As manufacturing jobs melt away, Michigan is looking toward the future and exploring innovative ways to restore our state and region’s prosperity. The goal is to revitalize our reputation as a dynamic and forward-thinking place to do business and to recruit and retain the best and brightest employees right here in Michigan.

We know we have the skills, the work ethic and the willingness to take on new challenges. Two local companies with deep roots in Lansing are leading the way in science and technology.

Housed in the former Walnut Elementary School, Lansing-based Niowave is a research, development and manufacturing firm specializing in superconducting particle accelerators and their components. The company, founded in 2006, designs, fabricates and tests accelerators for use around the world.  Niowave uses Niobium, an element mined primarily in Brazil, as the superconducting material at the heart of their products.

According to Chief Operating Officer Jerry Hollister, “When we started Niowave, we were essentially a parts supplier for the national labs. However, in 2009 Niowave became the first private company anywhere in the world to design, fabricate and test a superconducting accelerator in its own facility. This new advancement is opening up numerous markets that include defense applications, basic particle research and medical research throughout the world. For example, we just completed a project with the British government as part of their research into new ways of treating cancer.

“We also conduct our own research in the uses of the technologies we have developed and refined, both to create new products and to establish new uses for our current products.”

Dr. Terry Grimm, company founder and current president and senior scientist, is an Indiana native and MIT graduate who did research at the U. S. Department of Energy’s superconducting supercollider in Texas in the early 1990s. Although the government ultimately cancelled the project, during the course of his work Grimm had developed a relationship with colleagues at the MSU cyclotron, joined the faculty there and worked for more than ten years as a researcher.

Based on his years of research, Grimm determined that there could be real-world uses for the technology he had spent years studying. Niowave, Inc. was born out of that marriage of pure research and practical applications.

The company currently employs 45, more than double last year’s workforce numbers. Hollister says, “We anticipate that we will have 60 employees by this time next year. Our employees range from PhD-level scientists to engineers to CNC and CAD technicians.”

Hollister says Niowave is committed to Lansing, “Lansing offers several advantages as a site for our business. First, the proximity to MSU and the accelerator expertise in the region is key. Additionally, the manufacturing skill level of the area workforce is second to none. Lansing offers us the high degree of technological and manufacturing skills we need—and small enough to be relatively inexpensive and immediately responsive to our needs.”

The company’s list of customers and collaborators reads like a Who’s Who of major players in science, technology and cutting-edge innovation. They include the United States Navy (Niowave is currently training and teaching Naval post-graduate students), and numerous Department of Energy laboratories, including Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago.

In late 2009, Niowave was awarded six new contracts with the Department of Energy as part of their Small Business Innovation Research program. Together, these contracts will bring $1.9 million from outside of Michigan into the local economy.  Niowave is currently fabricating accelerating modules for the International Linear Collider (ILC) in collaboration with Fermi Lab near Chicago. This next-generation collider is the next step up from the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator recently featured in the book Angels & Demons.

In fact, growth has progressed at an unanticipated rate, and Hollister predicts that the company will soon be ready to expand and add a new facility. He says, “Our headquarters will remain at our current site, but we are looking at other sites in the area in which to expand.

“With the research we are doing with the Navy and Department of Energy, combined with the F-RIB project at MSU, we believe mid-Michigan can be a worldwide center for this technology—the next Silicon Valley for accelerator research and development. We could be looking at hundreds of new jobs in the next decade.”

Emergent Biosolutions

Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) reaches around the world to protect lives. It started in Lansing and has now grown to include facilities in Maryland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Malaysia and Singapore with close to 700 employees worldwide. Its headquarters is in Rockville, Md. with manufacturing facilities in Lansing and Baltimore.

EMS is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacture and commercialization of vaccines and therapeutics that help the immune system prevent or treat disease. Its BioThrax® is the only vaccine licensed by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of anthrax. In development are products focused on treatment of anthrax infection, tuberculosis, typhoid, hepatitis B and chlamydia. In 2008, EBS entered into a joint venture with Oxford University, England, to work on a tuberculosis vaccine.

The company traces its roots back to 1998 when it acquired the anthrax manufacturing facility in Lansing, formerly owned by the Michigan Department of Public Health (MDPH). With the acquisition came the license to produce anthrax vaccine for the Department of Defense. In 1996, the facility had been transferred to the Michigan Biologics Products Institute, which had been created to privatize the biologics products division of the MDPH. The facility was purchased by what was then BioPort Corporation. Emergent BioSolutions was then founded in 2004 by BioPort Corporation.

According to Adam Havey, president, Emergent Biodefense Operations Lansing, “The Lansing site is a 12-acre campus; we manufacture and distribute the anthrax vaccine. Depending on our production schedule, we employ between 325 and 375.

“Our primary customer is the United States Government and the Centers for Disease Control. Besides the anthrax vaccine, we continue to work on developing other biopharmaceuticals for a variety of uses. And, of course, we continue to conduct research and development of our BioThrax® to improve the ease of use and increase the value of its lifecycle. We are responsive to the needs of the U.S. Government and work to expand programs to offer a full range of countermeasures against biological threats.

“Over the past 15 years, we’ve moved from a small company to one of the premier biodefense providers in the world.”

Over the past decade, EBS has invested more than $125 million in capital improvements at the Lansing site.

Havey says, “We’ve benefited from a close working relationship with the State of Michigan and the City of Lansing who have worked with the company to provide more than $20 million in tax incentives over a 15-year period. We now have a state-of-the-art facility and have always worked with local contractors on construction and renovation.

“In 2005, we began construction of Building 55, a new $75 million, 51,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, completed in 2006. The new facility is designed to produce products in an environment capable of up to Bio Safety Level Three. This new building significantly increased our annual production capacity.”

Havey anticipates continued growth both in Lansing and worldwide.

He says, “Emergent is proud that BioThrax®, an important component of the Strategic National Stockpile, is manufactured here in Lansing. We believe our large-scale manufacturing capability will play a key role in adressing the government’s biopreparedness needs.

Niowave, Inc. and Emergent BioSolutions are both part of a new generation of Michigan employers—strong in technology, strong in science, strong in moving Michigan forward.