Company sale represents 'poetry' in motion
Steven Schultz
In the University's stepped up push to seek commercial development of its science, the events of Oct. 18, 2000, are a guiding light.
That is the day when Finisar Corp., a leading maker of computer networking equipment, completed a deal in which it paid $700 million in cash and stock to acquire Sensors Unlimited, an eight-year-old company that grew out of a close collaboration with Princeton scientists.
The story of Sensors Unlimited has become a model for such University-industry collaborations, said Joseph Montemarano, director for industrial liaison at the Center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials (POEM).
In addition to being a huge financial success, the collaboration shows how an academic research program can gain from a commercial affiliation without sacrificing scientific freedom or quality, Montemarano said.
"It really proved you could have your feet solidly planted in both worlds, academic and commercial," said Montemarano. "The ideas really are compatible."
Sensors Unlimited was founded in 1992 by entrepreneur Greg Olsen with help from electrical engineering professor Stephen Forrest. The company was "incubated" on the Princeton campus before moving to what is now a 35,000-square-foot facility on Route 1. Through its own research and sponsored research collaborations at Princeton, the company developed a range of products, from cameras that detect ice on the wings of airplanes to devices for monitoring the performance of fiber optic communications networks.
With the growth of the Internet, the communications devices have become a highly successful product for the company, which had $15 million in revenues in the first nine months of 2000. The company employs 110 people and plans to add another 100 in the next year.
Even after the sale to Finisar, Sensors' business continues to generate income for Princeton because the company has licenses to three Princeton discoveries. The company also continues to sponsor a significant amount of research at POEM and in the electrical engineering department. But perhaps most important, said Montemarano, the collaboration has helped create dynamic, real-world research opportunities and has resulted in employment for a number of Princeton graduates.
The collaboration also has served to alleviate concerns among academic researchers about potential conflicts of interest, such as corporate confidentiality requirements that would hold up the release of new findings. "There was never any hitch or glitch with holding up a student thesis or publication of results for even a nanosecond," said Montemarano.
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