servers, is backed up daily and can be accessed from anywhere with a password. A customer doesn’t have to have its own Web site, but because of frequent requests, eTapestry just branched out into Web-site development and hosting for not-for-profits and churches, whether they use its basic service or not. "It was the logical next step," says Love. A Web site allows an organization to interact with its donors, letting them log on to get information, make donations and register for events.

"We’re very, very well known in the not-for-profit world after only four and a half years," says Love. Through advertising, attending 50 trade shows a year and working with 200 consulting firms as partners that make referrals, he says: "The word’s out."

Clients of eTapestry are from across the country, Canada and Europe; some well-known Indiana customers are Marian College, Young Audiences, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Indiana Youth Institute.

ExactTarget, Indianapolis

TechPoint’s Gazelle award goes to an innovative technology company in business less than three years from initial commercialization of its principal product or service. This year’s winner, ExactTarget, launched its e-mail marketing solution three years ago and experienced growth rates exceeding 1,200 percent in 2002 and 320 percent in 2003.

Don’t confuse ExactTarget’s products with the spam email cluttering your virtual "in" basket. Led by President Scott Dorsey, it uses patent-pending technology to send highly personalized, permission-based emails to customers of his clients. Tracking tools record the recipient’s interaction with the email. Was it opened? Which pages were read? Was it forwarded?

The company received substantial initial financing from angel investor Bob Compton, who is chairman of the board. Today more than 2,000 organizations worldwide rely on ExactTarget e-mail software to strengthen their customer relationships. Clients range from Indiana-based companies, such as Marsh and the Indianapolis Colts, to nationally recognized brands such as CareerBuilder and General Mills. One of its keys to success is its aggressive deployment of sales people to sell products directly to medium and large companies, and to ad agencies that will put a private label on them.

Purdue Research Park, West Lafayette

The Purdue Research Park has been around since 1961, but major change came in 1993 when an existing building was converted to an incubator for small high-tech start-up companies. By 1997, the building was full with 28 companies, all with a strong relationship to Purdue–a requirement. A 60,000-square-foot Purdue Technology Center opened in 1999 as a "graduation facility" for companies outgrowing the incubator.

Continued growth has prompted a 46,000-square-foot expansion to the Technology Center, to be completed in February. About a third of it will be wet lab space–bench tops with sinks–with specialized waste-handling equipment to accommodate the needs of life-science and pharmaceutical companies. Endocyte, a cancer therapy company in the midst of FDA trials, will use 15,000 square feet of the new space on an interim basis before moving to something more permanent in a few years.

The park is now home to 110 companies. "Seventy-two are high-tech firms engaged in some form of new innovation that relies on technology," says Gregory W. Deason, director of research park development. Others are companies providing supportive services to park businesses, such as creating security for software firms and consulting with companies on lean manufacturing techniques. "Ultimately we intend all companies to grow. It’s a nice critical mass of entrepreneur-minded individuals."

In addition to the companies housed in the university’s buildings, some companies have bought land and built their own buildings. Cook Biotech, for instance, manufactures tissue-engineered medical products from the small intestine of pigs using Purdue-licensed research. Its 55,000-square-foot expansion will be complete later this summer. But even with the recent growth in the park, plenty of space remains available. Of its 591 acres, located some two miles from campus, 450 are left.

Susanne Hambrusch, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Living in a casual campus atmosphere, Susanne Hambrusch says it’s not often that she gets the chance to dress up. So as the recipient of the Mira Education Award, the Purdue professor and computer science department head–along with her supportive colleagues–took full advantage of the "black-tie optional" awards ceremony to savor the moment.

A native of Austria, Hambrusch earned a master's in computer science from the Technical University of Vienna, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Pennsylvania State, where she met her husband. As Indiana’s luck would have it, both were offered jobs at Purdue in 1982. She worked through the roles of assistant professor and professor where she focused on such heady things as parallel and distributed computation, data management in wireless environments and analysis of algorithms.

She moved on to associate department head and was appointed department head in 2002. "When you are faculty, you look out for your own research group and your own students," she says. "Now I’m concerned with everything. As a professor, you can only complain. Now I can say, ‘Let’s try it.’" One of the things she’s trying is a course where students use tablet PCs–essentially a giant PDA nearly the size of a laptop–where they write on the screen like a big sheet of paper. Juniors and seniors in the class of 25 work in teams to create new software tools for the tablet interface. To get the program started, Intel and Microsoft were persuaded to provide the tablets.

Hambrusch has long been a supporter of women in science and engineering. She was a critical facilitator for the establishment of the Computer Science Women's Network at Purdue, and an initial advisor and participant in the Women in Science Mentoring Program. She’s disappointed that only 8 to 9 percent of undergraduate computer science students are women, and that the percentage has dropped in the last few years, even as total enrollment has grown. "This is everywhere," she explains, not just at Purdue. But she’s pleased that women make up 20 percent of graduate enrollment. "We control graduate school admission. It’s much easier to say, ‘This is the student we want.’"

