RIMES makeover to promote innovation

MAKING IT: Anthony Teage, left, an employee at ChemArt, works on a sheet of ornaments while company president David Marquis looks on. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
MAKING IT: Anthony Teage, left, an employee at ChemArt, works on a sheet of ornaments while company president David Marquis looks on. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Etching is one of several processes in the ChemArt Co. tool kit that could one day be used for some new product to complement the ornaments and jewelry the firm already makes.
Later this year, the Lincoln manufacturer will have the option of utilizing an innovation engineer schooled in helping companies sort out how to best use established know-how to expand.
An innovation engineer and a second specialist with similar skills will be made available for hire as part of the new services the Rhode Island Manufacturing Extension Service, a 20-year-old nonprofit, offers as it gets a makeover.
The nonprofit, commonly known as RIMES, is in transformation mode, a process existing staff, who have been retained, will help nurture, said Jim Petell, associate vice president of research and economic development at the University of Rhode Island and executive director for URI Research Foundation.
Besides a name change, services will be targeting innovation and the economic stimulation that implies, especially for smaller manufacturers and startups, Petell said.
Bringing innovation engineers onboard is already under way, he added.
“I will be one of their first clients when they hire an innovation engineer,” said Dave Marquis, ChemArt president and chairman of the organization’s advisory board. “We’re a small company with 100 people. I’m trying to find another niche to go into.”
Last April, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., awarded the University of Rhode Island Research Foundation a cooperative agreement to manage RIMES, temporarily renamed Rhode Island Manufacturing Extension Partnership – or RIMEP – as of Jan. 1, said Jennifer Huergot, director of media relations for the institute, which helps manufacturing-extension partnerships throughout the country improve competitiveness. Other states that use the model of a university or university foundation working with the institute through a cooperative agreement include, among others, Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Dakota and Wisconsin, she said.
As RIMEP evolves, it will continue to offer “lean” efficiency-oriented programs and other services for which it is known, Petell said. But by late February or early March, the nonprofit and its programs will be rebranded in ways Petell said he could not yet discuss. Calling it a “work in progress,” Petell said RIMEP, as it is rebranded, “is going to have more services we can provide to small manufacturers, and that’s the going the cornerstone of our mission.”
Short-term goals are to increase innovation by providing additional services to small businesses, as well as to students across Rhode Island university campuses, Petell said. Long-term, RIMEP will work to create additional jobs and economic growth, including spinoffs and technology clusters, he said.
“There [are] a lot of small businesses doing the right things, and it’d be nice to see if you could take a couple of those together and expand them,” he said.
RIMES was first formed in 1996, according to Huergot, but the new cooperative agreement qualifies it for full funding of $750,000 this year.
Besides helping manufacturers innovate, dollar-for-dollar matching funds for the $750,000 that the national institute provides to RIMEP will come not only from revenue generated by the services offered, said Marquis, but from the state, through the new relationship with the URI Research Foundation. How much the state would have to provide was not immediately available last week.
“One of the biggest issues we had as RIMES was garnering enough state support for the organization,” said Geoff Grove, president and CEO of Providence-based Pilgrim Screw Corp., and former chairman of RIMES advisory board for the past five years.
“In the transition to the URI Research Foundation, that problem goes away because URI is funded by the state,” he said. “It will bring state dollars to bear to leverage federal dollars. Federal dollars have to be matched with state dollars and project revenue. It will allow the organization to grow and thrive.”
RIMEP also will work to partner with other universities in the state, Petell said.
“First we’ve got to work on restructuring what we’re doing, goals and strategic objectives and then figure out how to bring in key partners,” Petell added. “URI is a key partner. The Business Engagement Center can be a focal point for outside people to contact us, a conduit.” Not only established manufacturers but startups like those nurtured at accelerator Betaspring and in partnerships across the state’s university campuses will benefit from the services RIMEP provides, Petell said.
Although RIMES had not typically served as a resource for many startups in the past, Allan Tear, Betaspring’s co-founder and managing partner, said that the new programs offered by RIMEP may prove attractive as startup teams try to pin down outside resources to help them grow.
“The more information sharing we have about who knows how to do what, the quicker these startups can move,” he said.
Finding new business partners is another goal for developing companies.
At URI, engineering professor Walter G. Besio, founder, president and CEO of CREMedical Corp., has developed ultra-sensitive electrodes that detect signals on the scalp’s surface that could help predict when people are going to have seizures like those associated with epilepsy, and possibly even be used to prevent those seizures from occurring.
After winning about $250,000 in Phase 1 funding for a Small Business Innovation Research grant funded through the National Science Foundation in the past two years, and now ready to apply for Phase 2 funding at the end of this month, Besio is excited about the potential RIMEP has, once established and rebranded, to further economic development here.
One of the technologies Besio needs to make his invention work is a printed circuit board that is used to integrate the electrodes, wires and amplification devices to an amplifier on the EEG, or electroencephalograph, which measures brain waves. He has not found a company in Rhode Island or New England that supplies them.
“Going offshore [for goods and services] is costing us jobs and economies of scale right here in our neighborhoods,” Besio said. “The more jobs we can create here and the more people spend, the better things are going to be. I’d like to see us build our economy here.” •

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