Unil Perera, president of NDP Optronics LLC and a professor of physics at Georgia State University, had successfully completed his six month SBIR Phase I research for the Air Force on dual-band UV-IR detectors.  The basic technology had been developed by Perera at Georgia State and then licensed back to his company. 

The results of the Phase 1 work looked good and he had an excellent R&D plan laid out for his Phase 2 proposal. This would provide $744,000 in funding over two years to develop and test a prototype and bring this technology to the point that it would be of interest to larger, established companies that could help market it. 

According to Perera, "The SBIR proposal was looking good, but I knew that in Phase 2 the commercialization plan was examined much more closely than in Phase 1.  I did not want this to cause any problem with the acceptance of this proposal."

That is when he turned to the SBIR Assistance Program for the State of Georgia.  Program Director John Mills reviewed a draft of the commercialization plan and made a number of suggestions for improvements.  Program Marketing Manager Connie Ruffner searched databases and came up with statistics to document the size of one of the primary markets for this device.  A final review of the plan by Mills resulted in additional refinements which were made before the
proposal was forwarded to the Air Force.

Two months later Perera was notified that his proposal was being accepted, providing the funding his company needed to move this technology forward.  According to Mills, "Dr. Perera had an outstanding proposal to start with.  However, with the emphasis that federal agencies are putting on SBIR commercialization plans, he was wise to seek help in improving that part of his proposal."

The SBIR Assistance Program is part of Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute. The services are available at no cost to all Georgia-based companies. More information can be
obtained at (www.sbir-georgia.org or by calling 404-385-2600.

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