Clarian Health Partners, Indianapolis

Since 1997, Clarian Health Partners has been a unique consolidation of three Indianapolis hospitals: Methodist, Indiana University and Riley, and it continues to be an innovator. "In medicine there are 100 ways to do a procedure," says CEO Dan Evans, "but not 100 best ways." That’s where its emphasis on "knowledge-based care" comes in, finding "the best clinical pathways that result in the best possible clinical outcomes." The sheer number of the procedures done at the hospitals ensures reliability.

Hand-in-hand with the knowledge-based care is "evidence-based" medical management. For example, key indicators of diabetes will be measured and recorded every time a patient visits a Clarian doctor, then the best practice, based on the evidence, will be determined. "We’re involved with massive studies on diabetes," says Evans.

Two to three years ago, Clarian began using what Evans says is the largest clinical database in the world at the Regenstrief Institute, affiliated with the IU medical school. A patient’s symptoms will be compared against the database to help determine the best practice and develop a treatment plan. In a few years, 80 percent of Clarian’s patients will be using this system.

Clarian’s reach stretches from "bench to clinical," says Evans. "We fund and provide labs for primary and wet bench research in our facility." It’s also accustomed to being first to try new procedures. Methodist was the first hospital in the Western Hemisphere to use the lithotripter, a kidney stone crusher, and the first in Indiana to do kidney, liver, heart and bone-marrow transplants.

Technology is often mentioned as one of the drivers of health-care cost increases. That’s because we’re using more, says Evans. "If we drive out variation and improve clinical results, we will drive down costs." At the same time, he stresses we must do a better job managing wellness, especially diabetes and obesity, or utilization of technology will go up.

Sen. David Ford, Rep. Brian Hasler

The Trailblazer award recognizes people with vision whose efforts in advancing technology will make a lasting contribution. This year, TechPoint honored two state legislators for making Indiana a more competitive place to do business.

As chairs of committees created just two years ago to consider technology and economic-development issues, Sen. David Ford, Republican from Hartford City, and Rep. Brian Hasler, Democrat from Evansville, decided to take a different approach. They met jointly when the General Assembly was not in session to educate themselves and their members about Indiana’s high-tech issues. They traveled to IU, Purdue and Rose-Hulman to learn about the state’s most cutting-edge programs. "We wanted to know what was new out there and let the policy flow from that," says Ford.

This bipartisan cooperation and common base of knowledge led to some positive changes in the 2004 session. The R&D tax credit, set to expire in 2013, was made permanent. Companies needed to be able to plan long-term for investments in expensive equipment and highly trained scientists to develop medical procedures, drugs or fuel cells, says Ford. "Ten years to look forward was not enough."

Another success was securing funding to expand the current I-Light fiber-optic network connecting the main and Indianapolis campuses of IU and Purdue with 11 additional cities by 2006. In addition, Hasler shepherded STAR, the State Technology Advancement and Retention program, through the legislative process. "It’s a blueprint to keep the best and brightest graduates in Indiana and expand technology in the state," he says. One of its programs will bring junior-high students into the workplace to see how math and science is actually applied to encourage new career paths.

Both legislators stress the bipartisan way committee members worked. "It was almost a nonpartisan effort that was trying to get what was best for the state," says Hasler. "I don’t remember a single party-line vote in committee."

Still on the agenda for future sessions is how best to expand broadband access to every corner of the state, including wireless access, and setting standards for geographic information systems. Ford will be back to work on them; Hasler is not seeking reelection.

Community Tech Link, Muncie

Community Tech Link, Muncie, a program of the United Way of Delaware County, received the Bridge Builder award, recognizing an individual or organization's effort to bring technology to the "technologically underprivileged." The program was created in 1999 with local foundation and Lilly Endowment grants to work with not-for-profits on tech-related issues, says its director, Katie Frederick. When the initial funding ran out, United Way continued the program, with lots of support from community partner organizations, most notably Ontario Systems, Cardinal Health System and Ball State University. Together, the partners have contributed $2 million in human services to the program.

So far, Community Tech Link has assisted 50 to 60 organizations, from technology planning to Web-site development to support when their systems go down. Ontario Systems provides the server for the Web sites as well as access to its help desk. Other organizations also lend their help desks. "The not-for-profit calls here. I go down the list. If we can’t solve it over the phone, they might go out."

"Cardinal opened up their training facility so staff can go in and get training," says Frederick. It also helped with the purchasing logistics of the Red Cross’s new technology infrastructure, installed it and conducted the necessary training.

Community Tech Link worked with the Center for Information and Communication Sciences at Ball State to set up an eBook learning experience for a group of 6- to 10-year-old kids in an after-school program. In October, Ball State gave the United Way-sponsored Huffer Memorial Children’s Center 15 electronic books to see if children would favor them over traditional ones. Seventeen stories and a dictionary were loaded into the eBook, which is smaller than a laptop computer but bigger than a PDA and controlled with a stylus. "It’s a joy to watch them," says Frederick. "They line up and say ‘Is it time for the eBooks yet?’"