QuesTek Innovations, Evanston, Ill., announces that it was invited to the White House in early January to accept the U.S. Small Business Administration 2016 Tibbetts Award. This prestigious award is presented to small businesses, organizations, and individuals who have demonstrated excellence in leveraging Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding to generate measurable impact through technological innovation, technology transfer, business impact, and product commercialization.
The 2016 Tibbetts Award was presented to 37 small businesses, and QuesTek was specifically recognized for its unique contributions to the field of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) and President Obama’s Materials Genome Initiative.
QuesTek received its first SBIR-funded project in 2001, and has since been awarded over $30 million across a total of 93 projects, all of which have focused on the modeling and design of novel materials.
QuesTek’s reported commercialization value ranks it in the 95th percentile of all SBIR recipient companies. SBIR funding (from DOD, DOE, DARPA and NASA) has enabled QuesTek to create more than 30 jobs; transition its ICME technology and a team of engineers to a leading Silicon Valley consumer electronics corporation; form a joint venture with Thermo-Calc Software in Sweden to expand its ICME offerings into the European market; and enter into a strategic partnership with a major U.S.-based company to design and commercialize game-changing alloys.
Under SBIR-funded projects, QuesTek designed and commercialized two ultra-high performance steels: Ferrium M54 steel and Ferrium C64 steel. Ferrium M54 steel was successfully qualified and transitioned into the U.S. Navy T-45 fleet for the safety-critical hook shank component application, and is bringing an estimated $3 million in savings to the Navy based on an order of 60 components. Ferrium C64 steel is being qualified by Bell Helicopter and Sikorsky/Lockheed Martin for next generation helicopter transmissions, replacing lower-performing steels and allowing for significant increases in power density.
Both of these steels have received U.S. patents and are commercially available through a license agreement from leading specialty steel producer, Carpenter Technology.
