Furman University Classics Department
Dr. Christopher Blackwell, a professor in Furman University’s Classics department, helped make three ancient manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad available digitally for students and scholars to study online. These manuscripts, bound books with pages made of sheepskin, date from A.D. 950, are so highly restricted that fewer than 20 scholars have been able to study them over the past 150 years. We’ve digitized the three manuscripts, and developed an online application where users can view online the original pages on which specific references appear. Blackwell and his partner defined a standard by which concise string-expressions could be used to specify a text or part of a text. Then, Blackwell used the Google Maps API to make the images of the manuscript pages interactive, where viewers can easily pan around the page and zoom in or out. While these texts were once off limits to all but the most dedicated scholars, these online tools give any student with access to a networked computer and a knowledge of Greek the potential to make new discoveries about this ancient text.
http://classics.furman.edu

Innegrity, LLC
Innegrity, LLC, is a four-year-old Upstate company whose main product is a high-modulus, thermoplastic fiber, Innegra S, originally designed to replace fiberglass in composites, ropes and ballistics. Recently, however, the fiber exceeded expectations when tested in ballistics applications such as body armor, particularly when combined with existing high-strength fibers such as Kevlar. Because the production cost of Innegra S is a fraction of that of Kevlar and similar materials, replacing armor made solely from those materials with a hybrid that includes Innegra S would allow the same protection to individuals at a lower cost in both military and civilian applications. Because purchasing hard and soft armor has historically been so expensive, there are still a large number of military vehicles, for example, that go unarmored. The introduction of Innegra S as a component in the ballistics market will allow the same high-quality protection to be offered to more of our servicemen and women on the battlefield, and also to potential civilian targets. Only nine months after the ballistics testing of the first Innegra S armor panel, sales projections for the next year total nearly $5 million, and include applications in hard and soft armor, tents and mobile structures, and building security.
http://www.innegrity.com/

Sealed Air Corporation
Sealed Air Corporation is a global manufacturer of fresh food and protective packaging with a technology and innovation organization located in Duncan, South Carolina. After several years of research in the area of radio frequency identification, that organization developed an application of a custom-designed radio-frequency identification tag as a means to monitoring temperature in the shipping containers in which foods and other sensitive materials were transported. The three components of the application are the tags themselves, the software for managing the monitoring of the tags, and the handheld tag readers, which pull data from the entire shipping history from the tag. The tag design includes a feature that allows it to be converted to an external-probe tag, which can monitor the interiors of very large, insulated shipping containers, even at dry ice temperatures. The result is a temperature monitoring solution for customers, without having to resort to expensive IT resources. The goal of ensuring the delivery of foods where safety and freshness have not been compromised by high temperature exposure during the shipping cycle was exceeded, and early adopters are already expanding their systems.
http://www.sealedair.com

Zipit Wireless, Inc
ZipIt Wireless introduced the Zipit Wireless Messenger 2 (Z2) in late 2007. Developed in June of 2007, Zipit Wireless’ Z2 marked the company’s second breakthrough product launch with a variety of new features and technical enhancements. The company’s profile within the electronics industry has risen dramatically following the much-heralded launch of the Z2 and the company’s highly successful viral marketing campaign. The patented Z2 is a unique, all-in-one Wi-Fi messaging device that leverages Wi-Fi technology to enable heavy messaging teens and pre-teens to stay connected with their friends without the hassles of being tied to the family computer or incurring high messaging bills on a cell phone. The Z2 is uniquely positioned in the crowded consumer electronics space due to its appealing feature set built on a Wi-Fi platform and the company’s distinctive back-end controls and capabilities. With text capabilities, larger screens, 8 preset internet radio stations, mini-SD card slot, and parental controls for limited usage and monitoring, this product allows teens and pre-teens an affordable way to stay in touch with their friends as compared to messaging on cell phones. As evidence of its impact across various constituencies, the Z2 has received widespread press coverage and awards since its introduction last fall. The company has also received widespread media coverage for its highly successful viral marketing campaign targeting teens and pre-teens. The campaign, featuring up-and-coming YouTube video character Fred, was one of the first “online-to-offline” marketing campaigns leveraging an online star on national TV spots. In its first two months in the market, the viral strategy has resulted in over 800,000 unique visitors to the company’s websites. The campaign has also been featured on CNN, in the LA Times, and through other media outlets. In April 2008, the Z2 was selected for an iParentingMedia Award for its family-friendly design and unique features.
http://www.zipitwireless.com

