Nano Spin-Off Company Scores Big

A University of Rochester spin-off company focusing on ultra-small technology has been recognized in a big way. SiMPore Inc., a company founded by engineers on River Campus, recently won the Golden Horseshoe Business Challenge, a $100,000 prize recognizing its business plan as the best in a region encompassing western New York and eastern Ontario.

SiMPore grew out of research in the University’s departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. The work showcases the type of nanotechnology research happening in laboratories at both the Medical Center and on River Campus, as well as illustrates how such work could one day benefit the health of people around the globe. Founders of the company include Philippe Fauchet, Ph.D., professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; James McGrath, Ph.D., associate professor of Biomedical Engineering; and two of their former students, Christopher Striemer, Ph.D., and Thomas Gaborski, Ph.D.

The team’s work, initially published last year in the journal Nature, focuses on developing filters with almost unimaginably fine membranes able to screen out tiny materials such as viruses or proteins in a way impossible to do until now.

The company’s core technology is a porous silicon film so thin that it’s invisible to the naked eye when viewed from certain angles. At more than 4,000 times thinner than a human hair, the barely-there membrane is thousands of times thinner than similar filters in use today. The thinness and ability to adjust its pore size give the filter significant advantages over current membranes in its ability to separate molecules, making it possible to sort proteins quickly and inexpensively.

The filter is made of a material known as porous silicon, a close chemical cousin to the silicon that’s used everyday in computer-chip manufacturing. Unlike regular silicon, which comes as solid pieces like blocks or wafers, porous silicon is riddled with holes, a bit like Swiss cheese. The filter can withstand high pressures, a capability that seems impossible for such a thin material, especially one composed mostly of empty space.

Some possible applications of the work include protein separation for dialysis, ion exchange in fuel cells, growth of neurological stem cells, and air purification. The technology should also help researchers identify and characterize molecules more readily so that scientists can study the roles these molecules play in health and disease.

The company has just completed a very successful round with “angel” investors who are backing the company with more than $1 million of their own money in exchange for a stake in SiMPore. The company also won the Rochester Regional Business Plan contest and earlier this year was awarded nearly $500,000 from New York State to help commercialize its technology.