{"id":94537,"date":"2014-07-16T09:27:24","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T13:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=94537"},"modified":"2015-12-03T14:23:13","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T19:23:13","slug":"uconn-incubator-company-receives-5-5-million-for-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/07\/uconn-incubator-company-receives-5-5-million-for-research\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Incubator Company Receives $5.5 Million for Research"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Baki<\/a>
Baki Cetegen, left, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Engineering\u2019s United Technologies Chair, and Eric Jordan, United Technologies Professor of Advanced Materials Processing, at Amastan at the Depot Campus. (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amastan LLC<\/a>, a company in UConn\u2019s Technology Incubator Program (TIP<\/a>), has secured a $5.5 million investment in support of its ongoing development of high-end plasma technologies for the production and processing of nanomaterials.<\/p>\n

Amastan\u2019s UniMelt<\/a> Process technology allows for the production of superior quality, contamination-free nanomaterials, and advanced thermal spray coatings. The technology can be applied in a wide range of applications, including optics, missile domes, solid oxide fuel cells, turbine engines, additive manufacturing, and armored windows, says Kamal Hadidi, the company\u2019s founder and CTO.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a fantastic adventure,\u201d Hadidi says. \u201cThis validates our technology and will help us put it on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

The $5.5 million comes from two private sources: LaunchCapital LLC, a New Haven, Conn. firm that invests in leading-edge technology, software, and medical devices; and Dominick Pagano, a UConn School of Engineering alum, investor, and former chief executive officer of Dapco Industries Inc. and the EDAC Technologies Corp.<\/p>\n

Amastan grew out of a private collaboration between researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UConn. The novel technology that led to the company\u2019s creation was invented at MIT by Hadidi and fellow senior research engineer Paul Woskov, in collaboration with UConn professors Eric Jordan and Baki Cetegen. Jordan is an expert in thermal barrier coatings and the UConn School of Engineering\u2019s United Technologies Professor of Advanced Materials Processing. Cetegen is head of UConn\u2019s Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Engineering\u2019s United Technologies chair professor. He is an expert in optical imaging and laser diagnostics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great example of how UConn, Connecticut\u2019s flagship public research university, is serving as an economic engine for the state and regional economy,\u201d says Jeff Seemann, UConn\u2019s vice president for research. \u201cOur world-class faculty is awarded grants that support groundbreaking research on everything from military defense, to life-threatening diseases, to clean energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amastan has performed research for the U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, and the Office of Naval Research. As part of the investor agreement, Pagano will serve as Amastan\u2019s CEO and Konstantine Drakonakis from LaunchCapital will serve as chairman of the board.<\/p>\n

Located on UConn\u2019s main campus in Storrs, Conn., UConn\u2019s Technology Incubation Program offers research and development space to accelerate the successful development of fledgling companies, while providing entrepreneurs with critical resources and business services.<\/p>\n

Since it was launched in 2003, the Technology Incubation Program has helped more than 60 companies and maintained a new business start-up success rate more than double the national average. The companies have had a major impact on the state\u2019s economy, raising $38 million in grants and generating over $41 million in revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amastan LLC is developing high-end plasma technologies for the production and processing of nanomaterials. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":94763,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,1862],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[44],"class_list":["post-94537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-busn"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 19:23:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94769,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94537\/revisions\/94769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/94763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94537"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=94537"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=94537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}