It's not often that top-tier university professors work together to create a business from the ground up, but when they do, they develop innovative technology-driven products sure to change the world for the better.
Professors from the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia have teamed up to build a new venture-backed startup, PsiKick, that manufactures ultra-low-power wireless sensing devices – the lowest-power sensing devices in the world.
David Wentzloff and Benton Calhoun, friends from their time attending graduate school at MIT and now professors at their respective alma maters, launched PsiKick together in 2012. Wentzloff, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Michigan, and Calhoun, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UVa, tapped into the many resources available to them through their premier research institutions to create something that could have a tremendous impact on many different industries.
The sensors developed by the talented duo "operate at 1/100th to 1/1000th of the power budget of other low-power IC sensor platforms," according to the PsiKick website. "Their extreme energy efficiency enables them to be powered without a battery from a variety of harvested energy modalities including vibration, thermal gradients, solar, RF, or piezo actuation." Basically, because PsiKick's sensor are untethered to batteries, their future applications are almost unlimited, enabling, for the first time, battery free sensors, devices and applications for the Internet of Things.
The semiconductor startup recently announced that it succeeded in closing a Series A financing round led by New Enterprise Associates. The capital provided by NEA will help PsiKick accelerate its growth and continue to push forth with product development to meet the growing demand for energy-efficient systems-on-chip. Osage University Partners and MINTS – a University of Michigan venture fund – were also mentioned as new investors in the round.
“By reducing power budget to a mere fraction of other energy-efficient systems, PsiKick’s platform has the potential to dominate a nascent and fast-growing market as the ‘Internet of Everything’ becomes reality," said Forest Baskett, general partner at NEA.
PsiKick's technology is truly groundbreaking, securing multiple contracts with various Department of Defense Agencies and working with more than 20 customers for its ultra-low-power platform. Perhaps this is a sign that more professors from universities across the country ought to start partnering on revolutionary new technology.
Image via PsiKick
