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DSU's Ustad wins regional SBIR award

Madison – Dr. Melvin Ustad, Director of the South Dakota SBIR Center at Dakota State University, recently received the Project SBIR West Support Person of the Year award. The Franklin-Jefferson Regional Award is selected from a fourteen state region and is based on activities undertaken during 1996 to further the Project SBIR West mission in the state or locality of the nominee.

“The companies in South Dakota participating in SBIR really won this award. If they hadn't done as well this year, we could not be recognized for our leadership and success,” said Dr. Ustad.

The South Dakota SBIR Center had its most successful year in 1996. Dr. Ustad was a recipient of a 1996 Tibbets award as a “Model of Excellence for the SBIR Program at the State and Local Level” presented by the US Small Business Administration. The Project SBIR West Regional Council also selected Octa-Auqa-Flex of Timber Lake for a regional achievement award for their successful USDA SBIR project.

Twenty-eight South Dakota small submitted forty-nine Phase I and Phase II SBIR proposals in 1996. Six of those businesses won three Phase II and four Phase I SBIR awards valued at more than $1 million. Prior to this year, South Dakota had received one other Phase II award during the history of the program.

The following are a few success stories from the SD SBIR Center:

Microconversion Technologies of Brookings, a start-up technology based company, began in 1995 with a National Science Foundation $75,000 Phase I project to develop an ultra high sensitive dew point sensor. Since then, the company received a $300,000 NSF Phase II award and currently has three more Phase I proposals pending.

Windak of Madison, a software development business, received a $230,000 Phase II USDA SBIR award to develop a document image processing software package for small rural county governments.

Dakota Alpha, Inc. of Rapid City has been started, partially due to the receipt of a $75,000 Phase I award from the National Science Foundation. Dakota Alpha is developing a technology to recover precious metals from waste products.

MicroBioMed, Inc, a Volga based company, collaborated with an Alabama based business to receive a $750,000 Phase II award from the Department of Defense to utilize MicroBioMed's patented dyes in tissue welding of corneal repairs. The company also has two Phase I proposals pending.

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