Published: 12.31.2007

Ionatron’s CEO cites firm’s significance to Tucson

By Jack Gillum

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Tucson-based Ionatron Inc., a defense contractor that develops directed-energy weapons, is one of the Old Pueblo’s few publicly traded companies.

The price of the company’s shares, traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange, closed Friday at $2.94 per share, near the 52-week low of $2.65.

The company’s headquarters is near East Ajo Way and South Alvernon Way, where it has about 85 employees. Earlier this month, President and CEO Dana Marshall was appointed chairman of the board.

Here are condensed excerpts from an interview with Marshall on Friday.

Q What is Ionatron’s significance to Tucson?

Top 20 business events, from housing slowdown to hostile bid for Ventana Medical Center

Inside Tucson Business

(Edited on Dec. 30, 2007 to correct errors.)

So what will the region remember, business-wise, from 2007? That’s the charge Inside Tucson Business has set out to try to quantify each of the last three years.

These aren’t necessarily the biggest news stories of the year. Instead, we’re more interested in trying to figure out what events of the year will have the longest impact, either positively or negatively.

So here’s what a vote by our staff and contributors believes we’ll be remembering from 2007:

1. Slowdown in the housing market

“Anticipated for more than a year, the housing market downturn finally arrived during the spring, sending sales plummeting to a four-year low, as active listings soared to record highs.”

Published: 12.30.2007

2 recent firsts mark revival of UMC’s transplant team

By Carla McClain

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Somewhere in the Southwest in the weeks before Christmas, a small child and a grown woman died.

We don’t know their names, and they didn’t know each other. We don’t know why or how they died — only that their deaths very likely were unexpected.

But we do know that they gave vital parts of themselves to two Arizonans who now live on after undergoing rare and complex organ transplants at University Medical Center.

The woman’s heart and a kidney went to a 41-year-old father in a marathon back-to-back dual transplant surgery that took two transplant teams and 10 hours to complete.

The toddler’s two tiny kidneys now sustain a 56-year-old Willcox grandfather, freeing him from years of dreaded dialysis and a shortened life.

UA gets $3.3 million to boost solar energy research

ALAN FISCHER

Published: 12.27.2007

Activity is heating up at a University of Arizona program developing new solar technologies and expanding the use of the sun’s energy.

The Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy, known as AzRISE, recently received $3.3 million in funding for four years from the Arizona Board of Regents.

“This is going to be a tremendous boost not just to Tucson but to the whole state of Arizona,” said AzRISE co-director Joe Simmons, who is also head of the UA materials science and engineering department.

AzRISE, launched last summer, will find ways to make solar energy cheaper – and more attractive to consumers, he said.

Electricity produced by photovoltaic solar panels remains more costly than power from conventional coal- and gas-fired power plants, he said.

Published: 12.16.2007

UA leads in NASA deals here

In rest of state, businesses get most funding

By Michelli Murphy

When the University of Arizona failed to land a $36.8 million NASA contract last week, it was a rare loss in the UA’s long history of bringing space dollars to Tucson.

The university is the dominant force among the local organizations bringing NASA contracts to Tucson.

Educational institutions, led by the UA, have consistently pulled in three to four times the NASA funds that local businesses have, though Raytheon Missile Systems is among the private entities hunting for NASA contracts.

That’s the reverse of the picture in Arizona as a whole, which brought in about $100 million in NASA contracts last fiscal year, ranking the state 15th nationwide. Nearly three-quarters of Arizona’s NASA contract money went to private businesses, with the rest going to educational and non-profit institutions.

Tool developed at UA may spot cancer faster

Artificial opals help catch what other tests miss

ALAN FISCHER

Published: 12.14.2007

Cancer and other illnesses could be detected – and treated – years sooner, thanks to a tool developed by a Tucson company spun off from University of Arizona research.

“This technology can save lives,” said Mary J. Wirth. “You want to detect it before it has metastasized.”

BioVidria Inc., spun off from Wirth’s work at UA, will offer tools to detect tiny cancers and other diseases that current diagnostic methods miss and do the job more quickly, said Wirth, the company’s president and a UA professor of chemistry.

Early detection of cancer using bioVidria’s products – even long before symptoms appear – will allow doctors to offer more effective treatments.

Southern Arizonans win big at state Innovation Awards

December 14, 2007
Inside Tucson Business

Southern Arizonans won big at the annual Governor’s Celebration of Innovation Awards. Indeed, only three business finalists from this part of the state did not win awards – and one of those went to another finalist from here in the same category.

More than 1,200 people attended the gala called the state’s Academy Awards of Technology. It was held Dec. 7 at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale and put on by the Arizona Technology Council and the Arizona Department of Commerce.

Award winners from Southern Arizona were:

Innovator of the Year – Award – Startup

MSDx, 9040 S. Rita Road in the University of Arizona Science & Technology Park, is a biosciences firm developing a first-of-its-kind blood test to diagnose multiple sclerosis.

Innovator of the Year Award – Small Company

Published: 12.10.2007

Arizona Daily Star

Bio5 director gets top nod

Vicki Chandler, director of the Bio5 Institute at the University of Arizona, was given the Ed Denison Business Leader of the Year Award at the annual Governor’s Celebration of Innovation awards gala on Thursday.

The annual event is hosted by the Arizona Technology Council and the Arizona Department of Commerce.

Tucson leads Az in technology awards

Area accounts for six of eight leading honors

ALAN FISCHER

Published: 12.11.2007

Tucson cleaned up at the Governor’s Celebration of Innovation awards.

Local residents and companies took top honors in six of eight professional categories at the state’s top awards for technology and innovation.

“Tucson did so well,” said Bob Hagen, chairman of the Southern Arizona Tech Council. “It’s a real testimony to the quality of the science and technology companies in southern Arizona.

“This builds a reputation for southern Arizona for having quality science and technology projects and educational efforts. It really is a very big deal.”

The winners can use the recognition in marketing, promotions and going after new customers and contracts, Hagen said.