Date: Nov 22, 2013 Source: (
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Mark Watson sits in the conference room at Snowy Range Instruments on the south side of Laramie, spinning his flip-phone on the long table.
Watson is a design engineer who grew up building models and playing with circuit boards in Florida and Colorado. He carefully chooses his words as if he were extracting them from a complex mathematical equation. His phone vibrates every few minutes, drawing attention to the antiquated technology.
Many inventors and entrepreneurs carry smartphones, using the latest technology to stay connected to customers and investors. Watson could easily afford an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy, but his thoughts are occupied by a more complex gadget: his company's hand-held "answer boxes" that use a laser to help identify unknown substances and materials.
Snowy Range Instruments, or SnRI, is a start-up business at the forefront of Raman spectroscopy, a qualitative analysis method with potentially limitless applications. Its three partners — Watson, Keith Carron and Shane Buller — are devoted to the Laramie community, creating jobs and fostering a work environment that promotes creativity and personal growth.
Raman
C.V. Raman, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Raman spectroscopy is named for, lived in the early 20th century, long before the invention of lasers.
In 1928, Raman used a telescope to make molecules vibrate. The vibrations produce a spectrum of light, the wavelengths of which are unique to the chemical makeup of individual substances and materials. Therefore, by knowing a substance's chemical makeup, Raman spectroscopy can snatch identity out of the unknown.
Carron, 55, is the president of SnRI and heads the chemistry department at the University of Wyoming. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University in Chicago and has worked with Raman spectroscopy for most of his career.
Three events occurred as Carron was coming of age that made building hand-held Raman more cost effective — mass production of the personal computer, small lasers used in CD players and CCD detectors in digital cameras.
"When I was in graduate school and when I started here, Raman meant 30 minutes in a dark room collecting one spectrum," he said. "And now we do it in hundredths of a second."
Carron learned computer programming as an undergraduate at George Washington University in St. Louis.
"I was in the position to see the future of computers and microprocessors and how that changes everything," he said. "I watched the diode laser in CD players come out and digital cameras and put it all in these things."
SnRI's hand-held Raman spectroscopy devices have a computer processor containing a library of substances' chemical make ups. Through computer programming, the library can be altered to match the needs of individual customers.
The company's two hand-held models have applications that can detect illegal drugs, explosives, pharmaceuticals, polymers, forensics, minerals and gem stones. Some of the SnRI's contracts are classified, as hand-held Raman spectroscopic devices can be used in counter-terrorism and espionage operations.
Snowy Range Instruments
SnRI's offices are housed south of Interstate 80 in a non-descript building wedged between Motel 6 and the Laramie Police Department.
Carron, who likes to wear shorts and T-shirts as late into fall as possible, can be found there most Saturdays. He usually works 15-hour days between UW and SnRI.
"I can't make these at all," he said picking up one of the instruments. "I wrote the software. I have engineers that started with me in 2001. This isn't a one-man company at all. The engineers are what really make it."
The company's 14 employees are split into two sides: research and development and production. Carron said the office is organized to reflect the "throw it over the wall" model used by many start-ups. The engineers work on one side of the office, creating SnRI's new instruments. When design is complete, they throw it over the wall to producers who build them for SnRI's customers.
"There is more to this building than just instruments," Watson said. "This is providing jobs for people in a work environment where they can grow in a little different environment than the typical corporate world. We are trying to provide a place where people can feel valued and as a consequence they can do well and we can do well."
Buller is a UW alumnus with a degree in mechanical engineering. Born in Kansas, he grew up on a farm working with his hands, learning to build and fix things.
"UW has a wonderful engineering department, specifically a mechanical engineering department," he said. "I feel like I was very well trained there from an engineering standpoint — great professors, great labs and equipment, great machine shops. So I think that set me up very well to be part of the technology business."
Buller, 35, works with Watson and Carron designing hand-held Raman spectroscopy devices for SnRI's customers.
"It seems to be at the front of the field right now as far as portable Raman systems," Watson said of SnRI's newest model.
"It's fascinating stuff though, because any compound will generate a Raman signal, " Watson said.
That means SnRI's devices can be used in the medical field for pre-symptomatic detecting of diseases like cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis.
"One of my friends, a person I was in graduate school with, is at Georgia Tech and he is using these in surgery for removal of cancer, removal of tumors," Carron said. "He has this magic dust, its little nano-particles that light up when cancer is present."
Buller said the instruments could eventually become an industrial product, but they need to cost less in order to do so.
SnRI's two hand-held models retail for around $15,000, Carron said.
"The end game is a device that an untrained person can either put a sample into, or point to a sample, and it will identify it — without false positives or false negatives," Watson said.
Larry, Moe and Curly
SnRI isn't Watson, Carron and Buller's first company focused on Raman spectroscopy. The trio first teamed up at Laramie-based DeltaNu, which sold in 2007 for around $6.5 million.
"We did research at the university that tied into DeltaNu," Carron said. We got a number of patents through the university which they (UW) own(s). We assigned it to them and they make the money whenever someone uses it."
Watson and Carron built DeltaNu's first devices in UW's educational annex building before meeting Buller, who fell in love with Laramie to the point that he took a job driving a dump truck in order to live here.
"I like the community," he said. "There are a lot of good folks here. There is pretty much everything I like to do outside, right here."
After leaving DeltaNu, the men decided to team up again, forming SnRI in 2009. The company's incorporated name, MKS Technology, is a symbol of Watson, Carron and Buller's bond.
"That was a joke," said Carron. "MKS is scientific. It stands for meters, kilograms and seconds, so all of physics are done in MKS units. But it (the company name) stood for Mark, Keith and Shane."
Though their work is serious, the three partners don't take themselves too seriously, as evidenced by a picture of the Three Stooges that used to be in the bathroom at DeltaNu — Buller, who sports a buzz cut, would be Curly and Watson would be Larry. Carron would be Moe, Buller and Watson agreed.
"It's important for us to maintain a positive, fun atmosphere during stressful times," Buller said.
Watson and Buller said Carron is a "world-class expert" in Raman spectroscopy with a passion for building jobs in Laramie.
"There is not any hierarchy here, we are just partners," Watson said. "That has been one of the beautiful things about working with Keith. He does not try to tell any of us how to do our jobs. He just describes what needs to happen, what needs to be done, and then allows people the freedom to go and get it done in the best possible way."
Buller said it is "certainly" possible the devices could eventually be mass produced in a factory, creating middle class jobs for people in Laramie.
"I'd be delighted if we could build thousands of them," Watson said. "But the market isn't there yet. … It is kind of a chicken and the egg situation, where you need to get the volume up to get the cost down. You have to get the cost down to get the volume up, and I don't know how that is going to play out."