Furman University Dept. of Chemistry
The students of Furman University’s Chemistry department have created a high-quality e-textbook with its Bio-organic Wiki Textbook project. As a result in the change to the sequence of organic chemistry courses, a new teaching track was developed in which no textbook existed. Using a free wiki engine, a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit content using any browser, we created a platform through which students could write, referee and modify an e-textbook, with as little faculty input as possible. More than 100 students collaborated to successfully complete this e-textbook for the organic chemistry course. This project will benefit thousands more and we envision the content continually being improved in the coming years. With that experience under their belts, department faculty are now working with students in the bio-organic chemistry course to create an e-textbook of information covered in that course. They hope to generalize this technology so it can be used to create student-directed e-textbooks in all academic disciplines, and plan to disseminate their strategy in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
http://chemistry.furman.edu/

Enallage Communications, LLC
Enallage Communications, based in Easley, provides documentation, illustration and other technical services to Upstate clients. In 2007, Enallage developed a software application, the PRIDE Information Manager, for an Upstate non-profit to help streamline its functions. The program was implemented by the organization Providing Resources in Developmental Education, or PRIDE. PRIDE sends out monthly developmental milestone cards to more than 3,000 families across the Upstate, in both English and Spanish, to help families catch missed academic milestones in their children and to encourage them to take early action. Before the development of the Information Manager, the entire process was done manually, with data entered into spreadsheets and milestone cards printed, sorted and then mailed over the course of three years. The Information Manager developed by Enallage, using Microsoft Access compiled into an MDE file, calculates children’s ages and automatically determines the clients who should receive specific cards in a given month. The Information Manager has allowed the organization to add nearly 3,000 more Upstate families to its mailing list.
http://www.enallage.net

CreatiVasc
CreatiVasc Medical is a Greenville company that provides innovative, easy-to-use and intuitive vascular technologies for solving the universal problem of connecting patients to kidney dialysis machines. Founded in 2004, CreatiVasc has a five member board including Dr. David L. Cull, MD, a nationally recognized surgeon and Chief Research Editor for the Greenville Hospital System. The challenge with connecting patients to dialysis machines includes finding arteries and veins that traditionally are located using tactile skills to feel vibrations of blood flowing through arteries or veins. This technique results in many “missed sticks” and can lead to serious complications. CreatiVasic invention, the FistulaFinder, solves these problems by quickly and consistently identifying the fistula, stabilizing the vein, and preventing the vein from moving during the needle insertion. The FistulaFinder is simple and intuitive to use and does not require an extended period of training to achieve proficiency. During the three-month evaluation at Greenville Hospital System, the FistulaFinder successfully salvaged the fistula in 83% of the cases with no surgical intervention, a procedure that typically costs $3,000 to $5,000 dollars per patient. FistulaFinder began shipping in July 2008, and the nation’s largest supplier of dialysis medical devices agreed to disseminate the device to dialysis centers throughout the country.
http://www.creativasc.com/

Mr. Walter (Ted) Mueller
Retiring in 2008, after approximately 32 years in R&D, Ted Mueller has a long and distinguished record of invention and vision, as evidenced by his 45 US patents. His history of innovation led to his being honored as the company’s first Research Fellow, the highest level one may achieve in the technical field. Ted began his research efforts in the field of multi-layer shrink films that would replace PVC. His continued progress in this product arena helped evolve the display shrink film product line into one of five global Sealed Air Business Units. These products are familiar to any who have purchased games, software, stationary, or bundled products at warehouse stores. In 1985 he became intensely interested in the potential of extending our small medical products line. He developed the world’s first non-PVC medical solution package. Previously, only PVC bags were used as autoclave sterilized flexible pouches for IV fluids, but his were plasticizer-free polyolefin construction. His efforts progressed to include polyolefin tubing and connectors, and resulted in a global family of proprietary pouches that have transformed the packaging of drugs and parental solutions. After several years of pilot plant manufacture, a dedicated global manufacturing facility was installed in Duncan, S.C. This Spartanburg County clean-room factory, supplies to Asian customers, particularly China and Japan, where Sealed Air Medical products commands a major and growing market share, with sales in excess of $50 million. Ted has never been content to limit himself to any one product sector. Ted’s achievements are numerous and diverse- too many to cover in a brief summary. Ted Mueller was inducted into the Sealed Air Inventors’ Hall of Fame in 1998, in recognition of his numerous innovative contributions across many business sectors. These continue to have a sustainable impact on business success.

• Research Fellow, Sealed Air Corporation, Cryovac Division, Duncan, S.C.
• Inventor of over 45 issued U.S. patents.
• Developed the materials and process for stretch shrink films that transformed trayed poultry cuts from PVC to leak-proof chicken and other meat packaging.
• Developed low shrink tension shrink films for distortion-free packaging of textiles and greeting cards.
• Invented multi-layer extrusion dies capable of individual layer adjustment
• Developed initial “Case-Ready” packaging concepts trayed red meats. Package permitted high oxygen shipment, followed by rapid “blooming’ to bright red when grocer stripped off a portion of the film to reveal a gossamer high respiration film.