Soon after the firm was founded, the founders of Guardion won a $50k Gold Prize in the 2017 MassChallenge Accelerator and the CASIS/Boeing prize for research on the International Space Station. The firm was selected to be part of the Air Force funded Techstars Autonomous Tech program in Boston MA. A project funded with an NSF I-Corp grant entitled Ultrasensitive chip-scale ion-sensors for mass spectrometry describes the project as one in which Guardion helped mass spectrometer manufacturers increase market share and create new market opportunities by significantly improving their products sensitivity and reducing the reliance on expensive and cumbersome vacuum components. Guardion enabled these product improvements by providing detectors that increase sensitivity, significantly reduce size, weight, operating power, and cost of the detector section, and provide ion detection at ambient conditions, thereby significantly reducing vacuum requirements. Additionally, the high spatial resolution of the microfabricated sensor arrays open up new potential product lines by greatly simplifying the ion-prefiltering technologies needed in the customers systems. The piece went on tos ay that in addition to providing value to the customers, Guardions products will enable the end users to achieve their analytical needs faster, more reliably, and more impactfully. In particular, Guardions technology advantage will enable increased homeland security by meeting increasing demands for portable or leave-behind analysis equipment, and improve industrial processing through more affordable and easier to deploy analysis equipment.
